Treat Your Employees Like Your Customers

While recently scrolling through my LinkedIn newsfeed, I came across a post by Carrie Luxem (1851 columnist – read her last column here). Her message was simple: What if you treated your employees like your customer? While her message was more focused on the high-turnover of a restaurant, it can still be applied to a wider span of employers.

Think about the last time you complained about your food not being cooked right, too cold or late. What did you do? Chances are you either complained to the wait staff or the manager. And, chances are they did something to make it right – discount on your bill, a fresh order or some solution that appeased you. Why? Because the customer is always right. And, if you are the owner of that restaurant, you are proud of how your staff responded to that complaint.

Yet, with employees, we don’t look at them the same way. They are often times not looked at as a client or as a customer. They are looked at as simply staff that makes the client or customer happy.

Now, clearly, the employer is the “customer”, as in you pay for the support of your staff, but, I do see value in a common ground workplace where you encourage the collaboration of your team.

One of our core values at our company is a culture of respect. What this means is that we will respect each other, we will respect the process and we will respect our clients. Respect means that when our opinions differ, we will listen to each other with an open mind and be happy to be challenged with true data. A company that has a culture of respect can take steps to ensure that employees are treated like customers.

No company was created without great people. Great people attract great people and those great people attract great business. Great customer service can’t exist without great people. And bad customer service doesn’t drive great business.

The bottom line, which I have written about before, is that brands don’t sell brands, people do. Thus, you want a great business that rallies around your people and finds a way to treat them like your best clients. If you do so, especially to those who desire to be great, great things will happen for your company and for your clients. The circle of recruiting great people and great clients will result in a chance for your company to be considered great – not just by you, but by a greater sum of people.