The last decade has undoubtedly seen an emphasis on growth and investment; but within those two areas, which factors do business leaders view as most vital to their success?

According to Harvard Business Review Analytic Services study ‘The Impact of Employee Engagement on Performance’ the top success factors identified were: customer service, effective communications, high levels of employee engagement, and strong executive leadership.

However, employee engagement happens to be extremely closely linked to success factor number one; customer service. Profit and growth are fed primarily by customer loyalty, which is a direct result of customer satisfaction, in turn influenced by the value of services provided to customers. This very same value is created by employees who are satisfied, loyal, productive, engaged.

Best-practice companies who understand the gravity of engagement’s impact on customer experience, increasingly quantify and monitor their engagement levels using best-in-class measuring techniques. Unsurprisingly, most common among these are those measurement systems that tie together customer satisfaction and engagement metrics. Several best-practice companies interviewed in the survey found NPS and the service-profit chain to be effective tools to connect engagement initiatives with business goals. They know that when they make employees and customers their prerogative, a drastic shift occurs in the way they perceive and measure success. These measurement techniques take into account the effect of employee satisfaction, loyalty and productivity on the value of products and services delivered, so managers can build customer satisfaction and loyalty while evaluating the resultant impact on profitability and growth.

For example, at Dale Carnegie India, we use the Net Promoter System (NPS) to gain feedback after each training delivery. NPS provides a real-time metric which enables us to receive participant (customer) insights, giving employees critical, quick feedback on performance and what participants value most. If a program that is being tracked dips below our norms our dedicated training quality team is required to intervene and investigate, in order to understand whether the incident was isolated or symptomatic of a larger issue. Additionally, our weekly cross-functional Business Plan Review meetings serve as a forum wherein issues of this sort are brought to light and troubleshot with complete transparency. Here, every employee present for the meeting is treated as an equal stakeholder, welcome to share thoughts or solutions. The ownership by the entire team to the problem and a collective ‘working together’ approach has triggered greater team engagement. This has, in turn, helped our NPS scores to show an upward movement by a solid 25% in the last 6 months, making our scores way above the benchmarks.

Leaders who understand the direct link between engagement and customer centricity develop and maintain a corporate culture centered around ensuring their customer and employee experiences are great. They listen to customers and employees, experiencing their companies’ processes, whilst being open to suggestions in areas that need improvement.