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Hey Where Did My Favorite Employee Go?

Guest post by: Meridith Elliott Powell

Article Overview: If you have loyal customers than thank your employees. It is the relationships that we build with them that keeps us coming back. Remember that, the next time a favorite employee gets ready to move on and leave your company. We customers will wonder where they've gone, we'll wonder why they are not there, and with no explanation a piece of our emotional connection to your company will go with them.

Hey Where Did My Favorite Employee Go?

Last week I stopped by to drop off my dry cleaning, and my favorite customer service representative popped up to the desk and said "Well tell me goodbye and good luck!" I said goodbye and good luck? Why? Are you leaving? She said yes, and I am so excited. It has been my dream my whole life (she is about 55) to live in Arizona and I have decided to follow my dream.

As she checked me out, we had a great conversation about how excited she is, but how hard it is to leave this area and all of her friends especially her co-workers. She went on to say how her boss - the owner - has been teasing her telling her he hopes she hates it and comes right back.

I walked out of there and thought how incredibly valuable that conversation was from a customer service standpoint. You see, I don't think that employers always realize how attached we (customers) get to their employees. Susan (my dry cleaner) always knew my name when I came in, she automatically got my order together for me, and when she would see me coming in the parking lot she would pretty much have me checked out by the time I came through the door. She knew my dogs names, what both my husband and I did for a living, and always asked about my weekend adventures. She was that friendly face, that person who turned going to the dry cleaner from a task to an experience.

If I would have walked through that door and all of a sudden she would have been gone with no explanation. I may think she was fired, or just quit, found a better job or became ill. In any scenario, the employer doesn't look good. Because I did not know why she was not there, I would begin to make up my own story and most likely the employer would be the villain. It would go something like this - he not pay her enough so she had to find another job, or the dry cleaning shop is not doing very well, so he laid her off. You get the picture.

Instead, those of us that are touched by her incredible customer service may be sad to lose her, but we feel good about the reason. We are happy for her, and while sad to lose her, we feel better knowing the owner of the dry cleaner is sad to lose her too, and would hire her back in a moment.

To an employer, this may seem like a small and insignificant thing, but to those of us that frequent your place of business it is big. Your business is your employees, and when turnover is high, or good people leave it is smart to let us know why. It is your people that get us connected to your place of business, and when they leave a piece of our emotions go with them. I would venture to say that there are plenty of times employees leave for very positive reasons, getting married, moving, found an incredible opportunity in their dream occupation or getting promoted. Share those with us, and let us feel excited for them, and happy that we support a company that supports its employees.

When I was a banker, we promoted a lot of people. We had quite an internal talent development pool. Promotion always meant moving branches within the area, or moving to new city or location. We always made a big deal out of it and encouraged the entire branch to share the exciting news with the customers at least a full month before the promotion was to take place. While customers always hate losing their favorite employees, they always feel better being included and valued enough to be a part of the excitement.

Remember, your customers invest more than their money in your business, they invest their time and their story. If you want to retain them then include them.

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Article Tags: building a customer centric culture, creating quality customer relationships, emotional connection, loyal customers, relationships, the customer relationship



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Even more profile options - Thanks for the suggestions guys - I've now added: - Favorite Business Quote - What I Do - Favorite Hobby Looking forward to seeing your responses!
Re: Even more profile options - [quote="Evan":3lxxf1dd]Thanks for the suggestions guys - I've now added: - Favorite Business Quote - What I Do - Favorite Hobby Looking forward to seeing your responses![/quote:3lxxf1dd] This is awesome - at some point today I'm going to need to modify my profile and add this stuff. Nice work!
Re: Even more profile options - [quote="Evan":asnr3rr9]Thanks for the suggestions guys - I've now added: - Favorite Business Quote - What I Do - Favorite Hobby Looking forward to seeing your responses![/quote:asnr3rr9] Hi Evan, That's great! Do you think it'd be possible turn the keywords listed in the profiles into links like on social networking sites? For instance, if someone's favorite entrepreneur is "Bill Gates", I should be able to click on that name to find a list of all the other forum members who share that same entry.
Post subject: It's Not Personal, just business - I so agree! Actually, the business world as we know it IS in trouble. I heard some stats last week that they expect by the time 2050 that 70% of workers will be freelancers. Employee/Executive Bullying won't be able to stand it when it could be easier for someone to simply contract with the nicer guy (or gal). I, for one, will be choosing the nicer ones!
Facebook applications - ....[quote:36s714h1]The two that we were thinking of were Famous Entrepreneur Quotes and Which famous entrepreneur am I most like? [/quote:36s714h1] So far my own foray into Facebook has been a complete bust, though I expected that from the start. But if I do an Application for my own particular field of interest, such as Your Favorite Sci Fi movie...that might get people going. So Evan when you figure out how to do this please let me know how complicated it is!!


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