IN MANY organisations aspiring to develop a customer-centric culture, management will often have to choose between providing excellent service to customers and enhancing job satisfaction for employees.
Those who fail to strike a balance between these factors tend to believe that employee job satisfaction should always be compromised so as to maximise the quality of service provided to the customer.
I believe quality service is pre-determined by the job satisfaction of employees.
A study I read enlightened me to the fact that the well-being of employees should be addressed prior to providing quality service to customers - an unhappy employee is less likely to provide world-class service.
It may be true that achieving quality service at the expense of employees' well-being will yield quick profits but, in the long run, those achievements will also be dwarfed by heavy costs, such as rising turnover rate and undermined cohesiveness - which will subsequently creates barriers to sustainable growth.
As such, the efforts made to improve customer service should be shifted towards employees' job satisfaction in order to reach a balance.
Ding Yuanyuan (Ms)
