Employee happiness is a critical factor when it comes to excellent customer service. Employees who are happy with their work — and how their employers treat them — are more likely to care about their customers. This factor is because when employees are treated with respect and engaged, they naturally want what is best for their company. 

If employees are happy, it means they will be willing to go above and beyond for their customers — which in turn leads to more delighted customers.

The employee-customer relationship is an essential factor in successful customer service; when companies put their employees first, they find success.

What do employee happiness, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction all have in common? Granted, they are all very similar. However, employee happiness is perhaps most critical. 

Employee happiness is the employee’s overall contentment for everything related to their job, including how they’re treated by management and customers alike.

Here’s an aspect easily overlooked: employee happiness has a much more significant impact than employee satisfaction.

Satisfaction is just the employee’s opinion of their current job; happiness means employee contentment for all aspects of their work-life, not just their specific job assignments. Employee happiness means employee engagement. 

Here are three ways to improve employee happiness:

1. The first step to employee happiness is that there must be buy-in from leadership. If leadership doesn’t care about employee happiness, it won’t go beyond something as minimal as creating a flimsy employee satisfaction survey. 
   1. It is incumbent to communicate with employees how their opinions are vital for improvement and what changes are in process due to their input.
2. Decide to make employee happiness/employee engagement an organizational priority. It’s impossible to have employee happiness without employee engagement. A company cannot be engaged with its employees if managers aren’t showing constant commitment to their teams. 
   1. Employees believe that if their manager doesn’t care about the happiness of team members, how can the rest of the organization?
3. Offer benefits and compensation that matter. Employee benefits and compensation are essential aspects for employees to feel as though they are compensated fairly for their work. 
   1. It’s difficult to feel valued and under-compensated at the same time. Make sure your wages and benefits also display your commitment to your team.

The more employee happiness there is within an organization, the better the workplace culture will be for everyone involved! 

When employees are happy, customers are too.