Employee Loyalty = Customer Loyalty

 

Our previous post laid out why incentive programs were important to the branding function of your company. While there are many goals to all sorts of incentive programs, there is one underlying theme to many of them:

Loyalty.

Customers that are more loyal to a particular brand are more likely to buy products from them. Common sense right? That loyalty could be derived from their simple love of that brand's product. However, most brand love isn't quite that pure. There are other non-product reasons why a consumer will be loyal to a brand. Many times it's the rewards that the brand offers to its loyal customers. Credit card points programs or even simple things like "free haircut after ten visits" from a salon give consumers reasons to make repeat purchase decisions with those companies.

Another bigger reason for consumer loyalty is interaction with that brand. Many customers return to a store or service because of how they are treated with that organization's front line brand. That organization's front line treats their customers well, in turn spawning increased customer loyalty. The attitude of the front line would be attributed to how they're treated by their upper management.

Where employee rewards come in.

Proper use of incentive programs to increase engagement among an organization's employees should improve loyalty among those workers to the company. Increased loyalty typically results in increased productivity levels. This will also have a chain reaction to treatment of your consumer base. Employees that are treated well tend to pay it forward to their customers.

Customer loyalty starts with employee loyalty. Improving your employees' loyalty to your company starts with your showing of loyalty to them. What do you think?