A study conducted by McKinsey and Egon Zehnder analysed the relationship between managerial quality and revenue growth and found that customer impact, which is the capacity to grasp the evolving needs of customers, led all leadership competencies. The degree of customer impact also had a huge impact on the company’s revenue growth and the efficiency of the top management trickling down to the managers and the different teams under them, across all growth situations.

Organizations striving customer service excellence must define a customer-centric culture where employees at all levels individually and collectively have the freedom to prioritize customer needs in everything they do. Customer experience must be tied to individual performance assessment. Employees must be recognized and rewarded for their ideas and efforts to comprehend how to serve the customer better. The employee experience reflects the customer care the organization seeks to create.

Organizations must aim to get a decent Net Promoter Score (NPS), which benchmarks customers’ willingness to recommend a company’s products or services to others. Employees must be routinely asked to submit ideas for improving hospitality, customer care and for paring costs. They must be empowered to be engaged and passionate about the customer experience.

Organizations that recognize and reward internal cross-functional collaboration and knowledge-sharing and nurture their employees, understand that employee happiness reflects in customer service excellence, and hence attain sustainable business growth.