Adaptive Path Blog

A couple of items hitting the blogosphere touch on the value of happy employees in delivering Long Wow experiences to customers.

From a New York Times article on Herb Kelleher, former CEO and Chairman of Southwest Airlines, comes this passage:

And yet, when you look at a company like American, with its poisonous employee relations and its glum customer base, and compare it with Southwest, with its happy employees and contented customers, you can’t help thinking that Mr. Kelleher was on to something when he put employees first. “There isn’t any customer satisfaction without employee satisfaction,” said Gordon Bethune, the former chief executive of Continental Airlines, and an old friend of Mr. Kelleher’s. “He recognized that good employee relations would affect the bottom line. He knew that having employees who wanted to do a good job would drive revenue and lower costs.”

And from Bill Taylor, on Harvard Business Online, comes Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too. It ends with this note:

It’s a small practice with big implications: Companies don’t engage emotionally with their customers—people do. If you want to create a memorable company, you have to fill your company with memorable people. How are you making sure that you’re filling your organization with the right people? And how much are you willing to pay to find out?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 8:26 am and is filed under Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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