Online retailer Zappos recently started paying employees up to $1500 to quit the company during initial training sessions. Is this just a PR stunt? Are they crazy?

The bottom line is that satisfied and happy employees provide great customer service. As a customer, who wants to deal with an unhappy employee? It affects the overall customer experience. I think this is a great idea for Zappos or for any other company to weed out employees who could potentially affect the customer experience in a negative way.

For instance, let’s say that I am a satisfied and loyal Zappos customer that spends on average $250/ year at Zappos.com. This means over the next 25 years I will spend $6,250. One day I get on the phone with an unsatisfied employee that really pisses me off. Because of this negative experience, I stop purchasing from Zappos. That’s $6,250 worth of potential revenue lost. How about if the unsatisfied employee pisses off four other similar customers in one month? Zappos will lose $31,250 worth of potential revenue just because one employee created a negative experience for five customers. Imagine if you had a couple more unsatisfied employees and they piss off at least 5 customers a month. You do the math. If you think $1,500 is too much to weed out unsatisfied employees think again.

When was the last time you had a negative experience with someone who was servicing you? How were you feeling at the moment? Did you make a vow never to return there again? On other hand, when was the last time you had a positive experience with an employee? The connection between employee attitude and customer satisfaction is very important. If employees mistreat customers, then customers might not return. However, if customers have positive, memorable experiences, then customers will keep coming back. They might even recommend your store to their friends. It all starts with the employee.

BlueShirtNation.com

So, what exactly is BlueShirtNation.com? BlueShirt Nation, which is named for the polo shirts worn by store staff, is the employee social network of Best Buy. Best Buy executives first introduced the social network because they wanted to tap into their store employees for marketing ideas. Instead, they have seen higher participation in Best Buy’s 401(k) plan, lower employee turnover, and even photos of staffers’ pets.

Employee turnover at retail stores can reach double digits; however, employees utilizing BlueShirtNation.com are likely to stick with the company. The employee turnover for BluShirtNation.com users is slightly more than 8 percent.

If your employees are often heard grumbling under their breath or, worse yet, amongst themselves, you might want to consider surveying your employees to find out what they’re really thinking.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal Online, June 18, 2007, there’s a trend among human resource professionals to survey employees as part of an ongoing effort in ‘employee engagement.’ Engaged employees are more cheerful, more helpful, contribute more to the workplace, take initiative and speak well of the company in their off hours. With benefits like these, no wonder more companies are jumping on the engagement bandwagon.

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