Happy employees mean more satisfied customers

Post-pandemic success will depend on finding new, technology-enabled ways to adapt to a digital-first, unpredictable world.

Flexibility is now employees’ number one expectation and growing SMEs are more likely to meet this expectation.

Tough times have a way of clarifying what’s truly important – the people we care about and our relationships with them. It’s true in a business context, too. For small and medium enterprises, close relationships with customers and communities have always been a mainstay, but that’s deepened and evolved after 18 months of the pandemic.

Merlin Luck

In the fifth edition of our Small and Medium Business Trends Report, almost 70 per cent of SMEs called out government and community support as important for getting through the pandemic. From earlier research, 71 per cent of customers say businesses that show empathy during the pandemic have earned their loyalty. And, in the Trends Report, SMEs note a focus on employee engagement. These trends reveal two things. First, SMEs are working hard to address fast-changing customer and employee needs. Second, success over the next 18 months depends on maintaining these focuses.

Growing SMEs centre their customers with help from technology

Many SMEs were already built around their customers and employees. My favourite articulation of this came from Shardae Mazzeo, head of people and culture at CreativeCubes.co, during our Facebook Live discussion about leadership in the pandemic: “We became water in cracks. So wherever the customer and our team needed us, we made our way.”

Of course, those “cracks” have shifted during the pandemic, and SMEs are relying on technology to respond at scale. For CreativeCubes.co, that included building out a digital ecosystem built off Salesforce. Our research shows that more than half of SMEs have increased their presence online in the past year.

Growing SMEs – those with increasing revenue – are more likely to say they’ve invested in technology than stagnant or declining ones. And, regardless of how SMEs were affected over the 18 months, most say digitisation helped them navigate the pandemic.

Technology-enabled efficiencies are also giving SMEs greater freedom to build long-term relationships rather than transactional ones. I was impressed that AWS consulting partner Itoc spent much of the pandemic offering free tech advice to fellow SMEs regardless of whether they were an existing customer or not. It’s another great example of the community supporting one other.

Customer-centricity depends on engaging employees

During our Facebook Live conversation, Itoc’s head of sales and customer growth, Simone Longden, pointed out that a lot of these approaches rely on having the right people with the right tools. For their part, Itoc provided flexible working arrangements and shifted their office into a meeting centre that employees could access as needed, while earlier implementations of a customer relationship management (CRM) system and HR system helped make employees’ jobs easier even once fully remote.

Digital solutions like Slack also helped Itoc staff check in, stay connected and enjoy organic moments, even without being face to face.

Itoc’s approach tracks with the research, which tells us flexibility is now employees’ number one expectation and growing SMEs are more likely to meet this expectation. SMEs need to stay closely attuned to employees’ needs, continuing to build frictionless experiences so that teams can focus on doing the same for customers.

Successful SMEs will keep finding new ways to prioritise people

The pandemic may have been a catalyst for some changes made over the past year, but it can’t be a temporary driver.

Customer and employee expectations have shifted, and SMEs will be competing with peers who embrace a changed world. Sixty-nine per cent of SMEs plan to make changes permanent, particularly digital payments and e-commerce. And growing SMEs are more likely to see shifts as permanent – and to see operational changes made during the past year as beneficial.

A focus on people and communities has always been a constant for SMEs. But success will depend on finding new, technology-enabled ways to adapt that focus for a digital-first, unpredictable world.

See the rest of the trends in the fifth edition Small and Medium Business Trends Report.

Merlin Luck is regional VP, SMB at Salesforce.