I often wonder why American businesses don’t spend more time strategizing around happiness. It is true that many companies are customer-focused and invest lots of energy in meeting customers’ needs. Responding to those needs results in happiness (or in other words a great experience) for customers, for employees serving customers and for your bottom line. Unfortunately, the efforts being made by too many businesses to create happy and loyal customers mostly fall far short of what is necessary.
Customers want great business experiences that will help make them happier. And, of course, even the "very happy" folks can be moved to a higher happiness level, translating into 99 percent of all Americans seeking products and services that create great experiences—ones they want, need and desire—to give their pursuit of happiness a gentle shove forward and upward.
Only a blind, dumb and extremely arrogant business community would ignore the data and the business potential behind focusing strategies and planning and everything the business says and does on making people happier—and not just consumers. In fact, I argue, as have a few others before me, that employees must first feel as sense of "happiness" about the company they work for and the work they do if a business’s customers and clients are to experience levels of happiness that drive them to shop with that business.
Seth Godin looks at it this way:
"The key difference between marketing for growth and acting like a monopolistic utility is one of posture. Do you spend time doing things to your customers or for your customers? When someone calls tech support, are you viewing it as a chance to do something for them, or to get rid of them to cut costs?" Are we doing "for" our customers or "to" them?
In other words, pursuit of "The Happiness Quotient" does not rest on some shaky psychological definition of being happy. It's quite the opposite: create customer and employee experiences that build customer loyalty, create a great brand image, enhance customer loyalty, and increase sales and grow the bottom line. In essence, I am talking about building businesses that are customer- and employee-centric, that are built on values, and that deliver experiences that exceed expectations. That is what makes up "The Happiness Quotient."
