To delight customers, do this first

Dr. Bret Simmons says "How well our employees serve and hopefully delight our customers is a direct reflection of how well we serve and delight our employees." In his post, Leadership: My Bias, he explains:

...the number one thing we need to do on a daily basis if we want to grow our business (increase revenue) through excellence is to impress our employees in the same way we want our customers to be impressed. We need to make sure our employees are enabled with the knowledge, skills, and abilities they need to impress every single customer in every single transaction, and we need to ensure our employees are satisfied with and committed to what we are doing. That only happens by design, not by wishful thinking or simply issuing a new policy.

Thanks to Bob Sutton for pointing us to this article.