If you feel like it’s getting harder and harder to find a good customer experience, you are not alone. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, customer satisfaction has been in a steep decline for nearly two years and is now at levels not seen since 2006.
While at first this trend might seem surprising, it makes a lot of sense if you’ve ever had an online purchase show up broken or tried to resolve an issue by talking to a customer support robot. The fact is that many of the trends in technology and business that are pitched as making our lives more convenient come with cutting costs that eventually have the opposite effect.
Not every company is taking this approach. A growing community of employee-owned businesses are using a unique model of ownership that puts the customer first. By giving every person at the company an ownership stake, employee-owned (EO) businesses align incentives across the organization with the result that everyone - from the shop floor to the c-suite - benefits from making the customer happy.
This new model has many benefits for customers:
- Dealing with an owner instead of an employee means better service.
- Employee-owners are more likely to stay at a job and that means long-term relationships.
- The pride of ownership means that employee-owners care more about their craft and produce higher quality products.
- Finally, because every person at the company has a strong reason to cut waste and improve processes, many employee-owned companies are able to offer a much better value to the customer overall.
Consumers are starting to recognize the value of doing business with employee-owned companies. A recent survey found that 3 out of 10 Americans were more likely to buy a product if they learned that it was made by an employee-owned company.
About SunEarth
SunEarth Inc. was incorporated in the state of California in May 1978, and has since grown to become one of the most experienced solar thermal product manufacturers in the world. SunEarth’s strength lies in the engineering, manufacturing and distribution of world class solar water heating collectors, mounting hardware, ancillary components and integrated systems at competitive prices for each channel customer.
SunEarth’s primary production facility is served by an 184kW Solar World photovoltaic array that provides all the required electrical energy for our offices, production equipment, and forklifts. The facility also features natural daylighting, T-5 lighting when necessary, waterless toilet fixtures and drought tolerant landscaping.