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©2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com)
Global Business and Organizational Excellence • DOI: 10.1002/joe.21680 • May/June 2016
Focusing on the Critical Link
Between Employee Engagement
and Customer Centricity at
DHL Freight
Organizational leaders have long realized the
importance of fostering customer loyalty to ensure
profitability and growth. To improve consumers’
experiences, they have traditionally captured and
analyzed the voice of the customer and additional
insights within their organization. Such customer
experience management efforts tend to stall,­however,
when employees are not able or willing to act on
the information that has been collected. At DHL
Freight, collaboration with Gallup, Inc., led to a
shift in strategy that focused on cultural change from
the top down to bolster the link between employee
engagement and customer centricity. The results of
this effort not only accelerated implementation of the
company’s customer experience management pro-
gram but also identified practical measures for foster-
ing a customer-centric outlook and complementary
behavior throughout the organization. ©2016 Wiley
Periodicals, Inc.
In 2013 DHL Freight, the road freight forward-
ing arm of Deutsche Post DHL, a global market
leader in logistics, developed a customer experi-
ence management (CEM) program to cultivate
customer service and loyalty. In so doing, the
senior management teams in each country that
DHL Freight operates in focused on capturing the
voice of the customer via the Net Promoter Score
approach. Although employees were also asked
for their opinions, the primary aim was to under-
stand customers’ attitudes toward the company by
analyzing the interactions they had with the firm
at various points. The topics that employees most
often brought forward initially were perceived as
unrelated matters that concerned the workplace
rather than the customer.
Careful analysis of Net Promoter Scores gleaned
from both customers and employees revealed a
significant pattern, however: Work units where
employees seemed to be dissatisfied with their jobs
were also those whose customers tended to be dis-
satisfied. An example of this is given in Exhibit 1,
which shows that the poor level of job satisfaction
of this particular work unit is mirrored in the lack
of satisfaction felt by its customers. In this unit, the
difficulty that employees experience on the job was
similarly reflected in the difficulty encountered by
their customers when conducting business with the
company. Clearly, unless the specific needs of DHL
Freight’s employees were addressed, it was unlikely
that a process to merely capture customer insights
would lead to any substantial improvement in the
experience of the firm’s customers.
Effective CEM Begins With Employee Engagement
The connection between customer engagement and
a business’s revenue growth and profitability has
long been established. Customers that are happy
doing business with a company are more likely to
continue to do so, will probably buy more of its
products and services, are more willing to pay higher
prices, are less costly to serve, and typically spread
KIM MACGILLAVRY
and PA SINYAN

Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe May/June 2016 7
positive word-of-mouth about the company, mak-
ing it easier for the company to attract new custom-
ers. With markets maturing and consumer advocacy
on the rise, pressure is mounting for companies to
exceed the fundamental expectations that custom-
ers have regarding the quality and price of goods
and services. Across industries around the world,
organizational leaders are devoting valuable time
and resources to creating and delivering unique and
personal customer experiences, all in the hope of
forging a strong emotional bond between their com-
pany and their customers (Pine & Gilmore, 2011).
Indeed, research has shown that a great service
experience has a profound psychological and physi-
ological effect that is equivalent to feeling loved
(Calvert, 2013). Insights such as these bolster the
belief that an ideal customer experience is a very
powerful tool for creating and strengthening the
emotional bonds that drive consumer loyalty.
To improve the customer experience, company
leaders often turn to technology that enables the
voice of the customer to be captured in various
ways and that continuously monitors and reports
on the quality of the interactions that companies
have with their customers. The promise is that the
information they collect will drive the organization
to improve the customer experience, thereby fos-
tering loyalty behavior among its customer base
(Schmidt-Subramanian, 2015).
Although modern tools and processes are important
enablers of a great customer experience, they often
fall short of having the desired effect. This is usu-
ally because of a lack of customer-centric attitudes
and behavior on the part of employees. Many of us
have experienced this firsthand when dealing with
an airline or hotel. These companies are known for
sending their customers personalized e-mails pro-
viding all sorts of information about the transaction
and then requesting the customer’s feedback about
their services. In many cases, however, the helpful
and friendly image presented in the digital interac-
tions is not mirrored during in-person encounters,
especially when a problem arises.
A survey of customer management executives in
18 leading firms, conducted with the Oxford Strat-
egy Group, a student-run management consultancy
at the University of Oxford, found that all of them
use a wide range of methods to capture the voice
of customer, and many use performance indica-
tors derived from these reports to incentivize their
employees (Kumararajan, Salisbury, Stanghellini,
Jun, Zhang, & Kvist, 2014).The respondents, how-
ever, were less certain about whether their compa-
nies have been successful in implementing CEM
initiatives. The biggest challenges the respondents
cited were a lack of customer focus across the
organization, insufficient collaboration between
departments, and inadequate management buy-in.
Exhibit 1. The Relationship Between Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction
NPS: The Net Promoter Score is calculated as the difference between the percentage of total respondents that gave a score of 9 or 10 and the percentage of those that
gave scores from 0 to 6 on a scale of 0 to 10 on the specific question.
Source: DHL Freight Employee and Customer Survey, November 2013. Employee data: n = 33; customer data: n = 88.
Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.

May/June 2016 DOI: 10.1002/joe Global Business and Organizational Excellence8
These findings point to a common oversight in
many CEM programs—while employees usually
are provided with a multitude of data about their
customers’ preferences as well as various tools and
processes to help deliver a better experience to them,
little is done to ensure that employees are happy at
work, which is a precondition for having the mind-
set to please their customers. In order to create a
great experience for customers, employees need to
be engaged at work and motivated to do their job
well. Yet, global research conducted by Gallup, Inc.,
has consistently revealed that the vast majority of
employees are not engaged by their daily workplace
experiences (Harter, Schmidt,Agrawal, & Plowman,
2013). This suggests that most CEM programs will
struggle to achieve their objectives unless they also
address the happiness, engagement, and well-being
of the organization’s employees.
Research continues to highlight the importance of
ensuring alignment between the customer expe-
rience and the employee experience (Li, 2014;
Markey, 2015). Yet, company leaders receive lit-
tle practical guidance on how to drive employee
engagement in a way that improves customer satis-
faction.As part of its CEM program (MacGillavry &
Wilson, 2014), DHL Freight collaborated with
Gallup, Inc., to better understand the link between
employee engagement and the customer centricity
of its employees. To assess the maturity of its CEM
program, DHL Freight also developed a model that
delved into the five key dimensions of a successful
program, including customer centricity.
Happy Employees Lead to Happy Customers
DHL Freight employees in three European countries
were asked to use a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly
agree; 5 = strongly disagree) to respond to Gallup’s
Q12 questions concerning employee engagement
(see Exhibit 2), as well as 10 additional questions
that address key aspects of customer-centric mind-
set and behavior (see Exhibit 3).
The survey revealed a significant correlation
between the average scores of the responses to
the 12 employee engagement questions and the
responses to the 10 customer centricity questions.
Shown in Exhibit 4, these findings confirm the gen-
eral assumption that employees need to be happy at
work in order to be customer centric and vice versa.
The relevance of this finding is made clear in
Exhibit 5 (page 10). It shows that more than
Exhibit 2. Gallup’s Q12 Questions to Measure Employee Engagement
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
9. Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?
Source: Harter, J., Schmidt, F., Agrawal, S., & Plowman, S. (2013). The relationship between engagement at work and organizational outcomes: 2012 Q12 Meta‐analysis.
Washington, DC: Gallup. Copyright © 1993‐1998, 2014 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.

Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe May/June 2016 9
80 percent of engaged employees believe that
improving the customer experience is critical to the
success of the company, whereas only about half of
the employees who were classified as actively disen-
gaged share that opinion. The findings also reveal
that engaged employees are much more inclined to
feel good when making customers happy, which is
an essential trigger for acting with empathy toward
customers.
The research also shed light on the specific drivers of
employee engagement that lead to a more customer-
centric mindset and behavior. Cohesiveness and
alignment among employees contribute strongly to
employee engagement, as well as to customer cen-
tricity. Odds ratio analysis indicated that the most
customer-centric employees at DHL Freight are 7.7
times more likely to believe that their colleagues are
customer centric. Odds ratio analysis also showed
that the most engaged employees are 7.2 times
more likely to believe that their colleagues are cus-
tomer centric. By far the most important aspect of
employee engagement that drives the perception
of colleagues’ customer centricity was found to be
their commitment to doing quality work. An anal-
ysis of the findings revealed that people who feel
that their colleagues are committed to doing quality
work are 7.2 times more likely to be very customer
centric than those that do not.
All other employee engagement questions appear
to make much less of a difference to the customer
Exhibit 4. Correlation Between Employee Engagement and Customer Centricity
Source: DHL Freight Employee Survey, December 2014. n = 823; response rate = 84 percent overall.
Exhibit 3. Assessing Customer Centricity
1. My colleagues are customer-centric.
2. If I notice that a customer is not happy with the company I work for, I feel upset.
3. We are good at listening to customers and understanding their needs.
4. We are good at sharing customer opinions and feedback with others in the organization.
5. My colleagues across the organization and I collaborate well together to fix customer issues.
6. In my day-to-day work, I can influence customers’ perceptions of the company.
7. When I notice that something I did made a customer happy, I feel good.
8. My management thinks it is very important to understand what customers want.
9. My management actively takes part in solving customer issues and making improvements.
10. I believe that improving the customer experience is critical to the success of the company.

May/June 2016 DOI: 10.1002/joe Global Business and Organizational Excellence10
centricity of the organization. So, although listen-
ing to customers and sharing customer feedback
with others in the organization are important in
fostering a customer-centric culture, a cultural
transformation is unlikely to happen without the
collaboration among colleagues needed to effec-
tively address customer issues. The belief that
cultural transformation is unlikely without collabo-
ration is also supported by the results from another
study among DHL Freight employees that explored
the elements that would make the company a bet-
ter place to work (see Exhibit 6). While one might
expect working conditions to be a significant fac-
tor, the study found that internal collaboration and
communications also topped respondents’ list of
concerns.
Gallup’s Q12 questions help to pinpoint what
managers need to focus on in order to strengthen
cohesiveness and alignment among employees.
Such factors as clarity of the organization’s mission
and purpose play an important role in this context.
In addition, when employees feel that their jobs
Exhibit 5. How Customer Centricity Varies According to Employee Engagement
Source: DHL Freight Employee Survey, December 2014. n = 823.
Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.
Exhibit 6. What Would Make People Happier at Work
Source: Employee Net Promoter Approach (eNPA) survey open-ended ques-
tions, September/October 2013. Two countries; n = 204.
Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is
available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.

Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe May/June 2016 11
are important and their opinions count, they are
far more likely to be satisfied at work. Odds ratio
analysis indicated that DHL Freight employees
who strongly feel that their job is important are
10.1 times more likely to be satisfied at work, and
those who feel that their opinion matters are eight
times more likely to be satisfied. These two factors
are also major drivers of customer centricity.
Correlation analysis on the same dataset revealed
the employee engagement questions that most corre-
lated with the grand mean of the customer centricity
questions. As shown in Exhibit 7, the most signif-
icant factors turned out to be consistent with the
findings from the odds ratio analysis. (The mission
and purpose of the company makes me feel my job
is important: r = 0.61; at work, my opinions seem
to count: r = 0.56.) Therefore, both these factors
are hot spots for leadership teams to focus on when
seeking to create a more satisfied and customer-cen-
tric workforce.
Good people management contributes materially to
employee engagement as well as to customer-cen-
tric mindset and behavior. What distinguishes very
unsatisfied employees from very satisfied employees
is not primarily such things such as working condi-
tions or pay but, rather, the way people are man-
aged. As Exhibit 8 (page 12) shows, employees that
have the opportunity to do what they do best every
day and are encouraged to develop and progress are
mostly likely to be engaged and, therefore, contrib-
ute to creating a customer-centric culture.
The Importance of Putting Employees First
Healthy interactions between employees and
between employees and their managers are a pre-
condition to improving the interaction between a
company and its customers (Zigarmi, Blachard,
Essary, & Houson, 2009). According to research
done at DHL Freight, getting people to collaborate
at work and creating positive relationships between
Exhibit 7. Correlation Between Individual Employee Engagement Factors and Overall Customer Centricity
Source: DHL Freight Employee Survey, December 2014. n = 823.
Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.

May/June 2016 DOI: 10.1002/joe Global Business and Organizational Excellence12
Exhibit 8. What Distinguishes Very Satisfied From Very Dissatisfied Employees
Source: DHL Freight Employee Survey, December 2014. n = 823. Scoring is on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree).
Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.
employees at all levels leads to a more engaging
interaction with customers. Therefore, the way to
give traction to existing programs that capture,
share, and enhance customer relations is to improve:
•• Cohesiveness and alignment among employees:
Encouraging people to collaborate and commu-
nicate more effectively and making sure that all
employees’ opinions matter helps provide a com-
mon purpose that everyone can rally around.
•• Leaders’ people management skills: Managers
must learn to empower employees to do what
they do best, encourage their development, and
regularly talk to them about their progress.
These insights have proven helpful in improv-
ing the deployment of the CEM program at DHL
Freight. During the design phase of the program,
most efforts went to understanding customers and
determining the company’s brand value proposi-
tion. At this stage, most companies would invest
heavily in IT systems to continuously measure
structured and unstructured customer feedback
along as many touch points as possible, analyze
the data, and report it to employees in an elaborate
voice of customer process. With the results of its
studies in hand, DHL Freight, instead, focused first
on creating cultural change by taking the following
steps.
Defining the company culture. This sets forth “who
we are” as a company and complements the brand
values that explain “what we do.” An important
way to distinguish one company from another,
company culture essentially is about answering
the question “How we do what we do?” At DHL
Freight, the company culture is expressed by four
key words: pride, passion, power, and pace. Man-
agement developed new collateral materials in
tune with this culture. For instance, the polished
conservative-looking management board picture
was replaced with one featuring the management
team in denim and surrounded by Harley David-
son motorbikes. The DHL tattoo-style emblem that
appeared sewn onto their jackets was soon seen
throughout the company—stitched onto leather

Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe May/June 2016 13
jackets; affixed to laptops, mobile phones, company
cars, and office walls and doors; and pasted into
PowerPoint templates.
Training the leadership teams. The management
board was introduced to the principles of CEM
during a session with the Disney Institute, the busi-
ness insights and advisory segment of The Walt
Disney Company. At the same time, the docu-
mentation and implementation approach for the
CEM program was shared with board members
so that the link with DHL Freight was immediate.
To kick-start mindset and behavioral change, the
management board members, as well as the entire
management team in each country where DHL
Freight operates, also received classroom train-
ing on the company’s brand and cultural values.
Particular attention was given to five “leadership
must-dos”—inspire, listen, involve, lead, and cel-
ebrate—with concrete examples on how to dem-
onstrate and enforce customer centricity among
workplace teams across each of these five lead-
ership traits. Each of the country managers was
then individually coached on how to effectively
communicate the CEM program—and, in particu-
lar, the company’s brand and cultural values—to
their teams in their own way. All the management
teams also received training on the Net Promoter
Approach for measuring customer engagement
(Reichheld & Markey, 2011).
Engaging the people. Creating organizational
change is rarely effective if it is enforced solely
from above. Creating a bottom-up momentum
with measures that foster collaboration helps lead-
ership teams engage the entire organization, which
is essential to success. At DHL Freight, employees
were encouraged to share stories about how they
made customers happy and how others helped
them to do a good job. The most compelling stories
were widely published throughout the company as
lighthouse examples and the people involved were
recognized with awards and DHL Freight-branded
gifts.
In another campaign to foster engagement, teams of
colleagues in various countries were invited to join in
a flash mob dance routine. After rehearsing in their
spare time, they surprised colleagues—during a sum-
mer party, a management meeting, or on an ordinary
day at the office,for instance—with their performance.
The experience fostered friendship and cohesiveness.
Videos that were taken of the events created a buzz
across the company, prompting thousands of views.
Good people management contributes materially
to employee engagement as well as to customer-
centric mindset and behavior. What distinguishes
very unsatisfied employees from very satisfied em-
ployees is not primarily such things such as work-
ing conditions or pay but, rather, the way people are
managed.
Another measure that has proven effective in
energizing staff members is giving customers the
opportunity to praise individual employees via
customer surveys and calls. In a recent survey that
61 customers took part in, 26 employees were spe-
cifically named when asked if there was anyone
they wished to praise. This simple recognition lit-
erally brought tears of joy to some of the employ-
ees who were mentioned. No amount of elaborate
customer research is as effective at influencing
employees as a direct message from one person to
another.
The Ultimate Goal: Organizational Maturity in
Customer Centricity
A key obstacle to developing customer centricity,
especially in large companies, is their very organi-
zation. Most companies have adopted a matrix
structure that divides employees into both func-
tional groups and geographic areas. Although
there are benefits to being organized in such a
way, a matrix makes it more difficult to manage

May/June 2016 DOI: 10.1002/joe Global Business and Organizational Excellence14
the customer and employee experience because
it tends to create functional silos that divide the
head office from its operational units. Simply put,
many companies’ organizational structure does
not stimulate cohesiveness and alignment from the
top down. A good way to see how this manifests
itself is to compare employees’ reactions to these
two statements:
•• If I notice that a customer is not happy, I feel
upset.
•• When I notice that something I did made a cus-
tomer happy, I feel good.
At first glance these statements seem to be saying
the same thing; therefore, one would expect that
employees would rate their reaction to them simi-
larly. Research at DHL Freight has shown, how-
ever, that people who feel good when they make
a customer happy consider themselves to be much
more customer centric than those who feel upset
when a customer is not happy. Even though the
reason why a customer will complain about or
praise something is unlikely to be attributed to one
person, people tend to take praise more personally
and do not feel as responsible when complaints
arise. Getting people from an “I am great” mindset,
which is typical of employees in most companies,
to a “We are great” frame of mind is the acid test
for an organization’s customer centricity (Logan,
King, & Fischer, 2011).
To determine the maturity of DHL Freight’s cus-
tomer centricity, the company’s vice president of
customer experience and the managing director of
Gallup Germany partnered with researchers at the
University of Strathclyde and the media research
firm of Ovum to develop a model to assess the
maturity of a company’s CEM program. It was
made up of 31 statements addressing the five areas
listed below. Respondents were asked to rate their
perception of the performance of the organization
by using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disa-
gree; 5 = strongly agree).
1. Vision, values, and brand—Having a clear vision
for the organization that provides customers
with a desirable value proposition and differen-
tiates the organization from competitors.
2. Customer centricity—Making customers happy
to do business with the organization by learning
more about what they need and turning that into
action faster than competitors.
3. Visionary leadership—Managing the business in
a way that demonstrates that it always puts cus-
tomers first.
4. Employee engagement—Fostering an atmos-
phere in which employees are motivated to make
customers happy.
5. Tools and processes—Providing customer infor-
mation and feedback throughout the entire cus-
tomer journey.
The top 104 managers at DHL Freight (all board
members, country managers, and the senior manage-
ment teams of the main countries in which the com-
pany operates) were asked to rate the five statements
mentioned above; 103 responded, for a 99-percent
response rate. The model containing the 31 assess-
ment statements was sent to the same group of man-
agers separately; 75 responded, for a 72-percent
response rate.The exercise showed that since starting
its CEM program in 2013, DHL Freight has come a
long way in changing the mindset and behavior of
the leadership team through formal training and the
use of management engagement tools. Of the 31 indi-
vidual self-assessment statements, these two received
significantly higher rankings than the others:
•• If I notice that a customer is not happy with the
company, I feel upset.
•• I am proud to work for the company.
This indicates that the leadership team has a strong
customer-centric mindset and also strongly endorses
the DHL Freight culture. This contrasts with the
leaders’ opinion of how dedicated their colleagues
are in serving customers’ needs (see Exhibit 9).
Clearly, the leadership team recognizes it has its

Global Business and Organizational Excellence DOI: 10.1002/joe May/June 2016 15
work cut out for itself in order to equally engage
the rest of the organization.
To this end, the company has begun implement-
ing the Employee Net Promoter Approach (eNPA),
which relies on a simple set of questions to learn
how employees feel about their jobs and the com-
pany. Unlike more elaborate annual employee sur-
veys whose results take a long time to compile, the
eNPA questionnaire is sent to all employees sev-
eral times each year. The aim of the eNPA at DHL
Freight is not to measure performance in numbers or
to incentivize managers but, rather, to take the pulse
of the people who make up the organization and
give team leaders a starting point for discussing the
things that matter most to the people they manage.
In the same way that the Customer Net Promoter
Approach ensures a continuous dialogue between
companies and their customers, the eNPA facilitates
regular and meaningful exchanges between manag-
ers and their employees. All the challenges employ-
ees face at work are openly discussed, which has
helped to improve not only employees’ engagement
but also the leadership qualities of their managers.
Channeling Employees’ Energy Toward Customer
Service
Well aware that managing the customer experience
is critical to their success, organizational leaders
around the world have long focused on collecting
and analyzing voice-of-the-customer data, feed-
ing insights into the organization and incentiviz-
ing employees to make improvements. However,
evidence suggests that a strong customer focus may
not be enough to improve their experience. No
amount of technology or data can unlock the energy
of the people responsible for creating a highly cus-
tomer-centric work unit. Unless workers are fully
engaged in their role and responsibilities, they will
not be able or willing to deliver a great customer
experience. Ensuring high-quality interactions
between employees and customers requires ensuring
a high level of quality in the interactions between
the leaders of a company and their employees and
among the workers at every level. Continuous and
open dialogue among employees is as important
as frequent dialogue with customers. Companies
that recognize these facts and train their leadership
teams to improve the employee experience are most
likely to capture the ultimate prize of customer loy-
alty and the profitability that comes with it.
References
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Exhibit 9. Self-Assessment Scores of Customer Centricity: Deep Dive Questions
If I notice that a customer is not happy with the company I feel upset. 4.6
My colleagues always look for ways to make things better for our customers. 3.7
Everything we do demonstrates that we always have the best interest of the customer in mind. 3.7
We are good at listening to customers and understanding their needs. 3.6
We are good at sharing customer opinions and feedback with others in the organization. 3.4
My colleagues across the organization effectively collaborate together to fix customer issues. 3.3

May/June 2016 DOI: 10.1002/joe Global Business and Organizational Excellence16
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Kim MacGillavry, vice president of customer experience at
DHL Freight in Bonn, Germany, has extensive product and
brand management experience in a variety of multinational
companies. In his current role, he is in charge of the design,
development, and implementation of the customer experi-
ence management program for DHL Freight and manages
the customer service function globally. He can be reached at
kim.macgillavry@dhl.com.
Pa Sinyan is the managing director of Gallup Germany. In
this capacity, he partners with leading European compa-
nies to leverage insights from the field of behavioral econom-
ics to systematically drive change and achieve performance
objectives. The programs he supports deal with transfor-
mation management and employee, customer, and supplier
engagement across multiple industries. He can be reached at
Pa_Sinyan@GALLUP.de.