Upton Sinclair once said,

“You can’t make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it”.

I will go one better. I would say all our preachings of “Superior Customer Service” and “Fantastic Brand Experience” are all thin air, if the performance of the brand is not tied up with the day to day performance of an employee of that brand.

Let me say that again. What your employees do is basically culminates in what your brand will stand for. As simple as that. Knowing that, how many of us work in companies where our compensation truly rewards those who work hard for greater brand experience?

We give sales commission. But isnt making the target a totally company thingy? Where in that big equation does the customer fit? Does he give a dime knowing whether you have met your sales quota?

We give performance bonus. But isnt that dependent on company revenue and market share? Can your customer really give a damn about whether you met your revenue target or not?

Again we live and die by the sword claiming that we exist for customers. But in reality we work for our paycheck. And our paycheck has nothing to do with how satisfied our customers are. Let me repeat…absolutely nothing to do with HOW SATISFIED OUR CUSTOMERS ARE!

Now this is alarming hypocrisy. And one company who can teach us all that is Cisco. This Internet giant brand compensates all his employees solely based on one thing – the index representing the customer satisfaction. The more satisfied the customers are the more the employees get. Simple.

Can anybody point out a better brand model than that?