The Importance of Employee Morale When Using Groupon or Other Coupon Promotions

Employee morale may suffer

Does your company use Groupon or other online promotions to pull customers to your business? And does it work?

An interesting article in the Jan.-Feb. 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review by Utpal M. Dholakia of Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, suggests that when companies offer customers deep discounts to drive traffic, unhappy employees can damage the customer experience–and the promotion becomes a losing proposition for the company. Although in theory, the promotion is expected to be an opportunity to increase business and bring in new customers, in practice, deal-seekers often only purchase the deal, are not willing to buy extras, and when they are faced with overworked employees–exhausted from the increased traffic–they don’t want to come back.

Employees may feel overworked and may also disagree with the company even using the coupon program. And when the employees are unhappy, the customer experience will be affected. As the article states:

Your employees stand between your product and your customers, and ultimately they’re the ones who will make a promotion succeed or fail.

So before you use a coupon program to bring in more customers, take the time to include the employees in the decision making and planning process. Get employee input on how to make the experience a success. Through employee participation, you can achieve greater employee ownership and a better experience for the customer.