Opened Facebook to kill time on weekend but it tried to sell me lots of unwanted things, forcing me to sign out in fraction of minutes. On side panel it was suggesting me to order junk foods through food delivery apps as those are the healthiest of lot as per it, Center panel was playing big by offering me some real estate deals. Wandering through few more websites I finally reached LinkedIn. Fortunately, on LinkedIn a battle was on, Customer Vs Employee Battle. The trend was such, that if you scroll ten Posts, be assured two of them was on this topic. Like most of the people, I had been an employee and a customer for long. These posts made me wonder, whom should I side with? Who is more important, customer or employee? A real dilemma !!

There were one set of people with posts claiming the supremacy of employees over customers in an organisation and there were other supporting the opposite. Each group were quoting few successful entrepreneurs to back their claim. Most famous among the former group was Richard Branson’s following pic.

Like most of the times, I was as unconvinced with the former group’s point as with the later’s. Hence decided to break it down for my small brain to understand.

Customer-Employee vicious cycle :  Now whats this ?? Most of us must have read the economic vicious cycle in our school days , which states that Unemployment leads to poverty, which leads to illiteracy ,which in-turn leads to unemployment as below.

Likewise there exist a vicious cycle between customer and employee. Unhappy customers will adversely affect the companies revenue, making less money available for employees paycheck/benefits, resulting unhappy employees. Unhappy employees in-turn will not be motivated enough to work hard to make companies product/services better finally pissing the customer. Reciprocal of this holds good too, where Happy customers adds to companies revenue , which passes to employee through paycheck / benefits , making employees happy, in-turn employees work hard to make product/services better, finally making customer happy. Basically it ends where it starts. I have witnessed this first hand , when one of my previous employer ‘s customer wrote to them stating “we don’t only want you to succeed but we need you to succeed ” while my employer was going through rough times. Basically in enterprise environment each entity is so closely entangled with each other that they cannot be distinctly classified. That’s one reason why few good leaders make their organisation triumph and get paid incredible salaries while others suck !! Now if I read the Richard branson’s quote it states the same , he wants both to be happy .Just he choose to enter the reciprocal vicious cycle(diagram below) with happy employee as the entry point.

Marriage Analogy : A more simple analogy is marriage . Who is more important in a successful marriage : husband or wife? The answer is simple : both . Its not a marriage if one of them is not there. Likewise for an organisation both customers and employees are equally important. I cannot imagine any successful organisation with just one of them.

Balance is the key : Like most of the things here also balance and proper alignment is the key. Align both these entities for the common good and see your organisation thrive.

Conclusion : Both customer and employees are equally important , the time an organisation starts valuing one over the other is the time it invites its downfall. For organisation Its never Employees vs Customer , its always Employees and Customer.

TL;DR; Both customer and employees are equally important . Its never Employees vs Customer , its always Employees and Customer.

PS : Above are just my personal views . Thank you if you agree with any part of it , if you disagree your views are most welcome.