Happiness is Key to Employee and Customer Loyalty

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By: Bill Hanifin, CLMP™ |

Posted on February 1, 2020

An introduction to happiness and employee/customer loyalty

JoAnna Brandi is a Certified Chief Happiness Officer who I was grateful to meet during the 2018 Loyalty Academy Conference. Amidst an agenda full of strategic discussions and explorations of quantitative approaches to customer loyalty, we elected to include a presentation on Leadership, Loyalty and Love.

JoAnna’s presentation was well received and we’ve stayed in touch since. Though research in the topic has been ongoing for over 30 years, it was the Delivering Happiness project founded by Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos, that most recently caught my attention. Now, if you’ve noticed, discussions of wellness and mindfulness abound in the culture today.

More than just the under 30 crowd have taken a renewed interest in self-improvement, including meditation, yoga, plant-based diets and the like. But today’s discussion was anything but “woo-woo” in nature. Those pursuing “happiness” on a personal level yearn for better working environments, and business is just catching on to recognize that investing in “human capital” can lead to tangible and measurable business results.

In the time that has passed since our interaction at the Loyalty Academy, Happiness has become a science. A growing body of research supports the value of developing a positive workplace culture and reshaping executive leadership to encourage a value-based culture.

Also read: The Era of Brand Purpose is Officially Over

JoAnna recently earned the degree of Certified Chief Happiness Officer from Florida International University and has developed a full suite of actionable methods and tools to create more positive work environments leading to increased associate satisfaction. Since business depends greatly on its customer-facing persons to create memorable customer experiences, this is truly an important topic for every business leader to understand.

According to JoAnna, the connection to customer loyalty is undeniable as she shared, “Loyalty is the end result, it is just there are different pathways to get there”. The many conversations we’ve had at the Wise Marketer with business leaders make it clear that brands are on a journey to customize their own path to customer loyalty and added profitability. Investing in business culture and associates is one avenue that can create quantifiable results.

Here’s the entire conversation. We hope you enjoy it and that you walk away inspired and just a bit more Happy!