Investors tend to spend most of their time worrying about quantitative analysis Ratios like price-to-earnings and price-to-book get all the attention while numberless intangibles, like customer satisfaction, are left to annual surveys that are quickly swept under the carpet, never to be seen again
Let's face it we live in a quantitative world Everything we do revolves around top 10 lists of one kind or another We want a shortcut and lists meet this need Qualitative analysis, on the other hand, is tricky stuff, and most Warren Buffett wannabes find it too subjective
When conducting qualitative analysis of a company, most investment professionals look at the business model, competitive advantage in the industry, management and corporate governance This helps to determine how a company makes money, its uniqueness versus the competition, which people are making the decisions and how they treat ordinary shareholders Gathering all of this data can provide a better idea of how a company intends to grow its business while rewarding shareholders
However, it isn't the entire picture Touchy-feely subjects like satisfying the customer, rewarding employees and maintaining excellent supplier relationships matters as well
The Unheralded
Understanding the qualities that make a company great involve more than a simple SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) - that's business school 101 stuff To evaluate a company's intangibles, one must dig below the surface and beyond the 10-K Satisfaction is the key here and successful businesses have it in abundance
If a company fails to satisfy employees, suppliers and customers, in this order, it's only a matter of time before its stock price implodes Arguments exist for both sides of the discussion Some academics believe that customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction aren't mutually exclusive Just because employees are happy doesn't guarantee customer loyalty
But Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos com, the world's biggest online shoe retailer, and winner of countless customer service awards, said in a May 2010 article in SUCCESS magazine that " Customer service is about making customers happy, and the culture is about making employees happy So, really, we're about trying to deliver happiness, whether it's to customers or employees, and we apply that same philosophy to vendors as well "
This winning attitude may have contributed to Amazon com's (Nasdaq AMZN) acquisition of the business for $1 2 billion in 2009 (For more on the online sector, check out Choosing The Winners In The Click-And-Mortar Game )
Any company that's truly interested in customer satisfaction must first meet the needs of its employees; otherwise, it's putting the cart before the horse JetBlue (Nasdaq JBLU) came to realize, in 2007, that it wasn't doing a good job satisfying employees when it stranded thousands of its passengers because of a New York City ice storm Employee morale dropped, and with it, customer satisfaction Up to that point, the company surveyed employees once a year looking for feedback
It needed to do more, so it implemented "Net Promoter," a scoring system that calculates how many employees are actively promoting the company, both as a place to work and as a place to do business Once it began to look at employee satisfaction department by department, it was able to deliver programs that put everyone on the same page and results followed
Employees are the face of any brand The quickest way to destroy brand equity is to disrespect them Once you've lost trust, it's only a matter of time before you lose the customer Without customers, you have no business! It's a slippery slope that, privately owned software firm, SAS knows well
CEO and co-founder Jim Goodnight has been in charge for all 40 years SAS has been in business, and from the beginning he's emphasized employee benefits, leading to 13 straight years in the Top 50 on Fortune's "100 Best Companies To Work For" list as of 2016 In its 2008 corporate social responsibility report, the company states, "If you treat employees as if they make a difference to the company, they will make a difference to the company At the heart of this unique business model is a simple idea Satisfied employees create satisfied customers " Public companies are no different
No matter how vertically integrated your company is, you will always have suppliers of one kind or another, and those relationships can positively or negatively impact the quality of your final product or service One of Whole Foods' (Nasdaq WFM) seven core values is its commitment to its suppliers By creating a true partnership with the companies it buys from, it is able to provide its customers with a fabulous shopping experience
