My first post touched on "The Happiness Quotient," which is the focus of my upcoming book entitled, Lead with Your Heart....


Thanks to everyone who commented. MarketingsProfs is blessed with smart readers. Some of you commented that happiness is so subjective that it is difficult to define and to create strategies around.
You're correct. It takes me several hundred pages to explain happiness as a hard rather than a soft goal. I hope the following will begin to help make sense of what I call "The Happiness Quotient."
The data and the business potential behind focusing strategies and planning and everything a business says and does on making people happier, and not just consumers, is incredibly strong. In fact, I argue, as have a few others before us, that employees must first feel a sense of "happiness" about the company they work for and the work they do, if a business's customers and clients are to experience levels of happiness that drive them to shop with that business.
Citizen's Bank offers a credo that represents a good start, but only a start:

Customers: Treat the customer the way you would love to be treated all the time.
Colleagues: Do what it takes to make Citizens the best place to work in the world.
Community: Show that you care deeply about the community. Conduct yourself ethically all the time.

Pursuit of "The Happiness Quotient" does not rest on some shaky psychological definition of being happy. Throughout my book, I lay out what it takes to create customer and employee experiences that build customer loyalty, that create a great brand image, that enhance customer loyalty, and that increase sales and grow the bottom line.
In essence, I am talking about building businesses that are customer- and employee-centric, that are built on values, and that deliver experience that exceed expectations. Those things make up "The Happiness Quotient." But it is how we execute, manage and measure on "The Happiness Quotient" that will determine whether or not we really create a business built upon that principal.
One of the comments on the first post was from an executive in Australia, who had some very smart things to say. Where I take exception is in the statement that all businesses and CEOs want happy customers. In my experience, some say they do (others don't really thing about it), but most execute and manage to the bottom line, not to happiness.
I believe, and "The Happiness Quotient" argues, that those managing to the bottom line will not achieve the same results and those who manage to happiness. And their bottom lines will suffer for it.