It’s time for leaders to double down on the idea that the employee experience (EX) is now THE key driver of customer experience (CX) and finding smarter, strategic ways to connect the two. According to PwC, companies that invest in and deliver superior experiences to consumers and employees are able to charge a premium of up to 16% for their products and services. So how can leaders design EX to better align with CX? First, find out where the biggest gap is. Second, find creative ways to connect directly with employees and customers regardless of whether “customer service” is in their job description. Third, integrate customer and employee journey maps to identify and analyze customer problems. And finally, provide visibility into CX and EX performance together, putting success metrics into one perspective.
Employee experience in an organization (EX) already connected in recent years how it delivers on customer experience (CX). Given the changing dynamics of the labor force and all the ways technology has made it possible for companies, employees, and customers to connect, I believe it’s time for leaders to double down on the idea that EX today. THE key driver of CX and to find smarter, strategic ways to connect the two.
Consider the workforce challenges that currently plague most companies: the lack of skilled workers for new business needs, high turnover rates and the associated costs of recruitment and training, and difficulties in engaging employees given hybrid and other new ways of working, people’s high expectations for real DEI, and wide changes in the values of workers. In the midst of all this, companies are struggling to ensure they have a knowledgeable, experienced, and motivated workforce – one that is equipped to deliver a great customer experience.
And EX is becoming more important to customers. As more customers look to align their purchasing decisions with their values, they are becoming more interested in how companies interact with employees and tend to prioritize doing business with those who value their employees, treat them fairly, and put their welfare first. And employees interact with more customers more directly – and because of that employee engagement behavior has more impact on customers.
According to PwC, companies that invest in and deliver superior experiences to consumers and employees are able to charge a premium of up to 16% for their products and services. and MIT researchers found that companies in the top quartile of EX created more successful innovations, earning twice as much revenue from their innovations as those in the bottom quartile – and their change in industry Net Promoter Scores (NPS) twice as high.
EX is defined as the sum of everything an employee goes through throughout their connection with an organization, from the first contact as a potential hire to the final touchpoints after employment. This requires a holistic, focused, and purposeful approach, but most companies design and manage EX as a set of discrete employment elements, for example, flexible work arrangements, rewards and recognition programs, or health initiatives. That way of thinking is outdated. Today’s EX is created by the company’s overall culture, and all the in-between moments, including the ways managers interact with employees on a daily basis.
With all its moving parts, the customer experience requires consistent, cohesive engagement across the organization that EXcellence can foster. To tap the power of EX to create compelling CX, business leaders must align the two, connect directly with employees and customers, and use tools and processes to identify and report on effect each other.
Identify the similarities between employee and customer experience.
So how can leaders design EX to better align with CX? First, find out where the biggest gap is. A company cannot expect to provide a tech-enabled, seamless, and intuitive CX, for example, if everything it does with employees is paper-based, slow, and bureaucratic. And it is unlikely that employees will provide compassionate, caring, and personalized service if their employer does not cultivate an organizational culture that embraces those values.
But when employees understand that their experience is aligned with the desired CX, they intuitively begin to contribute to it through their own actions and decisions. For example, consider the fun and freedom that gives power Southwest Airlines employees to make its CX very enjoyable.
Second, to improve CX through EX, companies must find creative ways to directly connect employees and customers regardless of whether “customer service” is in their job description. Adobefor example, using listening stations where employees can go virtually online or physically at an Adobe office location to hear from customers directly and learn about their successes and challenges.
By shortening the distance between employees and customers, managers can enable employees to develop the customer understanding and empathy needed to identify and make CX improvements. It also increases employees’ sense of purpose and agency because they see the impact they’re making, which also leads to better customer experiences and can also positively affect employee retention to boot.
A third way to use EX in CX efforts is to combine customer and employee journey maps to identify and analyze customer problems. Some CX problems result from gaps or inconsistencies in employee skills and knowledge – or ineffective policies and outdated systems that negatively affect employees’ attitudes and their ability to perform well. work.
A map that correlates and calibrates customer journeys with employee journeys helps identify employee pain points that also negatively impact the customer. Insights into what employees are experiencing provide a unique insight into customer processes and systems that cannot be obtained from customer data alone.
For example, when Best Buy mapped its employee journey, it discovered that employees had trouble adopting the new point-of-sale (POS) system it was rolling out. And at the same time, the company knows that customers complain about long waits at checkout — and can write it off as a common customer service issue. Instead, Best Buy used employee research and an experience design approach to improve the system and bring in new technology that reduced POS training and transaction time. At the time these changes were rolled out, they reduced frustration for employees, improved employee retention, while improving CX.
Get a view of performance in two dimensions.
Finally, provide visibility into CX and EX performance together further enhances CX efforts. Companies can provide a complete view of the interlinked employee and customer experience by integrating KPIs from both areas into one view with a dynamic report instead of using separate reports. datasets and dashboards.
With simplified, integrated reporting, managers can better investigate and track issues. Health facility service provider Medxcel uses a composite site-level metric to assess how each of its sites is doing on customer relationship health, customer transaction performance, and employee engagement.
Also, when employee performance is reported in relation to customer metrics, employees tend to become more engaged with the organization and adopt a stronger orientation to business results. When O2, the telecommunications business that is part of Madrid-based Telefónica, wants to change from a mobile service provider to a digital telecommunications brand, it publishes an employee dashboard that summarizes customer results from on activities related to the initiative and reports the results to the weekly leadership team. presentations. This prompts employees to feel more ownership for the change and want to create innovations that enhance the company’s new identity.
If you have a better employee understanding of the desired CX and its impact on it, you can also encourage greater commitment to the organization and its goals. More evidence that it makes sense to prioritize EX in CX efforts – especially today.
