Businesses are starting to understand the value that can be delivered by effective Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) programs. While CX and EX has long been a focus for businesses, the two disciplines working closely together is a relatively new concept as evidenced by the rise of new roles - The Chief Experience officer. Many businesses are just starting to accept that happy staff make for happy customers, which leads to better brand loyalty, increased sales, and more profit. To fully reap the benefits of CX and EX programs, businesses need to stop running these programs in isolation and understand how they converge to positively impact business performance, according to Qualtrics.
CX has been a focus area for some time and EX has now joined CX as a business imperative . The main driving factor behind this increasing adoption of CX and EX programs has been digital technology. The right technology has let companies move from infrequent, cumbersome feedback programs to real-time insights that are actionable. In the next wave of development, companies are understanding the importance of the right feedback, at the right time, to the right people. This lets teams make a substantial impact when it’s most useful.
Now, companies need to merge their EX and CX efforts to amplify customer and employee loyalty and engagement. CX and EX are inextricably linked: regardless of industry, a company culture that values the employee can drive engagement and achieve greater customer retention and financial outcomes.
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Qualtrics has identified five ways to connect EX and CX for greater business outcomes:
1. Ignite the organisation through leadership
Businesses should look to move from siloed to collaborative working models. This requires leadership that values people and customers and this forms the foundation of its strategy. Changing the culture requires leaders to be aligned around the vision and have common objectives, values, and metrics. Leaders must define and role-model the behaviours they want to see in their people.
2. Authentic values-led customer culture
Customer-centricity needs to be more than a tagline; there needs to be visible action. This requires senior leadership to embed a culture of customer centricity within the organisation through the agreed mindsets, behaviours and metrics. This can influence business outcomes as long as the leadership considers this a long term strategy and stays focussed on communicating, aligning and re-aligning teams towards this goal.
3. Employees feel connected to the customer experience
CX programs that rely on scores lead to score-chasing behaviours that are unlikely to genuinely move the needle for customers. Instead, businesses should shift focus from metrics to empowerment. This means spending time to connect people to the customer experience through immersion and engagement programs, getting the right data to the right teams, and providing the right tools to capture and act on feedback. Authentic programs that build empathy throughout the organisation, not just on the frontline, will influence decision-making.
4. Innovative experience environment
The customer environment and the employee environment have traditionally been created in isolation from each other. Integrating them and designing workspaces that reinforce collaboration and connection to the customer, to each other and the wider organisation creates an innovative experience environment.
5. Experience management to monitor the business’s vital signs
Organisations that silo their measurement of experiences will naturally have blind spots that they’ll be unable to address. Moving toward connected data will help them optimise all of the experiences they deliver across customer, employee, product, and brand. They can then understand the levers that drive change and correlate experiences to financial performance. This will also unify the organisation to deliver differentiated experiences.
READ: How businesses can address low engagement levels in millennial employees
It’s important to map CX and EX programs to business outcomes and financial results. By demonstrating the tangible benefits of these programs, businesses can gain stronger buy-in from stakeholders and leverage these areas of commonality to create a brand that people want to work for and customers want to buy from.
Qualtrics is a rapidly growing software-as-a-service company and the leader in experience management. More than 9,000 enterprises worldwide, including more than 75 percent of the Fortune 100 and 99 of the top 100 U.S. business schools, rely on Qualtrics. Our solutions make it easy to measure, prioritise, and optimize the experiences organisations provide across the four foundations of business: customer, product, employee and brand experiences. To learn more, and to request a demo, please visit https://www.qualtrics.com/au
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