With a majority of companies now claiming to compete primarily on the basis of customer experience, it has become critically important to find every way possible to optimize it. While many organizations may be tempted to start with the customer, there is a more fundamental issue that needs to be resolved before a truly great customer experience is possible. This is where the employee experience comes in.
In order to have loyal customers, you need employees who are valued and feel valuable. Since my agency works in both employee and customer experience, I've seen firsthand some of the benefits of doing this.
Let's explore why great customer experience starts with employee experience, and what you can do about it.
Starting with employee experience helps all audiences understand your values and purpose.
In most cases, the audience that spends the most time with your brand is your employees. While your customers may have anything from occasional to frequent contact, your employees have consistent exposure.
In companies where the values and purpose are not clear, this causes a host of issues. Internally, it causes a lack of direction on how to prioritize and make decisions, which can (at best) create inefficiencies and (at worst) cause a lack of motivation, which leads to lower engagement, productivity and retention.
Externally, it can cause a lack of differentiation and many other things that can cause a brand to disappear in a sea of competitors.
When optimizing your customer experience, it is best to start with your employees and their journey. If your employees don't know why your company and product or service are great, how do you expect your customers to feel strongly about it? Starting with the people who work for you and who spend the most time thinking about and interacting with your brand means that you can make sure values and purpose are clear. Then, you have an entire workforce that can help you share those with the world.
For instance, take a look at your employee onboarding process. Are you making your values clear from the very start of their career with your company? What can you do to instill in brand new employees the same values you see in your best employees? Starting at the very beginning helps ensure these brand new employees understand and embrace your culture right away.
Take a look at the intersection of employee and customer experience.
Once you have made sure that your employees have a great experience, then it's time to start focusing on the customer experience. Start where customers and employees interact. It is interesting what you may find when you do this.
For instance, I have found in my experience that even the best and most well-intentioned employees are sometimes victims of the internal processes and silos within an organization. Have you ever been on a call with customer service and they've told you that essentially "things don't work" the way you would like them to, or the way that logic might dictate? Employees that are arbitrarily restricted from doing what's right for the customer are often not empowered to do the right thing. Find ways to understand where your processes and procedures might be getting in the way.
This has a win-win effect of enabling employees to do great work (which is more satisfying than having to say "no" all the time), and it creates ecstatic customers who are happy with the level of support they get from your team.
We can all agree that it is critical to have a stellar customer experience in today's marketplace. Loyal customers buy more, they buy more often, and they're more likely to refer others to buy. Once you've started at the beginning and made a stellar employee experience, and have thought through potential bottlenecks between your team and the customers they serve, you are now ready to deliver great customer experience.
