Are you attempting to produce a great customer experience in your business? If you're concentrating on your customers to complete that, you are already missing half the storyline.
That's because the quality of a company's customer experience is inextricably from the quality of its employee experience. In the long run, you cannot generate a great customer experience unless you have employees who are engaged, inspired and equipped to do so.
For lots of people, this concept makes intuitive sense. After all, a high level customer, a great part of the experience you have having a business will be shaped through the staff with whom you interact. If workers are happy and involved in their jobs, that sentiment will inevitably bleed into their interactions with customers. The staff will be more positive, more solicitous, more helpful-and customers will spot the difference.
What's often overlooked, however, is that the relationship between employee engagement and customer experience is bidirectional. Yes, engaged employees have a tendency to deliver a better customer experience. But a much better customer experience also tends to create more engaged employees.
Here's why. Imagine working in the call center of the business that has a horrible customer experience. Virtually every phone you take is a complaint-a customer who's frustrated, annoyed and lashing out since the company has failed to deliver on its promises. Every time that phone in your desk rings, you look at it with trepidation, understanding that, when you pick it up, you will probably function as the target of some other dissatisfied customer's ire.
Do you believe you would like that job? Would it engage you, give you happiness, direct you up out of bed each morning? Probably not.
No matter the number of cool perks might come with the assignment, there's no making your way around the day-to-day agony of getting to repeatedly cope with angry, unhappy customers. It literally saps the engagement and from the best-intentioned employees.
Now think of the other end from the spectrum, employed by a business whose customers are consistently satisfied-if not impressed-with these products and services they receive from your firm. Sure, even a company like this will have its share of customer experience failures that employees need to address. But those could be exceptions as opposed to the norm, making for a significantly healthier work place.
Instead of cringing each time the phone rings or a customer approaches, employees could adopt a far more positive and constructive stance. Instead of shrinking from customer interactions, they'd lean into them with enthusiasm. Instead of concentrating on defense, they'd focus on delight.
Executives often don't fully grasp how toxic a poor customer experience can be to their employees (let alone their customers).
Keep in your mind, it's usually not the employees who're principally to blame for a poor customer experience. Their best efforts are constrained through the systems, processes and workplace infrastructure by which they operate.
Consider, for instance, how much better a call center representative's job is when a long call waiting rarely exceeds a couple minutes. Or just how much better claims adjuster's job happens when policyholders aren't surprised at “small print” coverage terms. Or how much better an agents’ job are when they don't have to spend hours helping customers decipher unintelligible premium and policy notices.
These are just a few types of common customer experience friction points whose negative influence could be felt not only among customers but employees, as well.
It's important to understand the bidirectional relationship between customer experience and employee engagement because it truly amplifies the need for customer experience excellence to any organization. The impact of experience enhancements, and also the return on such investments, should be considered in a more holistic context.
Yes, a much better customer experience helps raise policyholder retention, increase cross-purchase rates and boost revenues, among other benefits. But it also improves employee engagement, which triggers lots of additional benefits, for example reduced staff turnover, lower absenteeism and better productivity, just to name a few.
It's for this reason the economic calculus around a great customer experience is much more compelling than many organizations recognize.
Happy, engaged employees help create happy, loyal customers who, consequently, help create happy, engaged employees. The need for this virtuous cycle cannot be overstated, and it is why the most successful companies appreciate-and act on-both sides of the equation.
