How AI can close the EX-CX gap

Many studies have proven the intrinsic link between employee experience and customer experience: Companies that create and deliver superior EX tend to also excel with CX, and vice versa. The logical corollary: companies that make improvements on one side will see payoffs on the other.

Malcolm Koh, Freshworks’ head of customer experience advisory, has seen dramatic progress over the years in how companies are digitizing user experience, and personalizing it further with AI. But he also sees an imbalance that needs correction: Some companies, he says, tend to over-focus on customer experience, sometimes at the expense of employee experience—which ultimately undermines CX.?

“Companies are typically focused on efficiency and the promise of AI to deliver that efficiency,” says Koh in an interview with The Works. “They’re pouring resources into building out self-service chatbots—but not as much into their people. There isn’t anywhere near the same level of focus on employee experience.”

Why is that? One reason is that, unlike customer experience, employee experience is a more complex, abstract concept that is difficult to quantify and measure. But until technology helps solve that problem, companies must prioritize employee engagement and satisfaction in any way they can. They can’t afford not to, Koh says.

“In a lot of cases, the human touch is going to deliver the outcome that customers want. If your employees aren’t satisfied internal customers, they’re not going to deliver satisfying outcomes to your external customers.”

Read the full Q&A with Malcolm Koh on The Works.

Why EX can get ‘lost in the shuffle’

Koh isn’t the only expert to take note of this powerful insight. In a recent interview with The Works, Laks Srinivasan, co-founder of the ROI of AI Institute, recalled how the IT organization of a Fortune 500 company felt like their hands were tied to invest in EX improvements:

Recently, I had a room full of executives of a Fortune 500 company, including the CIO, as part of a workshop, and everybody said, “We wish we could improve employee helpdesk, but employee-facing initiatives are not as big of a priority as customer support.”

There’s value to be had from AI there, but they’re hard-pressed to make AI investment a priority, given that IT is a cost center. And while in bigger companies, CIOs clearly have budgets for it, as you get to smaller and medium companies, AI pilots for IT can get lost in the shuffle.

How can IT leaders avoid falling into that trap? Keep their AI ambitions narrow and focused. As Srinivasan adds, “The companies that are getting real value from AI are finding smaller and smaller kinds of problems that they can deploy AI against.”?

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