The Customer Experience Doesn't Actually Begin with the Customer

Each of us understands what it means to be disappointed by a poor customer experience or delighted by the employee who goes above and beyond. Given the potential upside, dumping money into the customer experience (CX) seems like a no-brainer. But is it, really? Can you engineer an excellent CX by throwing resources directly at the customer, demanding that your employees deliver service with a smile, or requiring a friendly “my pleasure” in response to a customer’s “thank you?”

Many organizations certainly seem to think so. Companies spend lavishly on comprehensive CX strategies and building or buying high-tech systems in order to mine what they see as untapped veins of growth. And the data insists that this preoccupation with CX is justified. A report by the American Customer Satisfaction Index showed that leaders in customer service outperformed the Dow by 93 percent, the Fortune 500 by 20 percent and the NASDAQ by a whopping 335 percent.

However, the methods that many organizations are using to try and duplicate those glowing figures just aren't delivering. Only 37 percent of businesses surveyed said they were able to tie CX activities to revenue and/or cost savings. That means the majority are, in effect, just spending a lot of money on CX -- and keeping their fingers crossed.

The Law of Congruent Experience

When it comes to the customer experience, keep in mind a simple equation -- EX = CX

At DecisionWise, we call this the "Law of Congruent Experience." The employee experience (EX) equals the customer experience (CX). A superlative customer experience is the direct result of a solid employee experience. Yet, DecisionWise research found that many businesses jump right past this simple fact, opting to address the CX as if it were something they could conjure up solely as a result of products, process, placement, pricing and profit (Hint -- this means they ignore the people).

A friend and colleague, Lydia Michael in her book, Brand Love, describes the emotional and rational drivers associated with brand loyalty. This is the consumer-brand connection that captures the hearts of customers, and few organizations are good at it. Employees interact with your customers, make them smile and carry that brand message. If your employees are having a great experience, so will your customers.

What, then, do we need to keep in mind when we consider the EX = CX equation, and why is the EX side so important?

1. Your company is your people. People, not legal entities, get things done. Who drives sales, hires and trains the team, takes care of the customer, buys the media, teaches the student, or tends to the patient? Does the company do that? We cling to the delusion that corporations take action, make decisions and even have personalities. But, that's a distorted perspective. It's the people.
2. Employees are your brand. "Brand" is the Holy Grail of business; we're always growing, maintaining, repairing, protecting or defending it. But your employees create it. Not just your marketing or PR department. If your brand is your promise to your customer, then your employees are responsible for keeping that promise. It lives through the performance, interactions and genuine care of the people who bring it to life on the front lines every day.
3. Your employees are closest to the customer. They are best positioned to resolve a concern or to delight a customer. They are closest to your customers' needs, challenges and wants. They are also in the best spot to feed this information back up the chain. When our DecisionWise teams analyze our customers' employee survey results, we find it interesting to see how many of the team members' written comments provide information about how to improve the customer experience, even when asked about their own employee experience. These employees want to take care of the customer... and they know how!
4. EX = CX. Some organizations spend a fortune on elaborate customer service safety nets designed to keep employees from damaging the customer relationship. Why? Because their employees simply don't care. They're having a lousy experience, so they're not motivated to provide anything more than that to the customer. Employees will deliver a customer experience that matches their own experience within the organization.
5. Design your EX. Many consider the employee experience in the same vein as company culture – it’s just "the way we do things around here." But, instead of simply "letting the EX happen," design the EX you want to create and that will impact your customers in the way most instrumental to your organization's success. Instead of orienting all ideas around the customer or organization, focus on the employee, with the thought that if the organization has an extraordinary EX woven into its DNA, an extraordinary CX becomes inevitable.

All this doesn't mean you shouldn't work on building an exemplary customer experience; that would be bad practice. But do it in a better way, understanding the most important factor in shaping that experience – your people.

A version of this article by Tracy Maylett was first published in Entrepreneur.

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