Customer Experience & Employee Experience: Two Sides of the Same Coin!
Sharing a few excerpts from a recent session.
A quote which aptly captures the essence “We take great care of our people, they take great care of our customers, and our customers take great of our shareholders”- Herb Kelleher, CEO, Southwest Airlines
It’s a myth thinking of any equation between the 2 except for an “equal to” sign.
But, is it a circular conundrum and like with all circles, does one grapple with where to EX or CX?
From an external perspective, it starts with customers. Customer obsession, customer centricity, customer affinity would be core to every company’s vision.
From an internal perspective, it starts with passionate employees empowered by a customer-centric culture.
So what are the expectations? Simply put,
EX encompasses meaningful interactions & connections, conducive to get MORE done with LESS effort, ease of working with customers (internal or external)
CX expectations translate to understanding how the customers think, feel, aspire, interactions that empathize with customer problems, build solutions that solve their problems effortlessly!
Let’s consider a customer journey and the role played by “First Line Workers”. This segment has gradually started becoming pivotal to an organization’s success, simply because- they are the first ones to represent your brand to your customers and the first ones to get the pulse of the customer’s pain, joy or issues. How agile are you to react to them? How well are you equipped to connect them to all the internal resources to enable them to respond with the highest level of responsiveness delivered in an accurate manner.
In this context, the culture that one creates to bind this audience to emulate the organizational ethos finally reflects in the smiles that you can bring to your customers. With this segment poised to be over one billion, the role played by technology to enhance the experience chain from “employee to customer” and vice versa is a fluid one. Consider Microsoft Teams as a hub wherein these employees constantly remain connected while on the go. On the other hand, with advanced tech at our finger tips such as holo lens, customer service engineers who are a part of this customer team, sitting far away can now simulate the issue and provide a real time solution and keep the know-how archived for future reference in Teams. The ability to seamless extend the experience internally within your organization (EX) and externally to your customer (CX) via Teams open boundless possibilities from pro-active co-creation of customer journeys to enhancing the user experience in a service plus world.
In summary, Customer Experience encompasses the relationship between a service provider and its customer over the “lifetime of their relationship”. This service involves relationships, interactions and co-creation. To function well, both in the front stage and the backstage processes, the heart of the success lies in how you have architected the “digital transformation of your employees” as the pillar to propel the journey.