Linking EX to CX: The How and Why

Platitudes and gross simplifications regarding the impact of the Employee Experience on the Customer Experience abound. EX = CX. Happy employees = happy customers. Take care of your employees, and they will take care of your customers.

These are pabulum.

No one disagrees that customer-facing employees are your CX delivery system. But these trite poster quotes fail to address the real questions:

·???????? Exactly how does EX affect CX?

·???????? Which specific aspects of EX drive CX?

·???????? What is the impact of each aspect?

Everyone gets it: the ability or failure of your employees to provide exceptional service directly affects customer experience, loyalty, and brand perception. But it is only by linking CX data with employee experience and performance data and characteristics that you can better understand, manage, and improve the factors that drive your CX.

The How

To determine the impact of EX on CX, we start with your post-transaction customer experience data where the customer interacted with a specific identifiable employee. This might be in the call center, during a service or installation visit, tech support, a meeting with an agent or rep, or other one-on-one interactions.

We then connect the pieces, and the CX data is directly linked to the EX data. That is, data regarding the employee who handled the interaction is linked to the data on the experience of the customer who interacted with the employee. No abstractions or generalizations: if you want to know how an employee affects a customer, you need link the relevant data on the specific employee to the specific customer.

RED FLAG: employee data is confidential and protected by the fortress of HR!

This is a bogus objection. EX/CX linkage -- or EX Driven CX as we call it -- is not about rating individual employee skills and shouldn’t be something punitive. The goal isn’t to give Mary an “atta girl” or rap John across the knuckles for how they handled an interaction with a customer; rather, it’s about identifying how differences in the individual employee experience and characteristics manifest themselves in differences in individual customer experiences.

As such, the data should be anonymized and all personal identifiable items stripped away so you don’t know specifically which employee directly interacted with which customer. This can be handled either in-house by your staff with all identifiers stripped out or via a double-blind process that assures anonymity.

In addition, any other employee characteristics or information – such as tenure, level of education, years of experience, etc. – also can be appended to the file. ANOTHER RED FLAG! Not really: stay away from age, race, gender, or other traits associated with potential discrimination or protected class status. Which training classes an employee has taken, their performance evaluation scores, and so forth are scarcely controversial identifiable characteristics.

Once the databases are matched and cleaned, the magic begins. Using advanced analytical tools, including AI and machine learning, we model, quantify, and illustrate the impact of the various aspects of EX and employee characteristics on driving CX.

The Why

Managing the employee experience and hiring talent to deliver better customer experiences requires identifying, quantifying, and prioritizing the dimensions of EX and employee characteristics that drive CX. Instead of a simple “treat people well” slogan, this approach offers a blueprint for organizational development and hiring and training employees to ensure that your organization delivers superior CX. ?

Enhancing Employee Training & Development. With a clear understanding of the impact of EX on CX, you can tailor training programs to address specific areas of improvement and equip your employees with the tools, skills, and knowledge needed to deliver exceptional service.

Organizational Development. Learnings from EX/CX Linkage will help instruct changes in organizational culture and policies to boost EX and CX.

Tailor Recruiting Efforts. Armed with insights regarding what type of employee delivers the best CX, your talent acquisition team can better target prospective employees to be CX superstars.

Improve Accountability & Motivation. Knowing their performance is directly linked to CX fosters an employee’s sense of accountability. They’re more likely to take ownership of their role in the customer experience, leading to increased motivation to perform well and deliver great CX.

Drive Continuous Improvement. Continuous collection and analysis of CX data, in conjunction with employee data and performance metrics, enables you to identify trends, spot issues early, and implement continuous improvement initiatives. This proactive approach ensures that customer satisfaction remains high and that your company can adapt to changing customer expectations.

So stop pontificating about the abstract importance of employees in delivering the type of customer experience you want for your firm and do something about it.