Editorial
The Gist
- Cohesive strategy. Excellent customer experience (CX) hinges on a seamless employee experience (EX). Together, they foster a cohesive brand image.
- Employee importance. A superior CX isn't just about the customer; it demands top-notch EX, emphasizing the importance of employee satisfaction and engagement.
- Cultural shift. Embracing an Experience Mindset isn't just a strategy; it's a cultural shift. Balance, intention and understanding customer needs are key components
When I did my second master's in business strategy, I became fascinated with the relationship between business strategy and team construction. While management theorists at the time discussed strategies versus business skills, no connection was framed with the people that enable business strategy. Bring things forward to today, there has been no explicit relationship drawn between customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). Honestly, this has been the case even though many business leaders insisted they saw one.
I personally knew there was something here after I had co-founded several years ago a company called HealthOps, which measured multiple times a day patient engagement and nurse engagement. With this semi-streaming data, we saw a near 100% correlation. A few weeks ago, Tiffani Bova released the The Experience Mindset. Armed with research, she proves you can’t have great CX without great EX and her data extends across industries. Tiffani quotes a real believer, the former chairman of Best Buy, who said, “The heart of business is the idea of pursuing a noble purpose, putting people at the center, creating the environment where you can release human magic, embrace all shareholders, and treat profit as an outcome.”
Why There Is Only One Experience
Bova starts her book by connecting the experiences of customers and employees. She says, “Employees carry the torch every day of the values and mission of their company.” Given this, the day-to-day experiences of the people who serve customers are critical to every successful business. To paraphrase Theodore Levitt, the most important customer success person is often the person who decides not to drop the product before it ships.
Given this, organizations seeking to accelerate growth must balance customer and employee experience in a more intentional and balanced way. They must make customers happier by addressing issues with their employees. Bova contrasts this view with the one when I began my career — the view of Milton Friedman. She also clearly states that an obsessive focus solely on customer experience cause employee experience to suffer.
Bova contends that for organizations to grow, they must excel in both EX and CX. Simultaneously, she proposes that organizations can speed up growth by balancing improvements in tandem to capitalize on the combination. Organizations accomplishing this forge a virtuous cycle of momentum. Contrary to many leaders' thinking, she asserts that engaging customers begins with cultivating healthy, engaged employees. Bova emphasizes that COVID-19 and "the great resignation" have propelled employee engagement into the spotlight. In summary, she suggests that companies must shift from doing things to customers and employees, to doing things for them. Central to this shift is adopting an experience mindset, uniting people, process, technology and culture.
Related Article: Win-Win: Address Employee Experience for Better Customer Experience
Homing in on Great Customer Experience
Bova next digs into CX, stating that purchasing behaviors have changed as experience expectations rise alongside new technical capabilities. In this transformation, companies need to move away from a product-led model and concentrate on customers and their needs instead. This is similar to John McMahon in the "Qualified Sales Leader," who declares that sales and marketing's role is to "understand customer pains and determine how company capabilities align to alleviate the pains."
Bova continues, saying that becoming more customer-focused today requires greater attention to CX. She cites Salesforce research showing that 88% of customers believe the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services. For some, this may be eye-opening.
Bova continues to say, "Great CX is not defined by what you offer, but how your customer feels when they engage with your products and service, your employees, and your brands." These moments of engagement are significant. In fact, Salesforce research shows that CX leaders have three times higher returns for shareholders than CX laggards. Bova intriguingly defines the traits of superior CX and EX with terms like "efficient," "personalized," "predictive," "proactive," "flexible," "responsive" and "value-based." From a CX standpoint, she claims these terms translate to reducing the effort customers need to interact with your brand.
For employees delivering this CX, it boils down to interactions and effort. This goes beyond what Russell Ackoff labels as "machine age productivity." Instead, it entails using technology to enhance CX. Bova asserts that today's employees should experience the same level of improvement. But to be clear, great CX is about much more than simply deploying impressive technology.
Related Article: Why It’s Time to Embrace Employee Experience
Improving Employee Experience for Better Customer Experience
Bova claims employees for too long have been an afterthought. Leaders for too long have separated employee and customer experiences. In fact, Constellation Research Vice President, and Analyst Dion Hinchcliffe claims, “In discussions prior to the pandemic few organizations had employee experience making their top 10 priority list.”
For this reason, it should come as no surprise that most employees are disengaged and indifferent. And when there is a disconnect, everyone loses. Author and US Transformation Leader at Mercer Melissa Swift puts it this way: "Don't let boss baby customers ruin your EX.” Bova asserts that employers have ignored the needs and wants of employees for too long. Yet, superior CX depends on superior EX.
Bova claims that employees crave a better relationship with management. Just like customers, today’s employees want more from the employers and they have proven the willingness to change jobs and change often if they don’t get what they want. If anything, the pandemic reminded companies that people are their business. To win at EX, organizations should aim for positive seamless interactions with and for employees. This means organizations need to move from using technology to increase business productivity to improving how people work. This involves automating repetitive tasks and eliminating legacy processes and systems.
Achieving this involves moving IT spend from back-office processes to front office processes. The places where front-line employees engage customers. Employees should not have to deal with systems and processes that do not work. The fix clearly requires time and money. Bova, however, suggests employees are begging for this and customers feel daily the lack of investment through poor service. This without question impacts the bottom line.
There are simple things leaders can start with, including management by walking around. At HealthyOps, I saw this difference in two hospital units — in one, the manager stayed in her office, and in the other, the manager regularly walked the floor and talked to her team. Salesforce research finds that when the C-suite places a high priority on EX, the company experiences 1.3 times more growth. And when the C-suite places a high priority on CX, the organization experiences 1.4 times more growth. The results are even higher when both occur together. Reflecting this, research shows that 61% of C-suites say that good EX equals good CX. A common business problem is that there is typically an owner for CX but not for EX. To fix this, leaders must instill a vision for change.
Aiming for an Experience Mindset
The mindset aims to have both CX and EX represented in the boardroom. This means breaking down silos and integrating the organization as a whole. Fortunately, First CIO Deb Gildersleeve says, "Requirements for CX and EX should not be at odds with each other. Properly onboarding employees helps customers understand the business, which makes for a better customer experience. Proper onboarding of customers educates them on the best way to work with an organization's products and employees."
So, an experience is about balance and intention. To achieve this, UC Santa Barbara Associate CIO Joe Sabado says, “CIOs should understand the above personas needs and objectives, collaborate on achieving common, organizational strategy and vision, and model behaviors that promote digital transformation.”
This involves optimizing the relationship between CX and EX on a continual basis and tracking improvement. It requires recognizing that employees want to feel part of something. When this happens, they are more inclined to learn new skills and apply them to their jobs. Key leaders responsible for improving experience — including IT, marketing, and HR — must collaborate. They should begin by addressing flawed systems and processes. Bova believes that poorly executed workflow, substandard quality programs and low employee satisfaction undermine experience. Addressing this involves improving processes that waste time and eliminating redundant ones. Silos and tech debt obstruct both employees and customers. This includes data sharing — only 39% of organizations share data effectively.
It is time to streamline and remove friction from EX and CX. As a goal, technology should enhance efficiency. Processes should work seamlessly together, meaning the effort to complete basic tasks should be reduced. Interestingly, only 52% of executives believe that tech at their companies functions effectively. To start, executives should take inventory of where tech is not working well or seamlessly. This involves remembering that effective transformation stems from sound strategies and takes into account the benefits or challenges that arise for the business, employees and customers.
Put together, organizations should simplify processes for employees to create a better customer experience. Companies should also adopt appropriate training for new processes. Here, people and processes must be tightly interconnected. This requires ensuring alignment between employees and customers before solving any problem. This involves guiding people, processes, technology and culture.
Culture Shouldn’t Be an Afterthought
Bova asserts culture isn't an aspect of management; it is management. Done effectively, it supports inclusion, diversity and provides a space where employees feel listened to and empowered to be themselves. This means stakeholders need to understand the mission and live organizational values in the way they work and treat fellow employees.
Without question, great culture accentuates positive behaviors and traits and leads to improved performance. So effective change requires everyone to embrace uncertainty and maintain a positive outlook. For the experience mindset to flourish, stakeholders must believe. And there are five elements of effective culture — trust, C-Suite accountability, alignment, recognition and seamless technology.
Metrics matter too. They should be combined for CX and EX so leaders see the interrelationships. For CX, Bova suggests measuring NPS, Customer Satisfaction Score, Customer Effort Score and Customer Effort Index — and for EX, eNPS (% of promoters-% detractors), Turnover Rate, Retention Rates and Employee Satisfaction Index.
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Parting Words on Great CX and EX
Bova believes the biggest threat to business today lies in employee unhappiness. I would add business customer relevance. Winners see CX and EX as inextricably tied. Interestingly, the authors of “Future Ready” claim winners are businesses that industrialize their processes and data and fix their customer experience. As Bova indicates, it does not work to only fix employee-facing processes but not fix all the elements of customer engagement — systems, processes and how organizations treat and engage employees. It is time for more organizations to adopt an Experience Mindset!
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