Editorial
Transformation at its core is about change. And without question, there is a clear relationship between transformations aimed at the employee and customer experience.
Leaders in customer experience thinking have claimed for many years that you can’t be great at customer experience without first being great at employee experience. But the question is, as the need to transform accelerates, how CIOs and other business leaders balance each to optimize corporate business advantage.
Employee or Customer Experience: Where Is Transformation Most Needed?
I wanted to understand given the last couple of years and movements like "the great resignation" where CIOs see the most pressing need for transformation. Is it for customer experience or employee experience and do these requirements ever seem at odds with each other? Maybe the right answer is that transformation is most needed to align CX and EX so nobody gets left behind?
New Zealand CIO Anthony McMahon believes that “any transformation that benefits employees should create indirect benefit for customers so requirements should never be at odds with each other. However, priorities are a different story.”
Associate CIO at UCSB Joe Sabado agreed and added, “the two should really go together. It’s important to understand employees' and customers' needs, desires, lifecycle and their success metrics.”
In fact, manufacturing CIO Joanne Friedman adds, aren’t each, two side of the same coin. Without meeting employee needs early in a transformation, you can't secure the heart share needed for success.”
With this said, First CIO Deb Gildersleeve got into specifics. She said, “CIOs should fix onboarding for both! I don't think that the requirements should be at odds with each other. Properly onboarding employees helps customers understand the business which makes for a better customer experience. Properly onboarding of customers educates them on the best way to work with an organization’s products and employees.”
How Did COVID-19 Change Your Perspective on the CX-EX Link?
How did COVID change CIO perspectives on customer experience and employee experience, and how are they related?
Friedman claimed that COVID-19 didn't really impact her perspective. “Employee experience has always needed to be on equal footing with the customer experience in priority. You can call it a Canadian perspective, but if you have unhappy employees, you'll have less than satisfied customers.”
McMahon agreed with Friedman, “I've always seen them as related, even prior to the pandemic.”
This means clearly that it was the business that failed to connect the two and value employee experience appropriately. Constellation Research Vice President and Analyst Dion Hinchcliffe claimed in prior discussions that prior to the pandemic few organizations had employee experience making their top ten priorities.
What Needs to Be Fixed to Optimize CX and EX?
For each, what needs to be fixed before they can be optimized and work better together?
Enterprise Architect Ed Featherston said, “internally employees are a big challenge in many organizations. Given this as a CIO, this might be one of the first places to work on. How many times have I seen systems designed by technologists built on assumptions of how they think people should work versus how they actually work.
"Today, we need to make systems and work processes fit people, not retrofit people's use into already designed systems and processes. Once aligned to a transformation vision, operating models, strategy, CX is more intuitive, more informed, and more valuable.” Geoffrey Moore called this the difference between ‘systems of record’ and ‘systems of engagement’.
Agreeing with Featherston, Friedman said, “this speaks to the need for human centered design so processes and systems fit people, not retrofit people's use into already designed processes and systems. Once aligned to transformation vision, operating models, strategy, CX can be more intuitive, more informed, and more valuable. But in digital transformation, the impact is measurable. 39% of companies that fail typically to secure employee heartshare.”
Author and US Transformation Leader at Mercer, Melissa Swift concluded by saying, “don't let boss baby customers ruin your EX.”
Working Together With Key Business Functions
How can CIOs work to garner the support of CMOs and CHROs in digital transformation? And to optimize how employee and customer experience work together?
Clearly, CIOs play a pivotal role in gathering, collating, cleansing and making sense of employee and customer experience data. CMO/CHRO need to be data-driven just like everyone else.
Sabado said, “CIOs should understand the above personas needs and objectives, collaborate on achieving common, organizational strategy and vision, show the value of IT contributions, and model behaviors that promote digital transformation.”
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Everything clearly should start by getting out from behind the desk and communicating, communicating and communicating. To do this, Featherston said, “CIOs need to talk the language, and understand what wakes their CMO and CHRO up at night in a cold sweat? Once they can talk the same language and translate that into transformation requirements, they are on the road to success and winning them over.
In fact, Friedman added, “leverage CMO creativity and expertise to market digital transformation initiatives. At the same time, engage and constantly communicate with the workforce. This should include getting the CHRO’s help to come up with far better ways to measure value contributions for digital transformation and deliver on corporate strategic initiatives.”
Parting Words on Employee and Customer Experience Management
CIOs were clear that there is a strong relationship between employee and customer experience. Given this, smart companies should be think of them together and ask how to simultaneous improve them to meet corporate goals, in particular goals around customers and selling, marketing and servicing.
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