Empanadas and Home Security: How Employee Experience Shapes Customer Loyalty

The Gist

• Culture-first mindset: A strong culture is the foundation for positive employee and customer experiences.
• EX to CX connection: Bridging the gap between EX and CX can lead to innovative customer solutions and enhanced loyalty.
• Emotional engagement: Building emotional connections with customers deepens relationships and boosts brand loyalty.

Episode Highlights

• Building a culture-first organization: Focusing on employee satisfaction and culture lays the groundwork for an exceptional customer experience.
• Bridging EX and CX: Strong employee experiences lead to better customer interactions, fostering loyalty and innovation.
• Listening to Employees and Customers: Actively engaging with employees and customers through surveys and feedback channels can reveal valuable insights that drive improvement in both EX and CX.
• Innovation Through Employee Ideas: Encouraging employees to share ideas can lead to small but impactful innovations that enhance the customer experience.
• Emotional Connections in Marketing: Fostering emotional connections with customers through authentic experiences and personalized interactions can significantly enhance brand loyalty.
• Leveraging Technology to Enhance EX and CX: Integrating technology, such as apps and QR codes, can streamline feedback collection and improve both employee and customer experiences in real-time.
• The Role of Recognition in Building Culture: Implementing recognition programs, such as "Plus One," can motivate employees, build a positive culture, and indirectly improve customer satisfaction.
• Connecting EX to Business Success: A strong focus on employee experience can lead to better customer service, higher customer satisfaction, and ultimately, business growth.

Episode Transcript

Dom Nicastro: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of CMSWire's podcast. I'm Dom Nicastro, Editor-in-Chief here at CMSWire, and with me is Michelle Hawley, our fantastic Senior Editor. How's it going, Michelle?

Michelle Hawley: It's going good, Dom! Excited to dive into today's topic. We’ve got some great insights from our recent video interviews. You spoke with Gautam Pantakar, the GM of Oldfield, on Beyond the Call, and I interviewed DeLu Jackson, executive VP and chief marketing officer at ADT, for CMO Circle.

Dom Nicastro: Exactly! What’s fascinating is how both Gautam and DeLu, despite coming from very different industries and company sizes, share a common passion for intertwining employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) with marketing.

Michelle Hawley: Absolutely. It's really interesting to see how they both emphasize the importance of connecting these elements. So let's dive into some key takeaways from these interviews, highlighting their insights on EX and CX.

Takeaway 1: Culture and Employee Experience

Dom Nicastro: Let's start with Gautam. He really hit home the importance of culture in shaping both employee and customer experiences. Here’s what he had to say about focusing on employee experience first.

Gautam Pantakar: For me, it always starts with culture, you know. And I think what I would tell you is, have you ever, I don't know if I'm sure, you've gone out, but have you ever gone to this to say, you know, maybe, like a Walmart, you know, you look at the people that are working the registers, and they're all kind of like, maybe they're not really happy.

But then you go into electronics, and man, they're that team is having the best time ever. Like they are gel, they are in unison. They love each other. They're having a great time. Then you go over to sporting goods, and you know, they're kind of all over.

So for me, you take the cumulative group, everybody, golf, tennis, fitness, equestrian outfit, whatever it might be, and you say, I gotta figure out a way for this team to get the culture for the team the same. Because I can walk into one place and feel really good about the team. I can walk into another place and say, this is just a bunch of strangers.

So what I did is we basically start with like a real Hey, the member experience is accumulation of everybody, right? It's the concierge, it's food and beverage, it's golf, it's everything that they do to the course today. So we've got to galvanize the team.

So I start really quick with culture, right off the bat. And one of the things that we started is we started a plus one program, which is just a great, simple program, and it's nothing, it's no rocket science. But it's basically three parts. Number one is caught doing great program that we can award each other. If I see somebody walking in the rain to their house, I can jump in a golf cart, grab an umbrella and actually tell them, like, get in the car and I'll take you home, because it's a community, yeah, and I can award somebody a plus one for doing that.

Now the members can also award the employees a plus one, because we can't see everything, right? A lot of things happen without anybody seeing.

The second part of that is what everybody has just an employee of the month. We've got an awesome TV screen down in the lobby where the person's face is on there, and there's a scrolling screen, and the last thing's like an employee of the year.

And if you just start simple things like that, you start recognizing people, they're recognizing each other, then it's really about I want to achieve that, because I want the plus one pin that I can put on my shirt. You see, I have no plus ones yet because I haven't done anything awesome so far. You know, but it starts with culture. The ex side starts with the culture. There's no doubt about it.”

Michelle Hawley: That's a great point. Fostering a positive culture can have a huge impact on the overall experience. DeLu Jackson also spoke about the importance of culture in ADT’s operations.

DeLu Jackson: We have a team that's a collective team, cross functionally, that's dedicated to sharing that and communicating that and engaging with, again, all of our employees. And we share it at events and different activities.

Again, many different touchpoints where we'll see it come to life. And the great thing is it's happening all the time. It's what we do, so it's always there, really always there. And people are just, this gives another opportunity and a platform for people to share that and collaborate on communicating it out.

Related Article: Is Your Culture Creating a Great Customer Experience?

Takeaway 2: Listening to Employees and Customers

Michelle Hawley: Listening is another crucial element both emphasized. DeLu talked about ADT's approach to actively engaging with their customers and employees to gather feedback.

DeLu Jackson: Yeah, I think, you know, the good news is we engage with our customers. You know, we follow up with them through surveys and through feedback, through customer care. We take every bit of feedback very seriously. And as an organization, that's just a key part of us making sure we're providing what's important to them. And so that's really just what we continue to do. We have a team that's focused on that and again applaud them for always wanting to deliver an excellent customer experience.

Dom Nicastro: Gautam shared a similar sentiment about the importance of listening, especially in that hospitality industry.

Gautam Pantakar: So I'll show you something. So we have this really cool Oldfield app, and it's very cool, and it's got a bunch of things in there. I mean, members can sign up for events on there. They can do it all. There's actually a section in there about, basically saying, you have something to say about an employee? Do have anything you want to say?

And in there also is an employee chat thing. Also, if you can't quantify it by dollars, but you can quantify it to culture, right? When you see an active chat room and you see people engage like, hey, it's somebody's birthday, and it's like 100 people writing in there saying, yes, birthday, happy birthday, blah, blah, blah.

But we also do employee surveys. We still have that here. That's something that you need to have, but we actually have a member survey that ties back to the NPS, basically that Net Promoter Score.

So we have those things. I'm not a huge net promoter score guy, because I think what happens with the net promoter scores? Nobody really ever gives it a gives it a barometer. Yeah, you know, you don't know if is it 10? Good? Who knows? Is it 20? Nobody ever knows, right?

So then you Google, like, what is Apple's NPS? And you use that as a barometer. But I use the, what the survey for is really the the member feedback that we get. Yeah, member feedback is great because they do two things: they highlight the employees, and they tell you about their experience, and that's all the data I need.

The other thing we have not started yet, but we are going to start, is more of a in-the-moment kind of thing. So we have these cards that are going to be QR codes, so I can hand it to you. So if you came to dinner, I can just hand it to you, like Mr. Nicastro, how was your dinner last night? If you'll just take a quick picture of this QR code, we're going to ask you five simple questions. How was the food? How was the presentation? How did the server do? Is there anyone you want to highlight? Will you come back? Or something like that. So I get a lot of at-the-moment glances, and those are the metrics that we use now.

Related Article: Harnessing Customer and Employee Feedback for Better Experiences

Takeaway 3: Connecting EX to CX

Dom Nicastro: Connecting EX to CX is where the magic happens. Gautam elaborated on how a great employee experience can lead to a better customer experience.

Gautam Pantakar: So, something really small and kind of just silly altogether, but I mean, ultimately, you know, we spent money. Now, I know money is not the easiest thing to find, but if you can afford it, there's tangible things you can do, because you have to have some noticeable things that a customer will say, Oh, that's different from what it was last time.

So we added something really simple. It was literally adding those nice, tall water, stainless steel water things to the dinner experience. So when the hostess comes over, the server comes over, they make great conversation, but they actually pour your water, which is a, which is a CX thing, but it was birthed out of an idea by an employee, because we made it such that ... you tell me what the customer wants, and they said, Hey, what's really cool is adding what table-side water service to them, and boom, so we we got the ex side because we heard them and implemented.

But then the customer goes, that's really cool. And then what I can turn around and say is that ain't even my idea. That's so and so's idea. And then the applause for them is, I'm trying to push the applause to them constantly.

Michelle Hawley: DeLu also highlighted how ADT’s efforts to make sure employees understand their impact on customer safety plays a vital role.

DeLu Jackson: The Life Savers program. We did that for a number of years and continue to do that, which is essentially a program where when something unfortunate did occur, we had an opportunity for our monitoring teams that assisted in resolving those issues, meet with the homeowner and their families and the first responders, and just talk about all the important steps that occurred to make sure that everyone was safe.

We did it in different geographies, in different circumstances, but there are these magic moments where we realize just how important the work is. And I love it that when our work and our purpose come together, that we make the world safer when we're doing our jobs well. And we have 13,500 associates that are just super passionate about making the world safer, and that's pretty amazing.

Takeaway 4: Innovation and Adaptation

Michelle Hawley: Innovation is key in both their strategies. DeLu spoke about how ADT has evolved to meet new safety needs with cutting-edge technology.

DeLu Jackson: Well, again, the evolution of the space and even what we've learned about all the different consumers, that safety means so much more to so many different people. As you said, sometimes it's video, sometimes it's response, sometimes it's what I see before things can occur, right, is preventative.

And so as all of those things have occurred, it's given us a tremendous opportunity to expand our capabilities, but also the portfolio of offerings. So we have traditionally been known as a, you know, a professionally installed business and that's great. We take care of a lot of people.

And then we saw an emergence of people doing self set up or DIY. We have an offering there. We have health opportunities for people because all of those things are part of the evolution of our safety journey. And so as our brand continues to expand those services and the technology capabilities, it's pretty exciting to be on the forefront of those innovations.

Takeaway 5: Emotional Connection for Powerful EX and CX

Dom Nicastro: Emotional connections are powerful. Gautam’s story about empanadas really exemplified this.

Gautam Pantakar: So there's a young lady. Her name is Anna, and she works in the kitchen, um, she's one of the line cooks, you know, she does a lot of different, really, prep work. And so she came in one day and she made homemade empanadas. Mm, hmm. And there are two young ladies work back there, Anna and Eddie.

And Anna comes in one day and she has leftover empanadas, literally leftover empanadas. And she goes up the chef and she's passing them out, you know, she's like, try this, try this, try this. Just no different than if I had a cookie at home and I had extras, whatever it might be.

And the coolest thing about it was: A. they were delicious; B. She made them from home, brought it into us. He took those, and they are a menu item, and it says Anna and Eddie's empanadas. And we revealed the menu, and we did a bunch of different stations around there, and one of the stations was the empanadas. And guess who stood behind the empanadas? Anna and Eddie.

No patting me on the back, because this is Chef Jared's idea totally but he took the culture, he took the essence of what we're trying to do, and he says, "Not only am I going to highlight you, but I'm going to stick you on the menu. I'm going to put you in front of all these people." They're super nice people, but I've never seen like, the pride in two people over something that little. And if we can do that, versus just simply saying empanadas, it became Anna and Eddie's empanadas. That's, that's all this whole interview is all about.

Michelle Hawley: DeLu also spoke about the emotional side of their campaigns, focusing on what ADT protects people for, rather than just from.

DeLu Jackson: Yeah, it was great. Our team engaging with our consumers. We interact with thousands of people every day, right? Talking to them about what's most important to them. What we picked up from that was the tension between the fear that you talked about, but more importantly, the excitement people had about living their lives and the things they wanna do when that fear didn't exist.

So we called it that tension between you only live once and FUD. And the insight for us was that what we really do is focus on what we protect people for rather than just what we protect them from. And that's a really great insight and creates a lot of excitement in the consumers because you can hear the excitement of the first home or my second home or one of my children is moving into a home and I'm providing this for them. It's just all this passion for doing amazing things. And if we take care of the other parts, let's celebrate what we protect you for. So that's a really important issue or topic when we're managing that as an industry.

Related Article: Dogfooding Done Right: Improve Customer Satisfaction With Employee Feedback

Conclusion: The Vital Importance of the Intersection of CX and EX 

Dom Nicastro: Well, Michelle, that wraps up our key takeaways from these insightful interviews. It’s clear that both Gautam and DeLu are passionate about intertwining EX and CX to create better overall experiences.

Michelle Hawley: Absolutely, Dom. It’s inspiring to see leaders from different industries share such a strong commitment to their employees and customers. Thanks to our listeners for joining us. Be sure to check out the full interviews on CMSWire TV’s Beyond the Call (Gautam) and CMO Circle (DeLu).

Dom Nicastro: And don’t forget to subscribe to our CX Decoded podcast for more great content. Until next time, keep focusing on creating great experiences for both your employees and your customers.

Editor's note: This podcast transcript was edited for clarity.