Customer Experience And Employee Experience

By: Gopal VT, Head – Alliances, Dimension Data India Private Limited

Sir Richard Branson once said “Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients”

Is Employee experience (EX) and Customer experience (CX) linked? I would emphatically say a YES to that question. Ideally, the EX should reflect the same experience that we are trying to provide to our clients. It is becoming increasingly evident that the two experiences are so very closely linked, that one affects the other in every level. It is also common sense. Without employees we will not be able to provide any sort of CX and if the employees are not happy and committed they certainly will not be able to provide client delight to our valuable clients.

The key requirement for a happy and committed employee is the culture of the organization. It requires constant employee engagement. In some way, the employee experiences the brand attributes first. It makes them better prepared and inspired to strengthen the brand attributes with our clients. This process should start right from hiring a recruit. Identifying candidates who exhibit the basic behaviours and values that the organisation requires and trying not to hire just on “skills”. Finding people with the right attitude is most critical and specific skills can always be imparted as required by the company.

The second most crucial aspect is the ongoing training on our values, brand and key strengths. Employees should be able to turn these important attributes to competitive advantage and become true brand ambassadors for the organization. If this happens it is an irreplaceable asset; the employees will be committed to the company goals, will go the extra mile to make it happen and will be loyal to the organization. This passion will be reflected in their everyday interaction with clients and will turn to true client delight. Happy clients mean better and profitable sales.

The third part is to have a constant communication channel open to the employees for frank feedback. Regular surveys are a good method of getting feedback. However, all the surveys will be of no use if there is no action taken on constructive feedback. It is also very critical to communicate back to the employees on the feedback and the action taken on the feedback.

As the saying goes “you cannot improve what you cannot measure”. Today almost every company has a method to measure customer satisfaction based on feedback surveys and Net promoter score (NPS). Why can’t we do the same with employee satisfaction? Adobe systems recognized that Employee satisfaction and Customer satisfaction are critically interlinked that they created a new department which combined the Customer and Employee experience organization. This department bought together the client facing support helping clients and HR team responsible for supporting people. Adobe believes that the core success criteria of both customers and employees remain the same; attraction, retention and development. They are truly focused on world-class customer and employee experience.