The surprising (and inconspicuous) key to a better customer experience

Many firms have separate divisions, operations, and budgets for customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). The way many firms operate necessitates handling CX and EX separately, yet an approach that integrates the two has significant benefits. There is no doubt that these two topics interact. It's challenging to deliver a perfect CX without a good EX. This blog article examines the connections between employee experience and customer experience and the advantages of pairing them.

The importance of the customer experience cannot be disputed. One of the cornerstones of attracting more customers to your business, keeping them loyal, and boosting your revenues is giving customers a positive experience from the initial contact through sales, delivery, and support. If you track the correct measures, you can see the actual effects of customer experience on your costs, profitability, and competitive advantage.

Over the past two decades, businesses have shown great interest in the customer experience sector. Investments in digital customer engagement, marketing automation, and call center optimization were reasonably simple to justify because they produced results more quickly than many other business areas. These projects appeal to boards because of the short-term and long-term results made possible by customer experience solutions. The employees who made this experience possible did not receive as much attention while the customer experience was in its heyday.

Customers are getting everything easier with well-designed self-service portals and mobile apps. Still, according to a study on the digital divide between the CX and EX, employees struggle with the rigors of complicated and disjointed systems, frequently connected via slow corporate networks. Although EX has had some improvements in recent years, it should be noted that this change is proceeding more slowly than the business's customer-focused areas.

Clean slate

We can now properly assess the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on business. Organizations that had to implement remote and hybrid working models to maintain business continuity had to address at least some of their technical shortcomings. It quickly became evident that outdated infrastructures could not support these new operating models. Millions of organizations worldwide have made rash modernization decisions due to the requirement to support virtual meetings and collaboration technologies to replace in-person connection and teamwork.

Rapid modernization decision-making and implementation have benefits and drawbacks. Accelerated implementation cycles did not give adequate time for planning even though the groundwork for new technologies had been created. In only one year, many companies had experienced greater digital reforms than they did over the years before the pandemic. These quick investments, meanwhile, did not completely change the workforce.

It's time to consider improving IT systems and tools to create the right digital environments to support employees who now run their businesses differently. To achieve this, we must consider aspects such as employee well-being, satisfaction, and motivation. The benefit of providing a good employee experience is not limited to adapting to the conditions of hybrid work. In this way, organizations can gain cost advantage and competitiveness by improving their ability to acquire, develop and retain new talents.

Common purposes and diverse goals 

When you juxtapose the dynamics mentioned above with ever-increasing customer expectations, you can see a set of overlapping goals for your organization. It is recognized that perfecting the EX is a requirement for the excellence of the CX. Improving the employee experience, directly and indirectly, impacts the customer experience in every scenario.

Digital interaction systems are designed to reduce the necessity for face-to-face communication. Nevertheless, no matter how effective the system is, there will inevitably be exceptions and circumstances that call for human intervention. On the other side, there are high-value exchanges and transactions where keeping in touch personally is essential.

When an employee is needed to step in, the organization will not benefit from struggling with challenging to-use services and apps. The difficulty of the procedure has a detrimental impact on the employee's motivation regardless of whether they successfully solve the customer's problem using technology or not.

The standard of the digital experience that is provided to customers closely relates to the expectations that they have of brand involvement. Despite this, we've all spoken to a customer service agent whose voice sounds drained and discouraged. Customers are extremely disappointed by experiences where everything is wonderful until they speak to an employee. Customers frequently recall a bad personal interaction and a positive online or mobile experience when considering a commitment renewal or future purchase.

Customers may also confront instances in which the organization's multi-fragmented structure negatively affects their experience. Contradictional information from multiple representatives, continuously being passed on to other individuals during a conversation, and even being fired in extreme circumstances are all manifestations of this. Some of the worst client experiences result from a lack of internal coordination, for which no one wants to take responsibility.

Inadequate systems and process integration that do not satisfy the needs of people and processes are contributing reasons to the escalation of these issues. These invite the customer to ponder disconnections and incompatibilities. Working with roles, structures, processes, and behaviors that respond to the needs of the past rather than the present is at the heart of all of this.

Technological advances allow new products, services, and business models to be developed and rolled out faster. However, changing the organization's functions, rules, and regulations usually takes much longer. For this reason, it should not be forgotten that the success of the digital transformation is as much about people and company culture as technology.

New horizons

Modernization and integration are the key considerations for IT regarding enhancing the employee experience. All elements must be incorporated into the improvement frenzy, from enterprise programs built on SAP or Oracle to expert systems employed at the departmental level and web-based productivity-collaboration solutions.

The majority of contemporary solutions offer good user experiences for employees and application programming interfaces (APIs) that let them operate without hiccups on other platforms. The foundation of contemporary IT integration is APIs.

Digital tools are now more versatile than ever. You may assess which applications will improve EX by providing you with speed, efficiency, and compatibility by analyzing the solutions you intend to integrate into your business processes in light of awareness of the abilities you have and the talents you do not.

In addition, it's critical to remember that your employees' workplace environments have changed, affecting what your organization expects of them. Innovations brought about by hybrid working are challenging for people and companies to adjust to. A problem that needs to be considered is how to assist employees in adapting and continuing their development under these circumstances. For this, it is possible to look at the performance management and compliance programs provided by numerous solution providers, ranging from major companies like SAP to small developers.

These are not the only things that can be done to enhance the employee and customer experience. Organizations can greatly benefit from this by using embedded analytics, robotic process automation (RPA), and artificial intelligence (AI). You will discover that this synergy presents you with fresh opportunities you have never considered before as you start thinking about your transformation in the CX and EX axes.