Improve Your Customer Experience By Improving Your Employee Experience

Listen to those you are trying to help

As a business owner you are obsessed by your customer’s experience and delivering the best service possible to bring customers back time and time again.

How do you structure and justify an employee experience initiative that supports that goal?

There’s no roadmap to improving the Employee Experience (EX). Every company is different, and each company’s customer is different. But there are key factors that can help guarantee success for your employees experience.

You aren’t going to be able to help all the individuals in your business from day one, so start with identifying the biggest problem that most of your staff need solving.

Research the EX your staff are currently experiencing from onboarding new staff, examining your work culture, gaps in the functions of your teams. Utilise external expertise such as Unstoppabl to do this research and get an objective view of your business and your employee’s needs.

As already mentioned, each business is different but there are key factors that successful employee experience programmes share.

Don’t rely on standard best practice and industry norms

Applying traditional HR and customer experience (CX) practises doesn't work. Your EX programme should focus on the unique needs of your particular organisation rather than on standard best practice or industry norms.

Traditional HR seems to operate a top-down approach, where what is seen as being best practise for top level management is passed down and deployed to all employees. The lives of the majority of the staff within an organisation or business are quite different from the lives of the senior management team or board. Successful EX projects take this into account and fully understand the needs of the employee at all levels.

Too many times we’ve seen the wrong solution put in place for employees. Employee take up is minimal, the project is seen as a failure, budgets are cut because ‘no one used it’ and the employee experience is damaged.

Focus on the needs of your particular organisation

What does your employee’s daily journey in your organisation look like?

It’s crucial to fully understand and empathise with other employee’s jobs. It’s important to examine the person and what they do on a daily journey within your business. Understanding what is most important in that employee’s daily journey is key if you are going to improve their EX.

Technology plays a massive role in every employee’s daily work, yet few businesses look at how this technology works for their employees. Simple changes and improvements can move employees from frustrated and stressed to highly productive and happier in the workplace, yet it is unlikely Human Resources (HR) departments would consider this unless it affects the employee’s interaction with HR.

Environment is another key area which determines a good EX for your employees. Whether it’s the office environment, the daily commute for your staff, or how hybrid working works within your organisation. Creating the right environment can switch your employee’s experience from bad to great with one small change.

Build in opportunities for your staff to stay healthier during their working day. Providing fitness and wellbeing opportunities for your staff has a massive impact on reducing employee stress, time off work, and long term absenteeism due to poor health, but the solution has to be right for the needs of the individual. Giving all your staff a gym membership is unlikely to cut it.

What’s the shortfall in your business?

Most leaders or business owners know what their problems are but not how to fix them. Change in business, as in life, often stems from a problem that needs solving. It’s no coincidence that war is a rapid advancer of both medical and technological innovations. When the chips are down there is a real motivation for change and advancement. The same should be the case in your business.

The customer service call centre is a typical example, where a shortfall in customer experience can be catastrophic for a business’s reputation and sometimes continued existence. Improving the EX in your call centre will lead to better interactions with customers, better reputation of your business and lower turnover of staff.

When did you last engage with your staff and find out what they can bring to the table?  

Your staff are there, day in day out, interacting with your customers, seeing what works and what doesn’t. Finding workarounds to make things work better in your organisation. When did you last speak to them or provide them with a forum where they can share those ideas and help your business. Do you have an open dialogue with your staff? Is the door open? Could you find out more about your customer’s needs by engaging with your staff more?

How can I measure the effectiveness of a new EX initiative?

Some companies use more traditional metrics to measure the success of EX initiative – employee retention, satisfaction and engagement. Other companies are starting to use metrics like employee effort score which helps businesses understand how much effort is needed by an employee to achieve their daily tasks. It can quickly identify ways to make an employee’s daily tasks easier so they can be more productive. Other businesses are adopting an employee burnout metric which can identify why staff disengage and sometimes end up off work for long periods of time. When a key member of staff is off, how do you fill that knowledge gap without it having a detrimental effect on the rest of the business? Is it better to see the early signs of burnout and ensure it doesn’t happen?

Working out which problem to solve first is the most important step

Trying to solve all the problems you are aware of in your business will generally end up in paralysis and resources being spread too thinly. Picking the problem that is going to move the needle furthest in the right direction for the business is key.

Whether it’s a problem you’re already aware of, research turns up a problem that you were unaware of, or an incident gives rise to negative press and a negative social media. Tackling that problem first, usually provides solutions to other problems in your business.

Need help?

If you’re looking to improve your customer experience by improving your employee experience. Improve staff retention, attract better talent to your business, retain the staff you do have, and remove the new trend of quiet quitting from your business we can help. Book a meeting with Unstoppabl to see how we can help.