X takes all: experience is your brand

Customer centricity has long been at the helm of an experience framework, given that without customers, there can be no company. However, it’s time to rebalance the equation, and the imperative to look at experiences holistically across employees and customers has never been stronger.

At HFS’ 2022 Super Summit, Melissa O’Brien, Executive Research Leader, and a panel of industry leaders, including Tamar Cohen, Vice President, Employee Experience, Travelers; Ritesh Idnani, Chief Revenue Officer, Uniphore; Jesse Lewis, Design Lead Consultant; Greg Price, Senior VP-Practice Leader, Digital Process Automation, Virtusa; Nadeem Saeed, Corporate VP, Quality Excellence, Verizon; and Amit Shankardass, Executive Vice President Marketing, Teleperformance, gathered to discuss the importance, impact, and influence of improving experiences within and outside a company.

Align customer experience (CX) to employee experience (EX) to achieve business outcomes

We all know the “why” of experience design; however, the challenge has been getting to the “how” to create a great customer and employee experience. Adapting to experiences in a hybrid environment has elevated the need for a strong strategy, but as Exhibit 1 shows, developing experience strategies for the hybrid workforce is challenging. Therefore, organizations must get their EX strategy right to empower employees to deliver for customers.

Exhibit 1. Experience strategy is leadership’s greatest challenge in a hybrid world

Sample: 300 CX decision makers
Source: HFS Research, 2022

To have a chance at success, you must be able to answer how much has changed in creating experiences in the new hybrid world. According to Jesse Lewis, “You need to see how the customer engagement changed as people worked outside and inside the office. Understanding how to balance this new way of working is critical if you want to continuously improve.”

From a partnership perspective, Virtusa’s Greg Price indicated, “Without happy employees, customers suffer. We are looking at our firm to eat our own dog food. If our employees aren’t happy, how can we expect our customers to get value from our services?” For any company dealing with “The Great Resignation,” these words are likely true. Companies must use their data not just for sales and CSAT but also for internal metrics on engagement, loyalty, and intent. Together, leadership, HR, and managers can be better equipped to serve their employees and customers.

Amit Shankardass raises an interesting point that leaders who coach their associates to work with a clear understanding of how the business measures success are best able to deliver a better customer experience. He characterized this as “Ax*Bx=Cx.” The more aware advisors (A) are of business (B), the higher the potential customer experience (C) can be. Conversely, if A or B is underperforming, C suffers.

Use data to evolve your EX and CX

Technology continues to play a larger role in delivering experiences. For example, Exhibit 2 highlights that the digitalization of solutions to augment interactions is a means to make the customer and employee operate at a high level of engagement to differentiate a brand.

Exhibit 2: Creating digital solutions for customers and employees is mission critical to differentiate

Sample: 300 CX decision makers
Source: HFS Research, 2022

Many technology solutions are available to address interactions and experiences, accompanied by anxiety in the market about all the choices. Having so many options creates confusion about what works best to link EX and CX. In addition, firms looking to boost experience should be wary that with too much stuff, they are likely adding debt faster than benefits.

Ritesh Idnani encourages you to look beyond the system rather than at the data. “Use data to evolve the experience and command the customer’s time and attention to drive more engagement. The more personal the guest’s experience, the greater the loyalty.” Before investing in the next solution, ask, “Why is my experience lacking?” then solve the “What do you need?” problem, whether it is technology, systems, or data, to make your teams better performers.

The CEO and CMO must be all in on experience goals and metrics

Leadership on employee experience must start at the top. This is hard. As front-line employees are much closer to the customer, those in the C-suite must engage with them regularly to understand their challenges and empower them to deliver on customer experience.

Based on a recent HFS study of CX decision-makers in Exhibit 3, a chief experience officer must understand, innovate, and measure the right things across employee and customer populations.

Exhibit 3: The role of the chief experience officer will ensure these are actioned and deliver value

Sample: 300 CX decision makers
Source: HFS Research, 2022

Yet too many executives don’t make the time for this effort. As Tamar Cohen, a real-life EX executive, expressed, “How do we build business value by articulating employee experience? We aren’t going for hugs; it’s about fixing what is broken and helping employees succeed. How do we identify the blockers and how they impact negative value and fix that?” The way to fix this is to evolve how employees and leaders learn.

Nadeem Saeed echoed this sentiment, “The CEO must be serious about driving EX and CX. You need to be willing to get intimate with what both your customers and employees are feeling about the engagement with the business.”

To be a great leader in this new workforce, you must see employee information, performance, engagement, and CSAT (customer satisfaction) and sales data to paint a hypothesis and trends that you can act upon. Leaders need to work with partners to rethink data, access, and reporting to use the information and know what to do with it.

The Bottom Line: The right data, leadership commitment, and well-defined employee experience outcomes will always create better customer experiences.

To succeed with experience design and strategy, leaders must do more than be empathetic. They must ensure they communicate the “why.” They must make sure the data is relevant and useful, not overpowering. And they must choose solutions as an EX and CX platform, not as a bunch of siloed solutions bandaged together with the help of IT and promoted as a world-class solution.

It’s far more powerful in today’s hybrid workplace to be the “guide on the side” rather than the commander trying to dictate and control. Of course, as a modern manager, you must continue to listen and coach. Still, you need to be sure that your efforts communicate purpose and intent so that employees can act and deliver results for the customer and the business.

HFS ROUNDTABLE | In-person, London – Reimagining customer experience for our hybrid reality