It’s not possible anymore to build a superior mousetrap. The future of products and services thrive and fall short depending on the quality of their brand interactions with customers. It’s now more crucial than ever to provide exceptional customer service (CX).
Who’s accountable for delivering the best CX? Your employees. Business executives prioritize and invest more in their employees’ Experience (EX).
This is the best option. According to Dennis Perpetua, CTO of digital workplace services at Kyndryl, the world’s leading supplier of IT infrastructure services, this is the right decision.
“The most vital resource every company has are their employees,” the author says. “When you look at your employees as the most valuable asset, you begin to see that the investments you make in them are crucial.”
Perpetua isn’t the only one. According to a study that included EX and CX decision-makers conducted by the global marketing research company Forrester for Kyndryl and Kyndryl, improving the customer experience is the number one priority for 53 percent of executives. The report’s analysts concluded that improvement in EX is the top priority “because organizations know that these objectives can only be achieved by having engaged employees.”
Perpetua shares the same view. “The Forrester research shows that the top priorities remain about customers’ experience,” Perpetua says. “But C-suites, as well as decision-makers, recognize that employee experience is an avenue towards CX.”
That is, a strong EX-investment can lead to impressive CX outcomes. Here are three steps to enhance the experience of employees, which will yield more profitable business results.
1. Employ Telemetry To Find the Employee’s Behaviour
Traditionally assessing the employees’ experience was usually based on productivity indexes. The most commonly used benchmarks were measured against device data, such as the amount of time dedicated to specific tasks.
Modern EX leaders also collect and act on employee feedback data and behavior metrics. The benefits are enough to be worth it.
“You can take advantage of all the imagination, all of the creativity, all the knowledge and enthusiasm they possess to drive your business’s core goals,” Perpetua says.
To make this happen, it is necessary to consider behavior and sentiment. For instance, Perpetua asks, “Are employees spending more time on specific applications that facilitate customer interactions? And where do we observe differences in how they interact with customers, whether it’s the length or duration of interactions?”
In addition, how do these behaviors correlate with other indicators of satisfaction?
By adding this kind of data collection data to the places where employees contact, managers can pinpoint friction areas and even failures that would otherwise go unnoticed. Investing in services such as digital workplace consulting and digital experience management could help eliminate the “silent feeling,” as Perpetua refers to. The result is that employees feel more engaged during their work.
“When you can change your mindset, you’ll unleash an abundance of efficiency and empathy from your employees, which can be passed on to your customer and how they experience.”
2. Stop referring to IT investments as Overhead
Too often, employees’ hardware and software are viewed as business expenses that need to be reduced and amortized.
“It’s time to be changed,” Ivan Doppel, general manager of the Kyndryl global practice for the digital workplace, Says. These costs should be considered investments in employee satisfaction and are just as crucial as attracting, converting, and keeping customers.
“When businesses look at IT costs and budgeting one year to the next, they tend to be considered overhead,” he explains. “The shift I’ve observed in the EX and CX aspect is that budgets are being viewed as an investment that is strategic to the business.”
However, it’s not just about buying new laptops, Doppel cautions. “If you examine the entire organization and employees are asked to tell you how their user experience can be improved, it is unlikely that you’ll get the response, ‘I simply need a more powerful laptop’ or “I’m looking for better software.'”
Workflows can cause employees to be frustrated that they aren’t working, and it’s usually not related to devices. It’s not a good idea to spend time searching for files on an unorganized shared drive or slow down by bad single sign-on or multiple authorization checks.
“Most people don’t show at work feeling that they’d like to remain inactive all day long,” Perpetua says. “They are looking to move forward…They need to have the tools needed to succeed.”
Strategies to improve IT support and simplify the virtualization of desktops can create a more seamless experience for employees, which ultimately results in a positive ROI.
Since this forward movement directs to an increase in profits, “we can justify the investment in improving that employee experience as it is likely to result in those essential business benefits,” Perpetua says.
3. To Get More Meaningful Feedback
Then where can the EX investments be put in place? Discuss with your employees.
“They’re the ones with the most valuable feedback on which areas of the investment are most needed and are the most attentive post on how things are going,” Perpetua says.
Surveys are a crucial tool for the retention of customers, so employees should be asked their opinion. Not only every time and regularly. In conjunction with the telemetry-based insights into behavior and data, this could bring a greater knowledge of employee experience that was previously only available to CX.
“As the consumer, companies can understand how I’ve interacted with them via digital channels, via customer service centers,” Perpetua says. “All combined, it gives you an excellent understanding of the customer’s journey. This is also possible using EX.”
If you’re seeking feedback, feel free to be specific. If you’re too, general feedback may lose its actionability.
“Historically, there’s been no correlation between the feedback received,” Perpetua explains. “It’s often been too private or arbitrary, or it was too detailed.” This can prevent the input of employees from helping form the spending plan, strategic investments, and other financial decision-making.
Certain companies view customers and employees as distinct and distinct entities. They are both there for the sake of the others at any cost. Modern businesses, however, recognize that this gap is quickly disappearing. They know that employee discontent can be as damaging as negative sentiment among consumers. In addition, they realize that positive experiences at work can directly affect customer experience and business results.
Their forward-looking insight is quickly becoming an advantage in the competition. “The top companies are focused on their experience and using it as a competitive advantage,” Doppel says. “That’s a fundamental change.”
