Feature
The Gist
- Interconnectedness emphasized. CX and EX are deeply intertwined, with employee empowerment being crucial for optimal customer service.
- Human element crucial. Despite the importance of technology and data, the human aspect remains central to effective CX strategies.
- Data integration key. Integrating CX and EX data, with the aid of generative AI, is essential for a comprehensive understanding of their relationship.
LAS VEGAS — Medallia’s annual user conference in February featured speakers, panels and discussions about many CX and EX topics. One of the most present themes, though, was how interconnected CX and EX are.
In a keynote panel featuring three high ranking executives, Tracey Brown, chief customer officer at Walgreens Retail, said that while balancing innovation with operational efficiency can be difficult, providing employees with the tools they need to be efficient can make a huge difference.
“If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers,” Brown said.
Meanwhile, panelist Ginny Couvillon, head of client services, US wealth management, at financial services organization UBS, also stressed the importance of the human element of the CX strategy. As someone who works in the financial sector, she recognizes that employees gain the trust of customers and build relationships that are valuable to both customers and the organization.
While technology and data are important for CX, she said, at the end of the day, it comes back to people.
CX and EX: Inside the Frontline Employee Experience
Simonetta Turek, chief product officer at Medallia, joined the company three months ago and has previous experience working in a contact center setting. Her career path has meant that CX and EX have always been interconnected in her mind. In a contact center, the frontline employee is vital to what a customer’s experience ends up looking like.
Coming from the contact center space, Turek said that as important as operational metrics like average handle time are, what’s just as vital is considering if employees are able to give customers the best experience. Many front line employees don’t feel equipped or enabled to deliver CX, she said.
“It's very important to mesh [CX and EX] to ensure that your employees are empowered, [that] they understand how to serve those customers and [that they] have a feedback loop into what's really working or not working in terms of delivering value to customers,” she said.
Just as employees can use big picture feedback to inform their interactions with customers, organizations themselves should listen to employee feedback to understand exactly what’s happening on the front lines and if there are any issues.
“[Employees] are the first ones to know as soon as their customers know, so being able to listen to that signal is very important,” Turek said, stressing the importance of getting and using employee feedback.
“We know from many studies that designing CX programs that don't incorporate employee experience from frontline employees are just not as effective,” she added.
Spencer Mains, head of digital workplace experience at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), also provided insight into the unification of CX and EX. Mains described one of the programs they use in which they train senior talent in core principles such as innovation and problem solving. Eventually, the entire organization receives this type of training. This example provides a clear link between the quality EX and overall customer experience.
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“This fosters a strong culture around improvement and ultimately this translates into better internal engagement for everyone — which we find helps with our ultimate desire to ensure our customers are provided with the best possible level of service,” Mains said. “We end up with a much more powerful brand as a result.
Related Article: The Holistic Equation: Why HX = CX + EX
Measuring and Integrating Data
Mains stressed the importance of listening to the customer feedback as well as adopting an internal brand engagement program that incorporates listening to your workforce.
At PG&E, the team assesses the employee experience through what is called the “Joy Index,” Mains said. The four areas of measurements here include, “I enjoy working here,” “I feel known,” “I feel loved” and “I am proud to work here.”
“We measure this across the entire enterprise annually, meet and discuss results and then plan how we will increase our score by each individual work group,” Mains said. “We benchmark this against a national result, and this helps us figure out where we need to place more focus and where we are performing well.”
Measurement is just the first step, though. Organizations collect a lot of CX and EX data separately, and integrating them together for a fuller understanding of how CX and EX relate to each other can be overwhelming. Combing through it, analyzing it and truly understanding the implications is no easy feat.
Generative AI is one technology that will help companies better understand how CX and EX align, Turek said.
“With generative AI, you can look for themes without understanding the data set. It can look across all of that data and you’ll pick up those signals that might have taken you weeks or months to get right,” she said. “This advance in technology is going to be super beneficial in this realm, because the amount of data that we're now consuming is not manageable.”
Related Article: CX and EX: Great CX Improves Employee Experience, Too
A Top-Down Approach for CX and EX
Leadership has an important responsibility in creating a culture where EX and CX data can be seamlessly integrated. In this context, it’s important for leaders to be explicit about their vision, what it means to deliver good service and what that service looks like, Turek said.
Just saying that being “customer-first” is a key organizational value is not enough, she added. Leaders also need to make it clear what “customer-first” means and how to accomplish it. “Sometimes [these are] just words, but they actually need to turn into actions with measurable metrics that correlate to outcomes and results,” she said.
Mains also stressed the importance of a top-down approach — something that’s not easy to do in a large organization. PG&E adopted the LEAN operating model, which is built around two main principles: Creating value for the customer, and eliminating waste in processes.
“We are very deliberate and consistent with this approach, and our CEO has put major focus on this enterprise wide,” Mains said. “This has fostered a culture that is aligned top to bottom.”