It is well known that excellent customer experience is the critical factor in driving customer loyalty. Throughout the past few years, researchers have shown that implementing a sturdy customer experience strategy can significantly impact your revenue growth.
Developing such a strategy involves many different departments within your company. Marketing will point out their advertising campaigns and brand awareness efforts. Sales bring the revenue to the door, and the product team qualifies specific features necessary for product success. But What about Human Resources? Employees, especially customer-facing employees, seem to play a central role in customer experience. Just consider yourself a customer: a particular interaction with an employee can determine your overall experience in a store, at the doctor's office, on a telephone call, or social media. Yet, for executives leading organizations, the role employee experience plays in creating a great customer experience and in driving revenue tends to be a lot less understated — because it can be so difficult to quantify.
We've seen many companies describing themselves as customer-centric throughout the years. Throughout the years, business objectives have changed, and improving employee experience has become one of the focus points for leading a successful business. Employees that are engaged and effective at work can directly impact everything from work culture to growth and profits.
Employee experience is a total sum of workers' experiences at the company. That includes their interactions with coworkers, leaders, HR and user experiences with provided technologies. User experience with provided technologies can also be a massive element of overall employee experience; This is quite evident with customer-facing employees. For example, slow and non-user-friendly software can significantly slow workflow and cause frustration. Therefore, implementing the right solution, such as Live, can be a game-changer in how your employees deal with their everyday tasks.
Recently, research by IDC has begun to explore this link, showing that companies performing well on customer experience also tend to perform well on employee experience metrics. Therefore, improvements in employee satisfaction can drive improvements in customer satisfaction.
Employee experience is directly impacted by customer experience: A positive employee experience leads to a positive customer experience and vice versa.
Study after study supports this notion. A survey by Forbes, for example, found that companies that thrive on customer experience have employees who are 1.5 times more engaged. These companies are also more likely to generate higher returns, outperforming their competitors by 147%.
The awareness that great employee experience drives excellent customer experience is maturing in most industries. Leaders from various sectors actively seek the most efficient ways to achieve this goal, which is critical to reaching the final destination – improved customer experience.
For businesses, customers and their experiences are a key to their organization's success. As mentioned recently, the idea that employee experience is at the centre of success has become more prevalent. In most cases, a customer-facing employee is the first point of contacting your business. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure your employees are as ready as they can be to meet customers.
Improving employee experience should therefore be focused on creating a system of support. That can include everything, from a positive work environment to great work equipment. You should always make sure your employee feels valued and appreciated.
To ensure your customers have the best experience possible, consider your employees and their needs. Improving employee experience should become another element in your business strategy.
Companies that value and are working on improving employee experience usually tend to have overall higher levels of customer satisfaction. Loyal customers are likelier to recommend your company to others and repeat purchases.
It's much easier to upsell to present customers than to new ones because they trust you and what you offer. 78% will do business with these companies again even after a mistake has occurred during the sales process. Your customer gathering costs are also lower because you don't have to constantly invest money in finding new customers.
Employees with positive work experiences are shown to be more productive and committed to delivering their best work. This desire to do the best job they can leads to better customer experiences and service, which boosts customer loyalty. Satisfied employees tend to deliver consistent and high-quality service.
If the customers are turned off by repeated negative experiences with employees, they will look for alternatives. You should always ensure your customers have positive experiences with your staff to ensure your company grows. That is why is it important to remember that happy employees make happy customers.
Ever had a friend raving about their company? Maybe it was the company's excellent onboarding program or encouraging work environment. Sometimes, the best advocates of your brand are your own employees. Often, people perceive external people, like influencers, as primary brand advocates. While this is true to some extent, consider this: your employees know much more about your company than customers and can give a unique insight. That can be beneficial for both the organization and the employee.
Satisfied employees tend to stay longer with one company, reducing costs that come with recruiting, onboarding, and training new hires. Employee retention is an excellent indicator that promotes the health and success of your organization. The high turnover can be damaging to your business. This is due to the required time, stress, and the overall cost of hiring and training new employees are significant. Increased employee turnover brings about various problems, including high costs, low productivity and knowledge loss.
Considering research and given examples, it is pretty easy to confirm the original thesis; better employee experience drives better results in overall customer experience. In contrast to those who just occupy their job, employees in a positive environment want to put more effort and are generally more productive. They want to do a fantastic job for their customers, colleagues, and themselves because they feel valued and take pride in their work.
To create a safe and motivating environment for your employees, you should consider the following best practices:
Developing the right corporate culture and retaining top talent is not an easy job, but the efforts pay off.
Therefore, it is essential to sync internal processes to enable a better employee experience. Analytical support must provide insights to define the right set of KPIs and help transparent assessment of achievements.
Live helps improve customer and employee relationship management regardless of the industry. It establishes the right digital ecosystem that harmonizes the internal processes to ensure customer needs and enhance employee experiences. Strong analytical capabilities allow for setting the right set of KPIs on all levels. Also, regular evaluation of the achievements supports transparency of the process and allows for the integration of LIVE into your existing IT architecture.
Find out more information on how Live product family can support and enhance your CX strategy.
