No Jitter is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Looking at Employee Experience Through a CX Lens

CustomerJourney_AdobeStock_212575096.jpg

Illustration showing customer loyalty
Image: artinspiring - stock.adobe.com
Traditionally, businesses have taken a touch-point approach to understanding customer journeys, with the understanding that the cumulative impact of touch points influences a customer’s decision. However, looking at journeys from a historical perspective alone will fall short of driving business.
 
For long-term sustainability, enterprises must view journeys holistically and deploy tools and technologies to enable real-time action along the journeys. This requires putting customers at the heart of their organizations — an imperative for having a successful business in 2020 and beyond.
 
This sounds good in theory, but according to survey results from Omdia’s “ICT Enterprise Insights 2019/20 – Global: ICT Drivers and Technology Priorities,” report enterprises are struggling with meeting customers across their omnichannel journeys. When asked about their progress and status toward enabling omnichannel customer engagement, only 9% of respondents reported that their omnichannel customer engagement efforts are complete, with 19% saying that their companies’ efforts are well advanced, 27% indicating they are currently in progress, and 23% in early stages. But nearly one quarter of respondents said they haven’t yet started on omnichannel engagement (13%) or don’t think omnichannel is relevant (9%).
 
Combined, these figures show that 72% of enterprises are at risk of failing to meet customer expectations. More than ever, amid the backdrop of COVID-19, enterprises must more aggressively pursue a customer-first approach to experience delivery, rather than invest in systems that fit the customer journey. This requires that every facet of an enterprise focuses on the most vital asset — the customer. But an enterprise can’t do that if managers are blind to this customer-first approach, the company is chasing and focusing on short-term results, and financials and KPIs don’t align with customer results.
 
The only way to sustain customer lifetime value is to make customers loyal and profitable and to serve them efficiently. To succeed, organizations must align themselves strategically and functionally around the customer. Looking at employee experience through a CX lens will allow businesses to spot trends, implement new processes, and monitor and evaluate the impact these changes have on overall satisfaction and retention rates.
 
Organizing employees around the customer will require a team-wide or — better yet — company-wide mindset. This involves a top-down approach of laying a foundation that starts with company values to creating an environment where every employee takes customer satisfaction into consideration before making any decisions. This approach requires leaders to communicate changes and deployments regularly.
 
Additionally, getting employees engaged in the CX program is essential to involving them beyond just asking about their own job satisfaction. It also involves harnessing AI and analytics to listen, analyze, and distribute intelligence — in an always-on, systematic fashion — to what customers have to say about the customer experience. Utilizing the assets gleaned from customer experience strategies offers employers an opportunity to repurpose learnings to better understand their employees.
 
Finally, giving employees ownership creates a fundamental shift in the way they view and engage in their own jobs, in the success of the brand, and in the relationship with the customer. They, and the enterprise CX strategy, will be better served if they can identify the components of — and track progress in — their ongoing and strategic customer-focused assignments.
 
To learn more about aligning customer journeys to employee efforts, see my related article on Omdia, and please join me at Enterprise Connect Digital Conference & Expo on Wednesday, Aug. 5, from 4:15 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET, to participate in my presentation, “Taking Customer Journeys from Static to Actionable.” Check out the full program, and register for free here!