3 Step Action Plan: How to Align CX + EX.

By

Natalie Calvert

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Great Resignation. According to the BBC and many other news outlets, employees are switching jobs or leaving the workforce altogether at alarming rates. Recruiting staff is now also a major issue for many businesses. 

Employers are struggling to retain staff and realising the shift of power toward employees. The pandemic has played a key role in this exodus. It has also fostered a growing awareness that workers have been a critical component in keeping the world turning during these times. The war for talent has begun.

How can customer organisations balance this realisation with their customers’ needs?

Aligning CX (customer experience) with EX (employee experience) is the new frontier for customer organisations. 

Research shows that CX+EX matters to customers, businesses, and employees.

●      Good company culture increases revenue by x4. (Source: Forbes)

●      Companies with engaged employees had 89% greater customer satisfaction and 50% higher customer loyalty than ones with disengaged employees. (Source: Korn Ferry/Hay Group)

●      76% of employees say their manager creates the culture at work. (Source: SHRM)

As a sector, customer organisations are shifting from volume to value. Implementing digital transformation will remove up to 30-50% of transactional work. Employee focus is shifting to higher value, complex, and emotive conversations: the ones that matter. Employees are often the difference between winning or losing a customer. 

3 Critical Steps to Kick Off CX+EX Integration Successfully

Step 1: Understand the value of employees 

Many organisations understand the value of customer segmentation – the question is how to optimise this when it comes to human-to-human interaction. The first step is to understand the value of employees in the customer experience cycle. 

Employees who feel their voice is heard are 46x more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work. (Source: Forbes)

What key roles do employees play in customer conversations?

-       Where does valuable communication happen?

-       What defines a great conversation?

-       How can conversations be improved?

-       Which customers need which type of engagement?

-       What communication is best at each stage of the customer engagement process?

And

-       How can well designed conversations make it easy, remove stress and increase both customer and employee engagement?

 There are many ways employees can add value at each stage of the customer engagement process. 

●      customer retention

●      increased lifetime value

●      upselling

●      reducing complaints and failure across the organisation. 

Once organisations understand how to realise the value of employees in the customer experience cycle they can make the required investment.

Step 2: Map the employee journey too 

To date, organisations have overwhelmingly focused on Customer Journey Mapping. Going forward, CJM combined with EJM (Employee Journey Mapping) will be critical to success with both working from home and office-based employees. In Part 2 of this blog we will discuss how to achieve this. 

The up and coming Genesys report “The state of customer experience 2021” has found that 80% of consumers said they would refer a company to a friend after a highly personalised service interaction. They’d also spend more and buy more often. When things get complex and emotive a highly personalised service is best human led. 

Contrastingly recent research also shows that only 35-36% of employees said they were highly engaged at work. 13% said they were actively disengaged to the point of impacting their work environment negatively. 

There is more synergy between CX and EX than leaders may presume. Employees want to be engaged, empowered, and supported as they work toward a goal. With customer teams, that goal is customer experience. 

CX Employee Journey Mapping will enable your organisation align employee engagement with customer experience.

 Step 3: Plan an integrated CX + EX programme 

 Once you’ve identified the gaps, issues, opportunities, and risks, it's time to create your plan to deliver a unified CX+EX programme. 

According to Delloites nearly 80 percent of executives rated employee experience very important or important but only 22 percent reported that their companies were excellent at building a differentiated employee experience. 

Here are some important components to keep in mind as you get started. 

●      Creating a single view of CX and EX insights

●      Designing conversations based on customer and employee needs

●      Building a CX + EX centric culture into the organisation’s core

●      Including employees in CX efforts

●      Thinking in beta and being open to experimentation 

Put the customer at the heart of your EX. Understand the value of CX+EX, and it will be more powerful and deliver greater results than you could have ever imagined. 

 Part 2 of this series will explain the key deliverables in CX+EX plans. 

 In the meantime, book your free initial CX + EX coaching session here. 

About

Natalie Calvert’s phenomenal expertise and proven track record extends across 100+ customer service and sales organisations reaching over 200,000 employees across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the USA.

Natalie has led in-house teams and significant outsourcing operations. She is the trusted go-to person and a leading independent CX+EX authority. Find out more

CX High Performance helps organisations and leaders unlock people and customer potential and improve performance. Guaranteed. Through powerful consulting, coaching and training solutions. Find out more

Our mission is to help you succeed, and your customers and employee’s smile. 

Get in touch today: natalie@cxhighperformance.com