HOW TO ALIGN EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT WITH CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

To deliver exceptional customer experience, you need an engaged workforce. But this doesn’t mean ‘happy staff’. Natalie Calvert explains how to align employees and customer objectives.

The importance of employee engagement to customer experience is finally being recognized. Organizations have realized that disenfranchised and demotivated teams will never deliver a positive experience to customers - no matter how many ‘customer-first’ platitudes are issued by the business.

However, employee engagement isn’t ‘happy staff’. True employee engagement is more complex than just giving employees what they want. Employees become engaged when they are empowered and supported by their leaders to meet an objective. And in the case of customer teams, this means improving customer experience.

Our research shows that companies that focus on internal matters under-perform those with an external focus by more than 20%. This fact has huge significant when it comes to the bottom line. Plus, it helps us understand the psychology of employees. All of us want to do a good job - it’s an innate human trait. Customer service is ultimately about the customer, right? Therefore, any efforts to improve employee engagement must focus on helping staff meet definitive and worthwhile objectives.

A major projects undertaken by my organisation called ‘6 awesome habits of successful customer teams’ illustrated this vividly. We found that for employees to do well, Customer Obsession is a key driver.

Any efforts to improve employee engagement must focus on helping staff meet definitive and worthwhile objectives.

In fact, it’s more than just a key driver. Customer Obsessions is why employees commit with their minds and hearts - it gives staff a higher goal then just themselves.

This mindset also gives an external focus, which is vitally important. Awesome customer service is not about inner reflection or products and partners. It is about ‘delight, satisfaction and experience focussed around the customer’.

Aligning employee engagement with customer experience is a delicate balancing act. Yes, it’s important to recognise that how employees feel and are treated has a massive bearing on the service offered to customers. But customer experience design must always be around the customer first, not the employee.

A good exercise is to try to match external and internal messaging to give ‘one shared customer and employee vision. Smart organisations align the two successfully, usually demonstrated in their strap line and branding. One of the best is Sky’s ‘Believe in Better’, which works for both customer and employees.

Customer Obsessions is why employees commit with their minds and hearts - it gives staff a higher goal then just themselves.

Engage your employees around your customer mission with purpose. Everyone wants to be part of something meaningful and given the importance of customer experience to the success or failure of the business, there is no more worthy a cause.