Employee and customer experience are intrinsically linked, so why isn’t the data coming from both being managed together? Combining the two can improve operations and drive revenue.
Employee experience and customer experience are not one in the same. However, the two are intrinsically linked. After all, happy employees lead to happy customers, and happy customers lead to greater brand loyalty, sales and profits.
A study released by Forbes Insights in association with Salesforce points out that “the conclusion that happy employees and happy customers go together isn’t only comforting. It also points toward a powerful way for companies to grow faster.” Companies with high employee experience and customer experience grow almost twice as fast as their counterparts, according to the report. And, companies that invest in employee experience are four times more profitable than those who don’t and are listed twice as often in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, according to research from Harvard Business Review.
Despite these facts, however, the data from these two instrumental areas of the business are all too often managed separately. Because of this, it’s nearly impossible to understand the full impact one is having on the other and where to best focus efforts to improve both areas.
Combining employee and customer experience data to improve operational efficiency and drive revenue growth
Perhaps Harvard Business Review put it best when it said, “Customer experience and employee experience are now two of the driving forces of business. Independently, each function leads to valuable relationships — with customers and employees — but when customer experience and employee experience are managed together, they create a unique, sustainable competitive advantage.”
Here are four ways managing employee experience and customer experience data in one place can improve operational efficiency and drive revenue growth at your organization.
#1 Provides leaders at all levels with a complete view of the interlinked employee/customer experience
Traditionally, organizations have been great at capturing and analyzing customer feedback. But getting customers’ point of view is just half the picture. The complete picture only comes into view when customer feedback data is combined with employee feedback data. That’s because your employees have a unique view of your processes, procedures and systems that your customers simply do not. If any group is best suited to tell you what is and what’s not serving your customers well, it’s your employees.
When you give management teams — from the C-suite to the frontlines — full visibility into what’s going on throughout any area of your organization at one time, they can easily prioritize what needs to be done to have the greatest and most immediate impact in improving both areas.
#2 Exposes internal root causes of external issues
Bringing together employee experience and customer experience data in one place enables leaders to easily make correlations between what employees are experiencing internally and how those experiences are negatively impacting customer satisfaction.
Real-time AI-powered text analytics becomes extraordinarily powerful when you combine what customers and employees are saying simultaneously, as it uncovers corresponding trends or patterns that are happening on both the employee and customer side. Bringing this data together can expose ineffective policies and outdated systems, as well as identify gaps in skills and knowledge that pinpoint where there may be a need for additional coaching.
Some examples of issues discovered by Medallia customers who have brought together their employee experience and customer experience programs together include: a slow internet connection that was creating long checkout lines at a retail shop; staffing shortages at a contact center that was resulting in long hold times; and poor training at an auto dealership that was leading to a frustrating and lengthy car-buying process. As you can imagine, in all three of these situations, employee engagement, customer satisfaction and revenue performance were significantly declining.
#3 Enables quick and effective action
In high-stakes situations like these, it is important to have the ability to act quickly. By bringing together employee experience and customer experience data, every leader on your team from the executive level down to the frontlines can easily determine where to focus to have the biggest and most immediate impact on employee and customer satisfaction. The right experience management technology not only captures and analyzes the data, but also makes it actionable by automatically routing tailored insights and suggested actions to the right stakeholders across the organization who are best equipped to respond.
#4 Helps combine cross-functional skill sets
Forty percent of executives believe that creating teams that combine employee experience and customer experience skills is the best way to overcome obstacles in improving both initiatives. Merging the two programs into one platform accelerates learning and innovation and helps facilitate alignment between HR and operational teams.
For example, a Medallia customer who understood that customer experience and employee experience both worked better when tracked and operationalized together developed a joint program that included a large-scale, multi-country, enterprise-wide monthly pulse survey used to support a monthly employee and customer feedback huddle that included both HR and customer-facing teams. As a result, many pressing issues were resolved that gave hours back to employees while eliminating frustrating processes for customers. Even more importantly, it showed employees that their feedback was being heard, their voice mattered and that they were an important part of the solution in improving company performance.
You cannot see the complete picture of your organization without the voice of your customer and employee. Your employees have a unique view of your processes, procedures and systems — the ones that affect the customer experience most. Simply put, your people know what’s working and what isn’t. It’s time to use all the data at your fingertips. When you do, you’ll solve issues you might not have even known existed, improve operational efficiency and drive revenue growth.
Want to know what doors an employee experience strategy can open for your organization? Download Medallia’s Definitive Guide to Employee Experience eBook.
