Vitor Simão, Regional Director at Medallia Brazil, a pioneer platform and market leader in customer experience management, analyzes the results that an integrated customer and employee experience program can provide to companies.
Companies that are truly customer-centric move forward without ceasing. They are organizations that listen to the customer’s voice and reinvent processes to holistically anticipate and resolve the demands of their target audience. This group includes giants such as Sephora, Lego and Airbnb, among other companies that differ in their verticals.
The sum of massive digitalization with the need to listen to the customer individually is accelerating this natural selection. It is now a matter of having real empathy for the person, calling the customer by name, even if he is just one consumer in a sea of millions of buyers of an e-commerce portal.
Within this context, it is increasingly strategic to analyze the results that an integrated customer and employee experience program can provide to companies.
The reason for this is simple: Offering an excellent customer experience necessarily involves having passionate employees who feel respected and heard.
A study by Forbes Insight with the support of SalesForce in June 2020 corroborates these findings. From interviews with C-level executives from 300 North American companies, it was found that organizations that continuously invest in improving customer and employee experience earn twice as much as the competition.
Another result of this study is that, for 70% of the executives interviewed, a good employee experience has a direct impact on the customer experience, which, therefore, causes the growth of the company.
Research carried out in 2017 by HR consultant Jacob Morgan with the support of Emergent Research analysts shows that companies that strive for the continuous improvement of their employees’ experience are different from others. From the analysis of internal processes and financial results of 250 North American companies, it was discovered, for example, that companies with integrated customer experience and employee experience programs earn profits four times greater than their peers, in addition to double the revenues.
Another expressive index shows that these companies have teams 25% smaller than their competitors. This attests to the increase in productivity caused by the sum of customer and employee experience.
What is the reason for the market not to adopt this double approach with more emphasis?
The truth is that many choose to follow only one way or the other, which can put the company on a risky route. Organizations that prioritize employee experience over customer experience can end up with very well-intentioned employees, but with no real, or 360 degree, sense of what the customer is really feeling.
And, likewise, organizations that focus on improving the customer experience, leaving employee experience aside, may experience a high turnover of professionals, suffer the absence of an environment of innovation and engagement, and lose valuable insights that could improve processes or individual customer experiences.
Despite these facts, data from these two areas are often managed separately. Because of this, it is almost impossible to understand the full impact of one experience on the other.
Whoever integrates, in a single analytical view, the data collected on the experiences of the customer and the employee will achieve concrete advantages.
Managers of all levels and areas get a complete view of the experience of employees and customers
Many companies stand out for their ability to analyze customer feedback. The full picture, however, is only seen when customer feedback data is combined with employee feedback data, in addition to CRM and ERP systems. This is because employees have a particular view of how the company works. They are immersed in the ‘real life’ of the organization’s processes and can offer very different feedback from those delivered by senior management.
Finding the cause of problems that affect customers is easier
Integrated analysis of data on customer and employee experience is essential to get to the root cause of a problem that affects the customer. One way to achieve this goal is, through Artificial Intelligence, to carry out analysis of texts in real time that verify what customers and employees are saying.
Joining this data can expose ineffective policies and outdated systems, as well as discover that there is a lack of internal skills and knowledge to transform the customer experience. This may indicate the need for additional training for company employees.
Actions that resolve customer and employee dissatisfaction are accelerated
In situations where there is a high risk of losing dissatisfied customers with the experience they receive, it is important to have the ability to act quickly. By combining data from employee experience and customer experience, it is easier to decide where to focus to improve employee and customer satisfaction. The right technology for managing your experience doesn’t just capture and analyze data. The most advanced platforms on the market automatically send customized insights, in addition to suggesting actions capable of smoothing or solving the problem in question.
Metrics common to the customer and employee experience teams are created
Converting the customer experience and employee experience programs on a single platform accelerates the resolution of pressing problems, eliminating frustrating processes for customers and employees. One of the biggest obstacles to these advances happens when the company isolates the handling of customer experience data from employee experience data. Not only are the platforms different – the teams that manipulate the data are also different.
It is essential that the leaders of these areas collaborate very closely, in order to generate consensus on the transformation to be made. One way to break down these barriers is to implement some metrics common to both teams. The NPS is especially suitable to be used as a focal point on this journey.
The digital revolution has made customers even more demanding – in some cases, switching from one supplier to another happens in milliseconds. More than ever, it is important to understand that the quickest way to get the customer to love a brand is to ensure that the employees of that company are passionate about their work.
