Hunter Croft is President, Chief Executive Officer, and Member of the Board for ACT (Advanced Call Center Technologies, LLC).
We all love digital technology. The pandemic years left every industry with a rare moment to fully focus on launching new digital platforms and tools. But while customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) have been clear winners in these unprecedented times, I believe that a major factor in overall brand loyalty has been overlooked, the experience of their internal teams. Executives who want to see increased value from their digital investments in 2023 will need to prioritize the employee experience as a crucial component of their total experience program.
It turns out we’re in a “with great power comes great responsibility” moment for digital experience. According to data from a 2022 Execs In the Know survey, brands are more confident than ever in their single-channel customer touchpoints. Meanwhile, in that same report, consumers said that difficulty reaching a live agent was the number one most frustrating aspect of resolving a customer care issue. That’s a major disconnect between perception and the real world—and it can have real-world impacts on your bottom line.
Today, there is a good chance that your current digital experience may actually be driving a wedge between your consumers and the employees that handle your most critical moments, the ones that build or break brand loyalty. The issue I’m seeing is that for every new platform, app or feature that you launch to your customers, there’s a chance that you’re creating a blind spot for the employees or live agents who need to communicate with those customers if they decide to call for support.
But it’s key to understand that this isn’t a bad position. This is a major opportunity. The past few years allowed for an influx of digital investments. In 2023, we’re now faced with the challenge of optimizing those investments and making sure that consumer to employee engagements create as much value as possible for the business.
Don’t overlook your teams, prioritize employee experience.
We’re in the middle of a radical reshaping of the relationship between employee and employer. If you look to the headlines, you’ll see this labeled in terms of “The Great Resignation,” “Quiet Quitting” or “Office Exodus.” All those things are indeed happening in varying degrees. But at this moment, it’s essential that we don’t overlook the opportunity this creates to intentionally and holistically rethink the entire employee experience.
Today, many businesses are seeing this shift in employee expectations as a major challenge. Employees are being more selective about where they work and which types of projects they work on. But I really see it as a signal that your people may be looking for a reason to be more engaged and committed to the business. The key is to create an environment in which employees are engaged, dedicated and equipped with whatever resources they need to best serve the customer and do their job well.
My company has spent decades focusing on employee experience. It is 100% employee-owned, which means all employees have a path to owning shares in our company. This means your employees’ motivation can be uniquely aligned to your clients’ success. Another thing my company has done is map 100% of the employee experience and place measures and controls to ensure that the complete journey is performing to our expectations.
This provides visibility into potential gaps that new digital platforms are creating for your employees. We as leaders have to ensure that new digital solutions are deployed and optimized in such a way that you don’t drive a digital wedge between your customers and your employees.
Automation and self-service solutions are undeniably powerful tools to help customers and gain cost efficiencies. But in 2023, it’s more important than ever to make sure your digital investments are enabling your internal teams just as much as the customer on the other side of the engagement.
CX leaders and consumers agree that a positive and differentiated customer experience is the way forward to increase brand loyalty. However, the survey shows us there is still work to be done for CX leaders to meet their customers’ needs and deliver that positive, differentiated experience:
1. Consumers claim that “difficulty in reaching a live person” is the most frustrating part of resolving a customer issue.
2. Conversely, most CX leaders believe it is just the long process of resolving the issue that frustrates customers the most.
3. While 21% of consumers say “polite and friendly treatment” is the most important factor of the customer experience, only 1% of CX leaders believe this is a priority.
What you should take away from this is that there are still some very stark mismatches between what customers expect from a customer service experience versus what your teams believe, and in turn, are focused on delivering to your customers.
Mapping the employee experience brings much needed visibility to these areas of your business, gives you an opportunity to create better experiences for the customer, and ultimately sets your business apart from your competitors who are still living with these blind spots.
The secret to effectively mapping the end-to-end employee experience is to get insights and participation directly from the stakeholders that are responsible for key aspects of the employee journey. Whether it’s calling the IT help desk, enrolling in benefits, interacting with management, or keeping up to date with internal communications—you need to get a firsthand account from the teams that are responsible for each touchpoint. You need to wind up with a panoramic view that is built on direct actionable insights rather than a generic list from a single perspective. The key is to engage with leaders from teams like IT, HR, operations and finance to understand how each touchpoint affects your people and what opportunities exist to remove complexity and make their jobs simpler.
I see that the most successful brands have a clear employee experience strategy driven by insights across multiple departments of the business. This allows them to set outcomes and to measure and inspect critical aspects of the employee journey to know that they’re meeting those goals.
Business leaders have always believed that their teams, their people, are at the core of what drives success and growth for the company. From everything we’ve seen in the market, it’s become clear that the next five to 10 years will be about proving that to our employees. The next great revolution in business is differentiating on how your employees feel about logging in every day and delivering world-class customer experiences.
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