When companies work to create a positive work culture, they create positive employee experiences. This engagement means better retention rates and improved employer branding.
Management may not realize that employee experience can directly impact the customer experience; how you treat your employees affects nearly every area of business operations.
Almost every business has two primary goals.
The first goal is to recruit and hire talented people who will be productive and engaged while staying on the job as long as possible. The best way to do this is by creating a great work culture and a positive employee experience.
The second goal is to target prospects to turn them into loyal customers. Keeping these customers satisfied depends on creating great customer experiences.
Who is most likely to provide those great customer experiences? Happy, engaged, productive employees!
What is Employee Experience?
Every time a customer engages with your brand, it qualifies as a customer experience.
But what is an employee experience? That’s a bit more difficult to define.
While customers may engage with your company once or a few times, they aren’t engaging with you for hours each day, multiple days per week.
Employee experiences are ongoing and influenced by multiple factors. Unlike customers, workers also have rules, expectations, and productivity requirements.
Perks and Employee Experience
A lot of misleading reporting has led to some real misconceptions about perks and employee experience. Surely you’ve heard of companies that offer their workers break room video gaming systems, free pizza lunches, and bean bag chairs. While these perks draw attention, they aren’t what creates a positive employee experience.
That doesn’t mean that perks aren’t a good thing. They can play a small part in a culture that makes employees feel appreciated and values their need for a bit of indulgence.
However, perks can be problematic when used as a substitute for creating a truly positive employee experience. If you aren’t building an environment that allows your workers to grow and succeed, they will not have a positive employee experience.
Likewise, if they don’t feel supported, challenged, or happy, they will not have the type of experience you want to see mirrored in their interactions with your customers.
How to Engage Employees
The first step to creating a positive employee experience is to understand employee engagement. This knowledge begins with understanding that employee engagement isn’t something you can demand. Instead, you have to build a framework where that engagement grows naturally. What gets employees engaged?
- A company that shares their values
- Feeling trusted and empowered
- Fair compensation
- Meaningful praise and feedback
- Growth opportunities
Of course, these are all things that respected organizations already aspire to provide to their workers. Unfortunately, it can be harder to make these things a reality while also taking care of the daily grind of running a business. However, if you fail to do these things, that daily grind becomes even harder.
How Engaged Employees Create Great Customer Experiences
Engaged employees feel empowered and can act with a sense of autonomy, allowing them to take action to improve customer experiences. These workers have the confidence to see the customer’s needs and provide them with a solution that works.
Imagine an employee who isn’t engaged, doesn’t feel empowered, and can not act autonomously. They aren’t going to be proactive, nor will they feel any sense of ownership over any problems.
As an example, imagine a customer in your store searching for some product they urgently need. They can’t find it and are upset. They approach an employee for help.
If they’re fortunate enough to encounter an engaged and happy worker, that customer is in luck. This employee will go out of their way to track down that product and get it to the customer.
What about the employee who isn’t engaged, who doesn’t feel empowered, and who doesn’t believe they have the autonomy to do anything other than confirming that the product isn’t available? Their lack of engagement is going to lead to a customer experience that’s memorably poor.
Are Your Employees Engaged?
You shouldn’t make any assumptions about employee experience. The truth is that your employees may not feel as though you are doing enough. While 72% of HR employees stated that their organization was doing enough to retain them, only 43% of IT employees felt the same way.
If 57% of employees don’t feel their employer is doing enough to keep them around, chances are even more aren’t having positive employee experiences.
Does Customer Experience Impact Employee Experience?
Customer experience can have an impact on employee experience. When customers are generally happy with their experiences, they will reflect that in their interactions with your team members.
Companies with great customer service and quality products are more likely to have engaged employees who enjoy doing their jobs. It should be clear now that neither customer experience nor employee experience exists in a silo.
Customer Experience is the Key to Marketing Success
Businesses no longer compete on price or productivity. Instead, companies that want to remain competitive are sharply focused on customer experience. This democratization is largely a result of the eCommerce boom, which made customer service many businesses’ prime differentiator.
Sadly, many companies hinder themselves because they work so hard to create great customer experiences that they ignore the needs of the people they expect to deliver those experiences.
Rather than viewing employee experience as a waste of time, view it as an investment in your ability to remain competitive and grow.
