What is the Formula for Creating a Profitable Customer Experience?

A customer is any person or group that receives services from an individual or organization . If you run a company, it is the person who buys your t-shirts, pizzas or software.

Inhealthcare, it is the patient. In education, it is the student. In a non-profit organization, the customer is a child in a poor town receiving food and medical care. In every case, the customer is the reason why every organization exists, and the reason why the people there have a job to work for. If this is the case, why are so many organizations so terrible at giving the customer a great experience?

Most organizations have the same problem: they are desperate to win the loyalty and attention of their customers, but they don't know how to do it. Bribing with discounts doesn't work anymore, innovation alone doesn't work because there's always another company doing something more innovative. So many companies waste fortunes and years chasing something that doesn't work, and often fail.

The Secret of the Happy Customer

Yet some organizations are doing it right. So what is their secret? The secret is right in front of them, but it is also right in front of you. The secret is your people! The problem is that most organizations treat their people as if this is not true...

To create a sustainable and world-class Customer Experience (CX), an organization must first create a sustainable and world-class Employee Experience (EX). Think of it this way: Creating a great CX... or PX (Patient Experience)... or SX (Student Experience)... is like gardening. You can't just clap your hands and order healthy plants somewhere with the results you want. Gardening is a process-based activity; you deal with the components that create the desired outcome. This means doing things like amending the soil, watering and weeding. The gardener can't do much more than that, but if the work is done well, there is a good chance of a strong and bountiful harvest.

Growing an organization works the same way. Success comes from quality products, excellent customer service... and employees who care personally about delivering an exceptional experience for the customer every time. When an organization creates a world-class EX, the likelihood of a superior CX increases exponentially. When EX is poor, there is a high probability that the customer will see the effects of this.

Employee Experience (EX) = Customer Experience (CX)

Your people are the soil and nourishment from which your Customer Experience grows. You need a team of engaged people who feel respected and appreciated. If you have a workforce and they trust their leaders enough to be fully committed to the organization they work for, CX comes naturally.

Despite this, many organizations are doing much more cursory Employee Experience (EX) work than Customer Experience (CX). Why doesn't this work? Because CX is the result of doing. For decades, companies have treated customer satisfaction as something they could easily achieve through procedures, processes, benefits and pricing. This is not the right way. It's like deciding to lose twenty pounds by ignoring diet and exercise and only taking weight loss pills. Even if you get results, they will not be sustainable.

Providing Excellent Service

A winning CX is the direct result of the attitudes and behaviors of your people. The last time you experienced a customer service trauma, did you ask yourself: "What kind of experience are we providing to the employee(s) involved?" Probably not. Was the crisis a direct result of an employee breaking a promise, failing to identify or solve a problem, or failing to provide a little extra service? Probably not. Despite this, most organizations' awareness of employee experience is very poor in terms of understanding its role and relationship to customer experience.

Focus on Employee Experience

Employees are the face of your brand. They are on the front lines and in direct contact with your customers. Yes, customers see your website, your TV or magazine ads, your hospital, your factory, your stores. But they are nothing compared to a school counselor who works overtime to help a student with college scholarship forms, or a shipping clerk who works extra time and effort to reassure a customer who is confused about a delivery. Consumers are human and people intuitively respond to human interactions more than slogans, packages or discounts. Focus on Employee Experience. Whatever metric you choose (turnover, growth rate, customer retention, customer satisfaction, number of registrations, patient satisfaction, etc.), it has far more potential to move your organization forward than Customer Experience.

Consider the financial and other costs in implementing a CX management program where employees don't feel engaged. Some organizations spend a fortune on the security networks and software they install to ensure that their employees do not harm customer relationships and customers. Why? Because employees don't care about customers. Employees have a poor experience and so are not motivated to deliver more than that to the customer. We call this the "Equivalent Experience Code".

Law of Equivalent Experience

Employees deliver a Customer Experience that is equal to their own experience within the organization.

Disengaged employees mean disengaged or lost customers. Disengaged employees make minimal effort to engage with the customer. Customers respond in kind. In contrast, employees who are engaged and trust their employers will provide excellent CX by their own choice. You will no longer need to rely solely on shift files or the company's Code of Conduct Guidelines to ensure that employees don't damage your brand. A great Employee CX equals a great, loyalty-building, profit-generating Customer CX.