Why Your Customer Experience (CX) Actually Depends on Your Employee Experience (EX)

Happy customers mean a successful organization. But in the quest for the ideal Customer Experience, many companies overlook the most critical aspect - the Employee Experience.

READ THIS BOOK: EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

When it comes to "Customer Experience", companiesare not afraid to put their hands in their pockets anddo their best because ifit isdone rightit can yield very good results . Companies have realized that even a one pointincrease in Customer Experience score can lead toa huge increase in revenue. For example, that's$65 million in extra annual revenue for a hotel chain, $118 million for a car brand and $175million for an internet provider. A good customer experience means not only profits but also exponential growth. When you look at brands such as Amazon, Airbnb, Uber, Apple, they are companies that have achieved exponential growth by making it their core strategy to provide a unique customer experience. So we can say that creating a good customer experience is the core strategy for exponential growth.

There is no limit to theamount of money spent while tryingto providetheCustomer Experienceflawlessly . The global market for management services and technology that serve"Customer Experience" is expected to grow from $4.36 billionto $10.77 billion over the next 5 years.

Yet, today, only 37% of businesses say they can attribute customer experience activities to revenue growth or cost savings . We can think of this as a huge resource beingwasted in a potential gold mine. Because in their quest for a unique Customer Experience, they lose sight of the fact that the Customer Experience is actually directly related to the Employee Experience.

A BAD CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Last year I stopped bya boutique bakery near my home to buy a strawberry cake. As I approached the checkout counter , which was empty at the time ,I noticed one of the managers scolding a young female employee . The manager'sgestures were very disturbing, but they were innocentcompared to the words he was saying . The manager and the young girl finally noticed meand the girl came to the register. The first thing out of her mouth was, "Yes, what can I help you with?" She didn't ask, "How can I help you?" or "Our cakes have just arrived, would you like them very fresh? Shortand to the point: "What do you want?" Surprised, I was about to say something about the young girl's attitude when I realized something important and stopped:

This bad Customer Experience was not the fault of the girl in front of me. She was an intermediary between the bakery and me, the customer. This bad "Customer Experience" I had was a direct result of his bad "Employee Experience ". As I left without buying the strawberry cake, which I actually liked very much,I of course had afew words with themanager for her lack of awareness of both Customer and Employee Experience....

By the way, the bakery closed six months ago and never reopened . Thisis neither the first nor the last.

We allhave endless adventures with our own Customer Experience, both positive and negative. But recently, some companies have realized that the customer experience strategy created by the technology companies that have made a sound in the world has brought serious results and started to take this issue more seriously. However, if you ask me, the most basic approach to this issue is quite simple: "Just treat people (both your employees and your customers) the way people deserve to be treated".

A BAD EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

Take Chipotle, a Mexican food restaurant in the US, as an example . Between November 2015 and January 2016, 55 Chipotle customers in 11 states were sickened by an outbreak of coli bacillus , which received widespread media coverage . Chipotle was forced to temporarilyclose dozens of restaurants and locked more than 1900 restaurants for a day to address safety concerns . The cause of the outbreak was never fully understood.The value of Chipotle' s stock fell by about 30%. But Chipotle's troubles didn't endthere. It wasn 't just Customer Experience. In 2014, a group of Chipotle employees filed a lawsuit alleging that Chipotle forced them to workunpaid overtime. Since then, nearly 10,000 Chipotle employees have joined the lawsuit.

What do you think this case tells us about the EmployeeExperience? I'm not trying to make a connection betweenunpaid overtime and E. coli, but Chipotle certainlyhasa long way to go on both sides of the equation . There are many such examples.

For example, let's look again at the blunders made by Wells Fargo bank in the United States . It was revealed that the bank had opened accounts and issued credit cards in the name of itscustomerswithout their knowledge. Later, the bank charged customers for these accounts. The culture created by the banknot only allowedemployees to defraud customers, but many employees feltobliged to do so to avoid being fired. Instead of taking responsibility for creating this culture, the bank fired5300employees for "underperformance".

A BAD SALESPERSON EXPERIENCE

These examples can be multiplied. For example, as someone who has had a career in sales in professional life, it always hurts me that sales representatives are above politicians, who rank last in the trust index. If you have chosen this profession, you have to deal with the perception of untrustworthy people that automatically sticks to you. When we look at the surface of this situation, of course, it may seem like the first reason that some sales representatives behave in a way that causes customers to lose trust. However, sales means targets and quotas for companies. When companies and managers force sales representatives in the field to meet their targets at all costs, when people who are afraid of not getting bonuses, being underpaid, or being fired for failing to meet their targets behave in a way to lose the trust of customers in order to meet their sales targets, we cannot say that employees are solely responsible for this.

Many important brands and companies that you know the name of, which are currently among the most desired companies to work for, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously force their sales teams to behave in this way when it comes to sales. Except for exceptions, most of them do not really internalize the smarter approaches taught in sales trainings such as "it is important to meet our targets, but it is more important to solve customers' problems and gain their trust, do not sell to them, create value". And, of course, they don't direct their employees to behave in this way towards their customers because they are not so intent on putting these approaches into practice.

The most basic evidence of this is that many traditional sales managers do not systematically measure whether the sales representative on their team is doing enough to understand the customer's needs, whether the product they sell solves the customer's needs, whether the sales representative creates trust with the customer, whether the information provided by the sales representative during the sales process matches the service or product received. Because traditional sales managers focus on the target instead of focusing on a good employee experience and customer experience, and they want their employees to focus on this. This leads to major customer losses, sometimes known and sometimes, and most often, unrecognized by companies.

Employee Experience = Customer Experience

Anyway, sales aside, the examples I have described abovewere unbecoming of Chipotle and Wells Fargo, or so wewould like to think. Both companies were extremely strong companiesgoing intothese battles inthe publiceye, and both started to revitalize their brands. Butthey can't fully do so without the support of the key player in creating the Customer Experience: their employees.

CustomerExperienceis a direct reflection ofEmployeeExperience.

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