Why your Employee Experience drives your Customer Experience

The inextricable link between EX & CX

Peter Drucker said, “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. The customer is a foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. The customer alone gives employment.”

Employee Experience (EX) improves Customer Experience. - which in turn improves employee experience. 

Because of this circularity, organisations often get stuck debating where to start. And when debate stagnates, the Program lead is awarded a mammoth, undefined mission. 

At Proto, we know something about effective planning of Employee Experience programs.

Imagine expertly identifying ten or fifteen potential improvements - based on knowledge of how similar initiatives usually play out. And prioritising these by cost and impact from a nuanced view of your organisational culture. 

And, from that point of informed confidence, being able to focus on delivery. 

We’ve seen this approach yield benefits.

3 CX benefits of improving your Employee Experience

1. Firstly, your Engagement lead are not tempted to ‘tinsel’ – i.e. to implement immediate, visible initiatives that merely ‘signal Christmas’. Employees can spot tinsel a mile away. (It feeds the trolls). Instead, they consider only initiatives that genuinely affect EX. 
2. Secondly, the right combination of short and midterm activity builds a body of evidence. As your customers show real responses, the business stays engaged. And your Lead doesn’t burn out.
3. And thirdly, once you’ve demonstrated consistent business growth, resource frees up for longer-leadtime projects that deliver outsized returns. 

We think of employee experience projects targeting three parts of the body corporate: 

1. Customer Face - Operational employees need tools and skills to deliver outstanding customer experience 
2. Support Muscle — Staff supporting the customer-face need to be strong mentors and advocates for best process
3. The Head and the Heart — Marketing, Finance, IT and Procurement staff with corporate responsibility are also closest to distinctive corporate DNA

For best EX programs, very broadly, you should: Start with Customer Face. Grow deep trust amongst this group. Understand what isn’t working. Embed and support the right behaviours.

4 Customer Face Questions to Consider:

1. How do we connect with operational staff emotionally?
2. How do we set them up technically?
3. How do we grow them developmentally?
4. How do we build them psychologically to be more resolution-focused?

3 Support Muscle Questions to Consider:

1. How do we co-create effective processes?
2. How do we build Train the Trainer programs?
3. How do we drive leadership down to the right level?

Lead with Head, capture with Heart. Products, promise and policy must lead. Ability should drive recruitment and training, before adding EQ for culture fit. 

4 Head and Heart Questions to Consider:

1. How do we manage for success?
2. How do we blueprint a thorough employee onboarding?
3. How do we engage staff who live our values?
4. Effective EX is your lifeblood. 

Without a powerful, properly-designed, program, you’re bleeding out. Success will only ever be anaemic.

Employee Training and Workshops If you need help building EX capability into your internal teams and aligning staff with your CX goals, our workshops solve this business challenge.

Employee Journey Mapping If you’d like to understand what’s really happening during each employees' journey with your business, our employee journey maps unapologetically show you the broken parts of the employee journey that require urgent attention in days and weeks - not months and quarters.

Developing Employee Insights If you need deep insights into your employees biggest challenges, we’ll help you close the gap between the services you deliver and what your employees crave..

Building Employees Voice If you’d like to build on key satisfaction drivers, we can help you understand the voice of your employees and implement service improvements to increase your EX, CX and NPS