Your employees and customers have one thing in common – they want to have the best possible experience with your brand. Getting this right will lead to a strong engagement and durable, long-term relationships.
Treating your employees right will trickle down to their behaviour towards your customers – and it’s the best place to start. Drive your customer experience through your employee experience and it will lead to:
- Happy, engaged and brand-loyal employees who will treat the customer better.
- Building long-term relationships to develop engaged employees who won’t leave anytime soon as they’re invested in the business.
- A healthy relationship that will build your customers’ trust and loyalty.
Jackie Stierlin, our head of digital strategy, says: “When you build a genuine employee experience to support your team internally, your brand and customer will automatically benefit from your engaged and invested team.”
Good energy is contagious
When your employees are satisfied with their experience in the workplace, they are more likely to be optimistic about interacting with customers. This energy is bound to be contagious. Your customers will feel it and look forward to doing business with you. Employees who feel valued at work are more likely to please customers. This can lead to brand loyalty and perhaps a few favourable online reviews for others to see.
Culture, culture, culture
Employees are the foundation of a strong customer experience so you have to invest in providing them with the correct tools to succeed. Company culture is one of those invaluable tools, but it’s also the most underappreciated. According to a PwC report, only 38% of consumers say that employees understand their needs.
So how do you improve your company culture? By collecting data and measuring your culture. The biggest mistake a company can make is to assume that everything is okay and management has nothing to worry about. Most people don’t like to ruffle feathers at work, so you will have to find a way to persuade them to give you an honest opinion about the company’s culture. An anonymous survey is a great place to start.
When you measure and obtain the true picture of your company culture, consider measuring the ideal work environment. Ask your employees how they would like to feel at work because they’re the ones who create the company culture. This needs to come about naturally and cannot be forced.
Companies that are killing it
For example, take Airbnb’s mission statement of “Belong Anywhere” which applies to customers and employees. In terms of its employees, Airbnb isn’t only concerned with ensuring success in their working lives, but also in their personal lives.
Airbnb provides flexible and open office space for its team members and is extremely transparent about company goals. Employees have the freedom to focus on personal growth while contributing to the success of the company. Airbnb is ranked sixth on the Employee Experience Index. It’s safe to say that its employees are in an environment that contributes to a positive employee and customer experience.
Online retail company Zappos came up with a “Customer Service for Anything” hotline as the role of the paramedic gained traction. This encouraged customer service representatives to help people feel less alone by finding answers to questions ranging from Netflix recommendations to grocery store inventories and local restaurant deliveries.
As a business leader, encourage your employees to step outside their traditional roles to take action to resolve issues and most importantly, reward this behaviour. Go beyond the typical employee-of-the-month programmes and think of other innovative ways to reward them.
As you can see, the employee experience contributes to a company’s success and is directly correlated to the customer experience.
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