The case for merging customer and employee experience

Matt Porta from ServiceNow outlines how organisations adopting an ‘experience management’ (XM) approach are seeing gains in both employee engagement and customer loyalty

When organisations think about improving customer service, they normally start with their customers experience. Some businesses are now taking a different approach. New research suggests that combining a focus on employee experience (EX) alongside customer experience (CX), will deliver long-term improvements to customer service and satisfaction. Merging the two approaches is known as ‘experience management’ (XM).

The best part? When companies get it right, it creates a virtuous circle. Happier employees deliver better service, and customer satisfaction increases. As customers’ experience improves, morale and job satisfaction among employees also increases.

Setup for success

One of the best places to start is giving your employees the tools they need to succeed. Equipping customer service teams with the right systems is essential to making work more engaging and rewarding. For many, this means eliminating admin tasks that take up too much of their time, effort and energy. Research by Deloitte Access Economics found that on average, Australian workers spend roughly one day per week on routine admin tasks. It’s perhaps no surprise that 35 per cent feel frustrated by work. This has a significant knock-on impact on employee engagement. And as Deloitte’s research makes clear: low employee engagement leads to poor customer satisfaction and lower sales.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. The same research found that decreasing the time employees spend on routine tasks by just one hour per week would increase employee engagement and boost profitability.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in customer service, where front-line agents can be disconnected from middle and backoffice operations, meaning they have to spend valuable time chasing for updates and actions to resolve customer requests.

Instant impact

Taking action can deliver significant results. Take Kiwibank. Using ServiceNow’s Now Platform, it overhauled its customer service management for loan applications, creating new workflows that connected teams and departments to more quickly serve customers. By connecting multiple processes and systems, it eliminated the need for manual tasks like finding information, updating multiple records, or contacting different teams to track or request actions.

Creating a digital, dynamic service led to immediate benefits. Customer response times reduced by 75 per cent from four days on average to one. Applications needing rework decreased by 83 per cent. Unsurprisingly, customer satisfaction increased. Employee satisfaction also significantly increased, as teams were freed from routine admin and could instead focus on high-value work.

Kiwibank is not alone. Many companies are finding that as they convert more manual processes into digital ones, customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) depend on one another to succeed. When they do, the benefits are substantial: companies defined as leaders in overall digital experience enjoy greater market share, lower capital costs, and other advantages, according to a global survey by ESI ThoughtLab and ServiceNow.

With the help of new digital tools, merging an organisation’s CX and EX efforts can help raise employee performance and increase customer loyalty, according to recent studies. The combination also forces more data sharing between teams—something many companies do poorly.

Companies that made experience a top priority from the C-suite to the front lines, according to McKinsey research, saw gains of up to 20% in both customer satisfaction and employee engagement. Their customer service costs also fell by as much as 20%.

Harnessing XM

Digital technology and supporting expertise are needed to make the transition from specialised EX and CX teams into a combined XM practice. Data sharing between CX and EX teams is a critical strategy in merging the two practices.

Customer service managers have an advantage in the move to XM. Employees on the front lines are usually the first to notice issues that arise with customers, while customers who interact with engaged employees generally have better overall experiences with a brand. Many will already understand the power of keeping teams energised and engaged to get the best results.

If we empower employees with data and insights it helps them address potential problems quickly. The key is having the right platform in place that makes data accessible, and lets work flow between teams and systems.

About ServiceNow

ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) is the fastest-growing enterprise cloud software company in the world above $1 billion. Founded in 2004 with the goal of making work easier for people, ServiceNow is making the world of work, work better for people. Our cloud-based platform and solutions deliver digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity for more than 6,200 enterprise customers worldwide, including approximately 80% of the Fortune 500. For more information, visit www.servicenow.com.