Customer service is crucial, and it's the employees who provide that service. However, if employees aren't satisfied at work, they are unlikely to provide good customer service. We could make a Be like Bill meme to explain it. Come on, but we have done it!:
In recent years, optimizing the Employee Experience (EX or Employee Experience) has become a top priority for Human Resources departments. But what exactly is Employee Experience, and why is it so important?
Employee Experience encompasses everything that employees live, observe, or feel throughout their time with an organization. It's the overall relationship between employees and the organization, from the initial interview before they join, through onboarding and their professional development, until the end of their tenure. It may even extend beyond that if they maintain connections with former colleagues or discuss their work on social media and in subsequent interviews.
You can finally speak well of something that begins with "EX"! ;-)
So, how can you contribute to a positive Employee Experience, which in turn leads to a better Customer Experience (CX)?
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Recruitment & Onboarding:
When hiring, it's crucial to consider the right fit for your organization´s culture, focusing not only on qualifications but also on values and behaviors. To this end, we must identify beforehand the required behaviours, values and competencies. Do not focus -only- on the titles.
Once the contract has been managed, onboarding must be stimulating to consolidate the synergy of the employee with the organizational values. Good training will turn the new recruitments into new ambassadors of the brand, it will ensure that our collaborators are in tune with the objectives of the company and will do everything possible to achieve them successfully.
Imagine the good energy that a person happy to start working in our company can convey to the client!
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Involvement & good treatment:
For employee engagement to help us drive or improve the customer experience, the continuous feedback should be the essence of our culture.
As collaborators, in order to commit ourselves, we need to be aware of how we are contributing to the success of the company and for this we need to generate dialogues with different perceptions (supervisors, colleagues, clients...).
Giving priority to the needs of our collaborators helps to build a brand, precisely because they are a reflection of the organization inside and outside the office.
When employees are satisfied and engaged, they connect much more and better with the customer.
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Good work environment:
We must not overlook the importance of the physical environment. The more comfortable we are, the more we want to be at work and the better performance we will have.
Spaces also influence culture and engagement. Common and private spaces, areas where informal conversations can be generated and more emotional ties can be created and even areas where it can emerge and where we can capture our creativity. Do you want some ideas very easy to implement starting today?
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Digital environment:
Incorporating technology into our organization, regardless of the sector, has several objectives: streamlining daily operations, providing flexibility to our teams, and increasing productivity.
Technology also facilitates collaboration and open communication, allowing employees to communicate instantly, whether they are in the same office or working from different locations.
Through various tools, we can streamline project management, provide continuous feedback, create shared resources, and help new hires adapt more quickly to their roles, making them feel more supported.
How do you think an employee tasked with providing customer service would feel without any supporting tools? (Especially when they know that specialized solutions are available that can easily streamline their tasks.)
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Acknowledgment:
According to the Guide to Recognition produced by a well-known beer brand, around 89.6 % of poeple say they have a better day when their boss congratulates them for a job well done. However, 83.3% affirm that their bosses do not value their work. oh oh!
Often managers or team leaders lose sight of positive feedback. Sometimes it is unavoidable, however, if we digitize our Evaluation & Feedback process, there will be no supervisors left in the world who overlooks the good work.
The constructive feedback that helps learning generates a dose of commitment that is practically unbreakable in our team.
In the same way that a client values and appreciates a job well done, you should do it with your team.
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The best plan for the future:
Various studies provide us with very revealing data regarding EX and commitment:
- Companies with highly engaged employees outperform their competitors by 147%. Not much, is it? Ha-ha!
- Companies with a highly engaged workforce experience growth of 19.2% in operating revenue over a 12-month period. Have your eyes gone like Scrooge McDuck's?
- The 87% of customer affinity for Starbucks is due to to the way the company treats its employees. Yeah, we also thought it was because of the cups with our names on them (written incorrectly).
- Also, according to a Gartner survey, 89% of companies plan to compete primarily based on customer experience. And it is that as the world of work moves towards an increasingly digital reality, it is increasingly common for companies not to be able to afford not to generate commitment in their collaborators.
Whether you're a memory surgeon, flight instructor, nail specialist, or alternative energy consultant, we all work for end clients, whether they are other companies, individuals, society, or even the state. The experience and satisfaction of the client define the success of our work, and that successful experience starts and ends with the efforts of our employees.