Don’t forget the most important part of your customer experience

Be sure your employees know that you engage their best interests so they can engage with their customers

Recently, Gallup issued a study on how most employees truly feel a responsibility for delivering a superior customer experience while on the job. I do not think this finding is too big of a surprise for most of us as we all still have personal examples of a great customer experience. It is still hard when I am the eighth person in line with only one window open.  

Perhaps the most interesting fact from the study is that most employees felt that they lack confidence in their organization to properly support their responsibility to CX. This is a key aspect to customer experience and something that most companies fail to measure. By ignoring employees (and especially front-line customer-facing employees), it is like shooting the wrong target.  

I have spent years measuring customer experience and have seen first-hand how engaged employees can boost the overall experience. Ignoring employee engagement as part of an overall CX program ensures that you are leaving a blind spot open in your CX measurement.  

A yearly employee study is usually sufficient. And here is where it is important that an outside company run the survey to ensure you get honest feedback. Respondents need to know that their answers will have a firewall and will not result in any repercussions. Only then can you ensure that you will get unbiased and honest answers. Any employee survey should ask about the following: 

• Their perspective on executive management 

• Do they have all the tools they need to do their job 

• Relationship with colleagues 

• Procedural and or process issues in getting their job done 

• Compensation 

• Workplace relationship dynamics 

All these things can affect employee engagement. Without an engaged employee base, all the CX initiatives in the world will have a definite ceiling. Only with engaged employees, can your customer experience crash through that ceiling and deliver on the CX promise.