Customer Experience versus Employee Experience
Customers and employees are the lifeblood for any organization to continue to strive toward success. Their opinions count for every part of your organization and its brand. According to Forbes, “your customer experience is reflected by your employee experience.” So, how do we define the two respective terms? Customer experience refers to the relationship between a business and its customers. On the other hand, employee experience refers to the perceptions of an employee’s journey in the organization they work for. A happy and joyful employee is more likely to deliver exemplary customer service so that customers remain happy and loyal to your business. This blog will talk about reasons why it is important to invest in both customer and employee experience for optimal business growth.
Elements of Customer and Employee Experience
Prioritize both customer and employee experience and your business will soar with profits. There are three main elements to keep in mind for tracking customer and employee experience. Let’s learn more!
Customer Journey Mapping
To keep customers loyal and satisfied with your product, understanding their entire journey rather than just one moment is crucial. According to Salesforce, Customer Journey Mapping is the process of creating a customer journey map, a visual story of your customer’s interactions with your brand. This maps out all the touchpoints along the customer journey, including the website, social channels, and interactions with the marketing and sales team. Each part of the customer’s journey should be included on the map for the brand to understand the needs and expectations of the customer. As a business, this strategy is crucial to optimizing the customer journey in regard to each customer. To put it simply, this will be a big step towards more effective customer personalization.
Active Listening to Customer Feedback
Emotions are unpredictable. It is important to remember that customers are human beings who deserve to let out their emotions. At first, you may feel taken aback. Take a breather and just listen to what they have to say. According to Indeed, “active listening helps you to understand the significance of the customer’s words so that you can do your best to make the situation better.” Instantly reacting may be something you regret in the future. Instead, just actively listen to what they have to say and help them resolve their query or concern.
Clear Customer Communication
According to Entrepreneur, “the key to any good relationship is communication that goes both ways.” As the customer service saying goes, “help us to help you.” Let your customers help you by effectively communicating with them. Your customers have every right to know what’s going on with your business and its products. From social media to email to website interactions, customers can find brands and interact with them through reviews and comments easier than ever before. The last thing you need is an unhappy or frustrated customer. Keeping this in mind, every interaction with a customer affects the entirety of your business. Customer feedback encourages an organization to do better. Customers appreciate it when their feedback is truly taken seriously. Feedback can be good, bad, or neutral. Organizations can choose to ignore it and move on or take it in their stride and improve.
Developing an Impactful Company Culture
Company culture is an integral part of an organization. Without a strong and productive corporate culture, the organization won’t continue to support and build its workforce. Company culture is defined as the shared emotions of an organization and the employees in it. It encompasses the company’s mission and values and defines what matters for employees and external stakeholders alike. Building a sense of community through these common values and standards for work will make your employees feel connected to the organization, supporting their productivity and relationship with the company.
Encouraging Work-Life Balance
We all agree that there is more to life beyond the workplace. Employees desire time for their personal lives. This can be one of the biggest struggles for employees of all tenures to balance. Whether it’s at your first job or you’ve grown comfortable in your role after a long time, you want to believe that you will give it your all, which to some means sacrificing your personal time. There is that little voice in your head saying, “Weekdays are not meant for fun. They’re meant for work.” You start believing that weekends are the only time for you to enjoy your personal life. However, it is up to you to decide when you want to take personal time for yourself. Working from home has been the most productive for some employees in terms of office work so that they can spend more time with their families and better strike that balance in their lives.
Consistent Performance Reviews
Performance reviews give you the opportunity to see where you stand and identify areas for improvement. There is always room for professional growth at work. No one wants to be stuck in the same rut for years on end. Change is good. Growth opportunities and support and feedback from managing staff allow employees to advance in their careers. Depending on the organization, these reviews occur annually, semi-annually, or quarterly. Performance reviews are not only opportunities for employees, but also for employers to discover and learn their employees’ strengths, weaknesses, and longer-term goals.
Reasons to Invest in Customer Experience
Strengthens Relationship Between You and the Customer
In the business world, everything revolves around the customer. The goal of a business is to fulfill customer expectations and needs indirectly and directly. You want customers to stay loyal to your brand and come back for more. One way to do this is to embrace their feedback with open arms. Customers appreciate it when their feedback is truly taken seriously. Asking for feedback shows the willingness and initiative to improve your brand. There is always room for improvement for any brand. This will allow you to further understand and get to know your customers.
Increased Loyalty Through Word of Mouth and Referrals
Most customers hear about new brands and businesses through word of mouth. Customers are always on the prowl for new brands and products. Nowadays, with everything going digital, having a strong presence on social media can be a great advantage to putting your brand and its products out there for people to consider for purchase. For example, if your brand promotes healthy eating, you can promote it on social media by getting testimonials from influencers and customers alike and offer social media followers an incentive, such as a discount, to push them to try it out for themselves. These tactics can help attract more customers to try out your product.
Reasons to Invest in Employee Experience
Increased Employee Retention
Employee retention refers to the ability of an organization to retain its employees. Employees are an integral part of an organization’s culture. According to Forbes, “great employee experience empowers your people and gives them a satisfying workplace.” You want to keep them around for as long as possible. Workplaces don’t want to lose employees. But the reality is that all employees eventually want to step up the ladder and move on in their career journey. According to Quora, “employees are more focused on their quality of life and work rather than working for the sake of money.” Organizations create a company culture to allow employees to contribute to the organization in a positive manner.
Increased Employee Engagement
According to Forbes, “investments in employee engagement should go toward short-term benefits or programs that boost employee experience.” Allowing employees to engage with other teammates in such programs will help them in two situations – taking their minds off work and getting a fresh perspective on assignments. Getting a fresh perspective will allow the employee to expand their knowledge on the topic for the assignment they could be working on. This could also help them build new professional relationships for the future. Employee engagement can also give the employees a break from the office environment. Rather than being surrounded by constant shop talk, employees can take a breather by getting a cup of coffee and engaging with other workmates at the same time.
Using PxidaX to Invest in Customer and Employee Experience
The beauty of PxidaX is that it has every survey that you could possibly be looking for to focus on your business’s customer and employee experience. Companies need to find more effective channels for investing in customer and employee experience to make it a priority for the organization. This is where PxidaX can help gather customer and employee feedback, to make such strategies more actionable and effective. Sign up for a free trial today!