Revision of The State of CX: A series on customer experience trends and beyond - EX drives CX from Tue, 06/28/2022 - 16:06

The State of CX: A series on customer experience trends and beyond - EX drives CX

The evolution from customer communications to the more comprehensive approach of customer experience management represents the sea change in how businesses view their approach to customer growth and retention. The common theme in customer experience trends is acceleration. It reflects not only new demands for digital agility and analytics but also a focus on the implementation of customer journey mapping and other customer-centric tools. As a leader in CXM solutions, we’ve spoken with industry analysts, Quadient experts, and customers to deliver this series on the state of CX, which will explore each of the key customer experience trends across the CXM landscape.

Employee’s experience within your company is crucial to improved customer experiences

As organizations race towards digital transformation to enhance the customer experience in 2021, it’s crucial to assess where experience starts – with employees. Overwhelming research supports that enhancing employee experience directly enhances customer experience, with studies showing that companies with highly engaged employees outperform by up to 147 percent. Successful customer experience strategies stem from empathetic, customer-centric cultures. Similarly, employee experience rooted in empathetic, human-centric organizational structures produces a more positive, productive and engaged workforce. Do they feel supported? Are they empowered with tools, solutions and processes to efficiently perform their work? What friction points are they experiencing? Do they feel that they bring value to the organization? Is there a better way to streamline operations, decrease redundancy and task employees with high-value tasks? The bottom line is that if your employees are not happy, your customer experience will suffer. Answering these questions and identifying gaps can generate significant ROI.

Additionally, there is unprecedented scrutiny on organizations to provide safe, stable, supportive work environments that protect overall health and financial well-being. A brands' internal employee policies and culture – how it treats, enables and even pays its employees – has increasingly become an external brand value that drives customer decisioning.

Experts illustrate how positive employee experience is a vital investment

Employee experience: The realization that employee experience drives customer experience will finally hit its stride, pushed along because of the pandemic and the need/requirement to work from home. Annette Franz, Chief Experience Officer, CX Journey, Inc.

Employee experience drives customer experience. 2020 drove a shift in how and what we buy and lifted our awareness around how companies really treat their employees. We saw leaders jump in right away and send their teams home for safety. We saw other companies, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, and they continued to put their employees at risk. And we saw incredible ingenuity at the store level and at the corporate level – driven mainly by people who were on the front lines – adapting ever so quickly. I believe that globally, we’re paying more attention. - Ingrid Lindberg, CXO, Chief Customer

The most important investment that businesses can make in 2021 and beyond is in their employees. Putting employees first is critical to success. We learned last year that customers prefer to buy from brands that prioritize employee health and safety. This will not go away; instead, it must, and it will, become the new normal. Employees must be a priority and must be taken care of. - Annette Franz, Chief Experience Officer, CX Journey, Inc.

If you don’t build a team that can adapt, competitors will leapfrog you. Adaptability isn’t only important for humans, but the technology we use needs to be adaptable as well. Quick turnaround times, fewer bottlenecks, workflow automation and integration are mandatory.” (LanguageWire, Where next, CMO? Today’s top ten marketing challenges (2020)

“Today’s crises require brands to meaningfully engage employees even more. CMOs are uniquely poised to help organizations create a better employee experience working with CHROs. EX drives CX, which drives business results. Expect the lines between employee and customer experiences to blur.” Forrester, It’s time for CMOs to pay more attention to employees, July 27, 2020.

The landscape of customer experience management is exciting, and the acceleration of change is driving new opportunities for growth. It’s crucial your business remains agile enough to adapt to not just what innovation and demands are coming, but those that have already arrived. The new normal is now, and the transformation that focuses on the employee experience is just one of the trends in CX. Explore the others in our eBook, the State of CX.