Customer Experience, Employee Experience. Why do they matter in 2021?

~ Ian Schafer,

Co-Founder & CEO at Kindred

How do entrepreneurs need to act to make the business successful? We always rule by generally accepted principles, such as rational funds usage, eliminating the bottlenecks, and exceptional client orientation. But what about taking a special approach to the employee, partner, and any other persons involved in the service provision or goods selling process?

The communication convenience and employees' user experience are also coring for a company since the client impressions directly depend on them. Besides, competition requires businesses to develop the appropriate interaction channels with customers and make a seamless connection between them. Thus, today, to provide the offer, a company should focus not only on customer and user experience but also consider the staff condition and communication channels development. Companies try to boost these factors separately. Let's see what happens if a company will support them at the same time.

When people go to a store or a cafe, they hardly want only to eat or buy groceries. On a subconscious level, they have a goal to get a positive impression from the visit. The same goes for people working in enterprises. They also go to the office or open their laptops at home with the desire to get something exciting from the new business day. Easy working hours, as a minimum. These are all experiences, determining the attitude towards the company. And as Dale Carnegie said: "Attitude is everything". An enterprise's most powerful marketing force is its employees. Today it is unreachable to attract customers without the staff's sincere desire to help and strong faith in the company's mission.

So, to make a business grow, management has to pay attention not just to the user or client experience but also to the employee and multi ones. In this way, a company becomes to use digital experience economy principles.

Customer experience or CX is the full experience in each point with both the brand and personnel itself. A simple example would be customer-operator talk or customer-waiter communication. Each situation leaves us with a certain opinion about the way the company relates to its audience, what employees it hires. But primarily, whether we want to return to a specific place or to cooperate with a company to accept the approach it offers.

User experience or UX is the experience of the user interacting with the inanimate company product. For example, an app for food ordering or the official website. Moreover, the impression of staff interaction with office equipment and software is also a type of user experience. A person's opinion is influenced by the interface (convenient or complicated), used colors, speed, and accuracy of digital products' work, etc. The desire to interact with the business again depends on it.

Employee experience or EX is about relations between the company and its staff. It depends on how a company cares about its personnel. Is it convenient to make daily operations? Are there any opportunities for professional and personal growth? Are employees satisfied with their daily work?

Here not only the staff's well-being depends on the employer's actions, but also the level of staff-client interaction.

Multi experience or MX is both customer experience, got from various channels of communication with a particular company. The faster and accurately business develops in this area, the better a client response will be. In this case, the interaction system transformation boosts both the UX and CX.

Take, for instance, the IKEA app, where everyone can see how a piece of furniture will look in a house just by using the development. The company just chose the right way to convey its message and make purchase exciting.

Even based on general concepts, the above experiences have robust connections with each other. MX affects UX, EX affects CX, and so on. Therefore, business owners are mistaken in thinking only about the multichannel approach or increasing employee productivity. To extend the Client Lifetime Value (CLV) a company must pay attention to each impression that affects CX.

Penny Wilson,

CMO at Hootsuite

What determines how well you know your client? - UX design, point of sale location, and even the sequence of departments in a brick-and-mortar store. Now the UX level is the reliable metric that accurately reflects the CX. Because of the pandemic, most applications have changed, following client requirements. If earlier an inconvenient interface and navigation were just unpleasant, today its elimination has become principal for a successful business. Now users prefer clear developments that perform tasks quickly.

Often, if the user does not like the application, he stops buying certain company services. For example, there are two taxi services: A and B. Company A has an easy-to-understand application that allows car ordering for a specific time, shows the starting route point, and chooses the most profitable travel option. The application is highly customized. Company B has a list of route types, lacks the flexibility and ability to tailor the trip to the user's needs.

Besides, the complicated interface makes it impossible to figure out where exactly the car is and when it will arrive at the destination place. With 100% certainty, company B will have far fewer customers, even despite the pricing that can be significantly lower than company A.

If, because of the interface issues, the client does not receive the service on time, he will call the support service to sort it out. Thus, negative UX turns into CX that can become positive or negative depending on the company specialist that will communicate with the client.

Besides, don't forget that the company's employees are users too. They use hardware and software purchased by the employer. The company's investment success in this area depends on how innovations facilitate staff work or how often employees use developments in their everyday operating.

As seen, the user experience directly affects CX and EX, respectively. It can be also transformed into CX, where the final client's impression depends on the EX.

Shep Hyken,

Customer Service & Experience Expert

Client experience depends on the employees' mood, workload, and productivity. Many businesses still don't consider this factor as a key one. That's why their success is short-lived. Companies spend much more effort in solving issues like "how to improve work efficiency" and "how to make the client satisfied". Here, managers don't care about a staff satisfaction degree. But the paradox is that only happy employees will want to perform more and make customers happy too.

A core task for a business now is to organize seamless communication and interaction between employees. When working remotely, it's needed to maintain productivity and make staff feel convenient. For these purposes, new communication solutions as, for instance, Avatar, are created. It's an Imeve company development, similar to Skype or Zoom, but much better because of 360 camera and VR technologies usage. The product makes it possible to recreate the conference atmosphere and transmits 3D models of employees' avatars. Thus, the solution enables fully immersing in the business atmosphere, regardless of location. This development is a shining example of a connection between EX and MX: due to the expansion of corporate communication possibilities, the EX becomes better.

Tony Hsieh,

Venture Capitalist, CEO at Zappos

Besides, the company must blur the boundaries in communication and work between departments. It refers to the interaction between employees to satisfy clients' needs in the shortest time. Often, in a business view, work with a client is the contact center's responsibility. That's not true. Almost all clients' issues need the participation of several internal teams?

XME.digital recently worked on a new fast-code development creation. The team developed a contact center that can quickly resolve any client issue. So, if the client demands to return the TV and replace it with the new one, the system immediately engages:

Correct interaction does not require performing one department's functions by the other one. It allows reacting to any situation cohesively and influencing its positive outcome by joint efforts.

Talking about personnel, it's needed to consider how convenient its work is. In brick-and-mortar grocery stores, cashier workplaces are equipped with Point of Sale hardware so that the employee has everything at hand. It enables him to remain productive. But let's get back to the contact center operators. They usually need to track product information and switch between a dozen tabs at the same time. It's tiring and provokes employee burnout. To prevent it, a company can use software similar to the above fast code solution with a one-stop-shop interface. It can combine all the systems into one and provide the necessary information automatically or in 1-2 clicks. This approach minimizes routine work amount, increases productivity level, and allows making tasks faster.

Thus, staff satisfaction comprises:

Thus, by meeting the above requirements, the employer gets personnel able to perform its work efficiently and politely communicates with clients.

Following Gartner's prediction, to 2024, organizations with an established multi-experience corporate digital strategy will outperform competitors in CX and EX satisfaction metrics.

Even today competition in this area has increased. Users are no longer interested in trivial approaches. They need a multi-channel one that can surprise them with AR/VR instruments, IoT, 5G, and other technologies. According to the US Today research, 9 out of 10 respondents want to start a purchase on one device and end it on the other one in the place where they left off. Customers want to receive an offer a second before the demand arises.

But companies cannot keep up with trends without capturing data about CX directly from them across multiple communication channels. Therefore, in this context, it's advisable to talk about the advanced omnichannel digital experience. It can only be achieved through digital innovation that will surpass the competitors' capabilities or even move the company beyond the competition.

The company should develop those communication channels that are most suitable for performing various operations: Instagram accounts for placing a catalog, contact center for confirming order details or problems solving, WhatsApp for convenient file sharing, etc. To boost this area, management has to simulate a variety of client-company communication scenarios. It helps to understand which set of channels will work effectively.

All of the above experiences directly affect the general client's impression. Therefore, the primary business goal should be to improve CX by boosting EX, UX, and MX. If a satisfied client contacts polite, promptly working staff from any place via a convenient application or any other clear channel - he will never go to a competitor.

Sally Gronow,

HR Director at Dwr Cymru Welsh Water

Besides, when developing software for solving customer issues, the company should pay attention to nonlinear requests first. 100 cases of a linear solution will not affect the company's reputation, while 1 complicated request without solving can destroy it.

A company achieves an impeccable customer experience through the active development of employees, communication channels, the interaction between users/employees, and the company's software. This approach is the digital experience economy capable of increasing and sustaining business opportunities throughout its life-cycle.

The successful company's development strategy needs to contain:

XME. fast code platform is a well-suited solution to develop digital products that can boost experiences at one time. It enables getting an MVP that supports modern 5G, IoT, Cloud, AR/VR, and other technologies in a short time. Also, fast code benefits allow the creation of robust interoperability systems between back-office departments to quickly problem-solving. XME based solutions minimize the number of personnel mistakes, help to establish communication with customers, and increase the CLV.