Customer loyalty is an increasingly important commodity. KPMG has run a survey on the topic, interviewing consumers across 20 different states in the world. More than half of them say they would remain loyal to the favourite brand after a bad experience. With these statistics in mind, it’s quite natural that brands want to focus on the customer to the highest degree.
However, we should not forget employees are directly responsible for customer satisfaction. Prioritizing employee experience brings long term results and ensures sustainable business growth. There is nothing that can pay out more than investing in your talents. Hopefully, my quick review will show why this is essential for achieving employee engagement and customer loyalty at the same time.
Joining CX and EX for sustainable business growth
In the past few years, we could see the EX industry rapidly developing and successfully keeping up with the CX field. More and more companies want to establish a strong connection with employees since they are the heart of any brand’s success. This is especially true in a predominantly virtual world, where a positive employee experience can be harder to create and easier to lose.
Indeed, research in the Journal of Applied Psychology has shown that prioritizing employee experience has been more of a challenge to foster and develop during the pandemic. The study shows people are more likely to become anxious with an increase of uncertainty, which can further on lead to a disconnection from daily tasks.
I recently participated in a live panel discussion around employee engagement in CX businesses, and one of the co-panellists was a “Head of CX and EX”. This made us all pause – it’s not a job title you see very often, and yet, it made perfect sense to me. If we are to develop a positive customer and employee experience, it is our task to have ongoing conversations and be aware of what drives people to be present, engaged, and satisfied.
Putting people first
At Kura, our mantra is that people make the difference. I truly believe organisations need to recognise the return that can be made from investing in employees. I am not talking just about financial benefits. Brands should invest time in understanding the motivation of their employees and identifying the optimal support they can give for personal development.
After reviewing our internal data, we could see a clear correlation between customer satisfaction and time invested in people development. Without a doubt, people need you to recognize and acknowledge their strengths to do their best work. This will empower them to grow and develop further.
As working from home continues, it is vital for organizations to ask themselves if they are doing enough for their employees. Here are a few questions to navigate your critical thinking:
- Are we helping employees stay connected?
- Are we bringing our employees on the journey with us – even as we all work in isolation?
- How will practices developed last year change as it becomes safe to go back to our offices en masse?
- What flexibility will we seek to maintain?
- What have we learned from our own experiences over the last year that we can implement business-wide to further enhance our employee engagement and outputs?
Ongoing EX conversations
Whilst many businesses have created methods of keeping in touch with employees and supporting them during the pandemic, it’s important to consider whether the measures put in place a year ago are still working for employees now. Perhaps a daily internal newsletter has become too much, but an opportunity for a conversation with the leadership team would still be welcomed today.
One of the recent changes we’ve made at Kura is introducing an open, any-question-asked forum with our CEO. Employees from across our six offices can join a virtual Q&A session and ask whatever they want. With nothing off the table, the sessions have proven to be a great way of maintaining open communication with our people. We’ve managed to increase engagement as well as hear first-hand concerns.
Our company’s practices proved employee experience has an enormous positive impact on the bigger business picture. That’s why we constantly work on gathering and answering real-time feedback. In the end, this data helps us continue prioritizing employee experience.