The Secret to a Great Customer Experience? Your Employees

The experts at KPMG, Ipsos, and more share the top reasons why employees are essential to delivering a great customer experience. 

Want to enjoy the benefits of customer experience (CX), including gains in customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and sales? One of the most effective ways to do so is by turning to the other side of the customer experience coin: The employee experience (EX). 

Leading organizations bring together their employee experience and customer experience programs and strategies and combine employee and customer experience data to deliver stronger outcomes for both EX and CX. 

For real-world examples of why employees are key to a great customer experience, we connected with Medallia’s partners at KPMG LLP, Ipsos, Giift, Zipline, and 3CLogic for insights. They revealed the advantages of aligning CX and EX initiatives and shared effective approaches for investing in the employee experience to enable better customer experiences.

Why employees are essential to a great customer experience

Employees are an incredible resource for identifying issues impacting the customer experience and for coming up with actionable solutions to improve customer experiences. They’re also a dominant force that shapes the overall customer experience. When employees are engaged and satisfied, so are customers. 

1. Employees are a powerful resource for identifying issues — and actionable solutions for improving the customer experience

“Your frontline employees know more about your customers than just about anyone at your organization; if you want to understand (let alone improve) the customer experience, centering the voice of your employees is one of the best places to start,” says Kyla McGowan, Head of Customer Enablement at Zipline.

Your company can find out about friction in both the customer journey and employee journey that is having a negative impact on the customer experience by harnessing the power of employee feedback surveys, employee listening, and employee crowdsourcing. 

“Employee feedback is invaluable for enhancing customer experiences because employees are on the front line, directly interacting with customers,” says Jeff Mango, Managing Director, Customer Experience Lead at KPMG LLP. “By tapping into this wealth of knowledge, businesses can tailor their services or products to meet customer needs more accurately, leading to improved satisfaction and loyalty. Incorporating employee feedback fosters a culture of continuous improvement and innovation, ultimately elevating the overall customer experience.”

Some of the areas in which employees can help brands uncover previously undetected or overlooked issues include challenges with a company’s processes, technologies, services, and employee training, says Guillaume Seynhaeve, VP of Business Development and Partnerships at 3CLogic.

In addition to shedding light on what’s hindering the customer experience, employees are also a valuable resource for identifying potential solutions that get at the root cause. 

2. Engaged employees are more likely to deliver a great customer experience

Investing in employee engagement can be a winning strategy for organizations for a number of reasons. For starters, employees who feel valued, heard, and connected to their brand are more likely to stick around. Happy, engaged employees are also more likely to do their best work and provide better customer service and experiences, which in turn can boost customer satisfaction, retention, loyalty, sales, and brand reputation, says Manoj Agarwal, Co-Founder and CMO at Giift. 

“It’s a win-win for both customers and the company’s bottom line,” he adds.

“When employees understand and feel connected to the brand promise and the aligned CX strategy, they are more engaged and satisfied in their jobs, as well as better at delivering a differentiated and preferred experience to customers,” says Eda Cetinok, Chief Client Success Officer, Ipsos Customer and Employee Experience. “In turn, happy customers continue to use the brand and advocate on its behalf.”

Organizations with high levels of employee engagement have been found to see a 10% increase in customer loyalty and engagement, according to Gallup researchers. 

To reap these rewards, brands need to prioritize listening to, understanding, and meeting the needs of employees and ensuring team members feel connected to the organization’s overall mission and are motivated to work together in support of the company’s CX goals. 

“Without understanding what your employees need and without taking meaningful steps to meet those needs, employees can’t deliver the customer experience your organization has so carefully curated,” says McGowan. 

Why businesses should align their EX strategies with their CX strategies

According to the experts we interviewed, when organizations bring together their customer and employee experience efforts, they have the potential to:

• Reduce employee and customer turnover 
• Improve customer and employee satisfaction
• Drive employee and customer loyalty
• Increase operational efficiencies
• Fuel innovation
• Strengthen financial outcomes, such as sales

“Integrating customer and employee experience strategies can create a virtuous cycle where satisfied employees lead to satisfied customers and vice versa,” says Seynhaeve.

Medallia researchers have found critical connections between CX and EX as well. Employee experience leaders are nearly 2x times more likely to report higher customer satisfaction and stronger customer retention and CX leaders are 2.8x more likely to be viewed as a great place to work compared to under-performing organizations. 

How to invest in employee experience to enable great customer experiences

1. Create a voice of the employee (VoE) program

“Leading organizations demonstrate their commitment to incorporating employee feedback by creating structured channels for voice of employee (VoE) programs, similar to voice of customer (VoC) initiatives,” says Mango.

Give your employees a platform for sharing insights and suggestions for improving customer interactions through:

• Employee surveys
• Suggestion boxes
• Forums
• Video feedback
• Crowdsourcing 

2. Act on employee suggestions

More than simply gathering employees’ suggestions, it’s important to bring them to life and ensure that team members across the organization are empowered to influence customer experience tactics, adds Mango.

Whether you want to win over more new customers or do a better job of retaining existing customers over time, turning to your employees for inspiration could be transformative for your organization. That was the case for a popular video hosting and sharing platform. Agarwal shares that when the company leveraged a recommendation from one of their employees, they were able to launch a new business unit that eventually helped the brand evolve from being a struggling video-streaming platform into becoming a successful SaaS company. 

This is a practice Agarwal’s own company puts into action and has led to innovations within the organization. By listening to employee feedback, the team at Giift discovered that their customers were looking for ways to keep their employees engaged throughout the year. As a result of this insight, the brand introduced a new resource, an annual employee engagement calendar that’s full of ideas to help HR professionals build out engagement plans, that the company’s clients look forward to receiving every year. 

3. Implement efforts to improve employee performance

Employee burnout, poor morale, disengagement, and decreased productivity and performance can all lead to negative consequences for the customer experience. To set your team members up for success, Seynhaeve recommends using the latest tools and best practices — including AI, workflow optimization, agent coaching, analytics, and automation — to optimize employee performance and enhance customer interactions. 

4. Ensure employees understand the “why” behind your customer experience initiatives

To create an environment in which employees are more willing to support efforts to improve the customer experience, McGowan recommends making sure employees have insight into what’s expected of them (and why). 

Join the world’s best brands in prioritizing employees

Think of any category leader, and the companies that come to mind are not only managing successful customer experience programs, they have effective employee experience strategies in place to increase employee productivity and engagement and bolster customer satisfaction. 

Ready to elevate your efforts? Discover our global ecosystem of best-in-class partners available to help you create experiences that your customers and employees will love.