The experience cycle: How CX, EX and employee engagement create business success

In today's competitive business landscape, companies are increasingly focused on delivering exceptional customer experience. However, creating outstanding customer experiences doesn't happen in isolation. There exists an intricate relationship between customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and employee engagement (EE) that drives organizational success.

In this article I explores what I call "the experience cycle" – the interconnected relationship between these three critical factors and how they collectively contribute to organizational outcomes. 

We'll examine not only how EX influences EE and ultimately shapes CX, but also how success in CX can circle back to strengthen employee engagement through storytelling and organizational pride. 

Understanding the components

Before jumping into their relationships, let's define each component:

Customer experience (CX): The sum of all interactions a customer has with your brand across all touchpoints and channels throughout their journey and how they feel about those interactions.

Employee experience (EX): The journey an employee takes within your organization – from recruitment to exit – including their physical workspace, tools, work-life balance and relationships with management and peers.

Employee engagement (EE): The emotional commitment employees have to their organization and its goals, resulting in discretionary effort and advocacy.

A Gallup study conducted in 2020 showed that businesses with highly engaged employees experience an 18 percent increase in sales, as their teams were more motivated to exceed expectations and enhance customer service. While it might be tempting to draw a direct line between employee experience and customer experience, the relationship often proves to be more nuanced. 

Here's how the experience cycle works in practice:

 
Exceptional employee experience creates conditions for high employee engagement, which then drives positive customer experience. 

Let's break this down further:

1. Great employee experience (EX) provides the foundation: When employees have the right tools, supportive leadership, appropriate autonomy and a positive work environment.
2. This enables employee engagement (EE): Where employees feel committed to the organization's mission, are willing to go above and beyond and have emotional investment in their work and the success of the organization.
3. Which drives greater customer experience (CX): Engaged employees deliver better service, show more initiative in resolving customer problems and create more meaningful and empathetic interactions.

Bi-directional impact: Creating a cycle

The relationship, however, doesn't end here. Anyone who had to endure algebra in school would have learnt that mathematical formulas are not always linear; many equations involve complex relationships that can be approached from various directions. Some can be solved bi-directionally, meaning you can work forward to find an outcome or backward to determine the inputs that produce a given result. Similarly, success in customer experience can feed back into employee engagement that leads to positive employee experience. Thus, creating a cycle.

When customers have positive experiences and share their satisfaction (through high net promoter scores, positive reviews or direct feedback), this creates:

1. Pride in the organization – employees feel part of something successful
2. Purpose and meaning – seeing the positive impact of their work
3. Validation of efforts – confirmation that their hard work matters

The role of storytelling in linking CX and EE

A powerful tool for leveraging customer experience success to foster employee engagement (and ultimately boost employee experience) is storytelling.

Research has shown that the use of storytelling is often an effective strategy that organizations can use to enhance employee engagement. It’s not always about reporting huge profits (though that can be a motivating factor). Stories of customer success can humanize data and metrics, helping employees connect emotionally with the organization's mission beyond just the bottom-line. When employees understand how their contributions directly impact real people, engagement naturally follows.

When organizations collect and share success stories internally:

1. Employees see the tangible impact of their work.
2. Abstract metrics are turned into human experiences (that are more relatable).
3. Organizational mission and values are reinforced.
4. Employees are positioned as the "heroes" in the organizational story.

C(X)hicken or E(X)gg?

With employee engagement always resting at the center of this cycle, a common dilemma for organizations is what to prioritize: customer experience or employee experience? 
The answer isn't easy, but evidence does suggest that these initiatives should be pursued in parallel, with a clear understanding of how they correlate with one another.

A parallel approach may include:

• Ensuring leadership champions are established for both CX and EX initiatives
• Creating cross-functional teams that include both customer-interacting and employee- interacting roles
• Developing metrics and reporting that track both customer and employee satisfaction
• Creating feedback loops that directly connect customer insights to employee experiences
• Designing processes that simultaneously improve both customer and employee journeys

Building your experience equation

For organizations looking to leverage these relationships, consider these steps:

1. Measure what matters: Establish baseline metrics for CX (CSAT, CES, NPS), EX (eNPS, turnover, satisfaction) and EE (engagement scores, discretionary effort)
2. Find correlation points: Identify where improvements in one area correspond with changes in another
3. Create feedback loops: Ensure customer feedback reaches employees and employee insights inform customer experience design
4. Develop shared goals: Align CX and EX objectives to create united purpose
5. Tell compelling stories: Use real examples of how employee actions created customer success

CX, EX and EE are an interconnected system

The relationship between customer experience, employee experience and employee engagement is neither linear nor one-directional. Instead, these components create an interconnected system where enhancements in one aspect can generate widespread positive impacts across the organization. 

By understanding and leveraging the experience cycle, leaders can create more effective strategies that recognize how investing in employees ultimately drives customer satisfaction and how harnessing customer success stories can further fuel employee engagement.
The most successful organizations will be those that view CX, EE and EX not as separate initiatives but as interconnected components of a unified strategy – creating a virtuous cycle that drives sustainable business success.

Take a moment to assess your organization's approach to the experience cycle. Are you treating CX, EX and EE as isolated initiatives, or have you recognized their powerful interconnection?

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