Fred Reichheld, New York Times best-selling author and creator of the net promoter score (NPS), shares his thoughts on the importance of the employee experience in delivering quality customer service.
CX Network caught up with Reichheld for this podcast on employee experience (EX) and customer-centricity, where he offered his advice for making use of employee feedback and his thoughts on the challenge of competing priorities in bringing CX initiatives to fruition.
A great employee experience is the only way to deliver great CX
Reichheld noted that the importance of optimizing the EX cannot be understated with regard to its impact on the customer experience. According to Reichheld, one is not possible without the other:
“It is a pipe dream to create happy customers if you have grumpy employees, or those who lack innovation or think that the goal is to exploit customers as opposed to serving customers.”
The goal should be to attract, retain and inspire your employees in order to achieve the ultimate objective which, according to Reichheld, is enriching the lives of customers.
For businesses to begin implementation of EX initiatives however, the value must first be proven to key stakeholders to secure investment and ensure they are given the go ahead. Proving this value is not always easy, although Reichheld offered some advice for achieving this, noting that stakeholders must be made aware of the profitability of these initiatives:
“I start with the notion of enriching customer lives and demonstrating how that drives profitable growth. Common sense says there is no way to profitably and sustainably grow a business without your core customers coming back for more.”
In light of this, there is clear economic value in driving positive employee experiences as, according to Reichheld, the businesses with the highest employee NPS generally tend to have high customer NPS also.
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Making use of employee feedback is key
Ensuring that there is a well-defined system in place for employees to provide feedback on business operations is key, not only to ensure they feel that they have a voice but also to make use of their unique knowledge of the business and drive innovation.
Reichheld explained that daily or weekly team huddles are useful and noted that he has advocated the use of defined questions that gather employee feedback. This feedback informs on the performance of the teams from their own view and, in Reichheld’s experience, on which team leaders should be promoted.
This way brands can ensure that the qualities that drive positive employee experiences are being highlighted and driven by team leaders.
Managing employees’ competing priorities
It was revealed in the podcast that one of the greatest challenges for CX practitioners looking to drive positive employee experiences comes from competing priorities. Reichheld explained that this issue will be present in every business and so a process needs to be in place to ensure that priorities are well-defined.
Teams need objective definitions for what their priorities are so that the need to decide what should come first is eliminated meaning they can focus on delivering on the defined priorities.
According to Reichheld: “We will always need to make tough trade-offs but what inspires people to do their best is when they feel they are being listened to, that they have a voice and the team is being put in a position where they can enrich the lives of customers and see this as their core purpose.”
The employee experience appears to be every bit as, if not more important than the customer experience. You cannot have one without the other, you cannot deliver quality customer service if employees are not taken care of first.