Newsletters

Customer Support:   (972) 395-3225

Home

Articles, News, Announcements - click Main News Page
Previous Story       Next Story
    
The Balancing Act: EX + CX

by Andrew Kokes, EVP, Global Head of Marketing, HGS - November 1, 2022

The Balancing Act: EX + CX

By Andrew Kokes, EVP, Global Head of Marketing, at HGS

 

As the demand for revamped customer experience (CX) escalates, brands have been continuously reinventing their customers’ experiences to match these expectations. In today’s digital world, customers expect brands to meet them where they are and provide the exact experience they are expecting. This could include high levels of personalization, top-notch service, quicker responses, among many others. But, as this demand increases, have they also thought about their employee experience (EX)? Employees are the backbone of their brands, and are the front line of defense with customers themselves – which raises the question, are brands making the appropriate connection between EX and CX?

According to Qualtrics, 60% of customer service agents said customers “became more rude and aggressive during the pandemic,” and one in five agents thinks about quitting every week. CX is inextricably linked to EX, and now is the time for brands to invest in solutions that improve the baseline for both. 

Many of the same autonomous CX strategies and tools that are meant to improve the customer’s experience, such as knowledge bases, robotic process automation, or artificial intelligence, can also assist employees and destress their challenging job – creating a win-win-win. 

  • Win One: The customer gets the right answer fast, with the least possible friction.
  • Win Two: The employee's stress is reduced as the number of systems and complexity are simplified.
  • Win Three: The businesses making the investment grow with more satisfied customers, and become more profitable with reduced cost of operations related to customer and employee attrition.

By improving upon EX, brands can better create meaningful solutions for overall CX.

Experiences Matter More Now Than Ever

According to PWC, 73% of consumers point to customer experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions, yet only 49% of U.S. consumers say companies provide a good customer experience. In today’s world, customers have a wide variety of options to choose from when making purchase decisions, as well as endless information and resources to help them with their choice. This is why CX is so important for brands: By creating experiences that stand out from other choices, customers feel appreciated and like they want to continue doing business with the brand. 

In order to provide this type of customer experience, brands must also evaluate their employee’s experiences. Agents at contact centers or call centers fully represent their brand, and the quality of their service can either make or break the customer’s experience regardless of the communication vehicle (online chat, phone, or email). 

According to Genesys, the volume of customer interactions handled by agents has increased by nearly 20%, and spiked up to 40% in some cases since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This increase is a result of customer’s rising expectations when it comes to CX. Over 60% of customers will defect after one bad experience, up 22% when compared to 2021, as reported by Zendesk. This uptick in a need for creating better customer experiences has been dutifully acknowledged by brands while their own employee’s experiences have since fallen off the radar. 

Although contact center agents are the backbone of their brands, almost half (46%) of agents do not believe their leadership invests in their team or function, and over a quarter are not provided with the tools or training needed to be successful. By not having a well-rounded employee experience, brands may see a decrease in customer satisfaction resulting in monetary loss. Implementing successful strategies and tools that improve upon EX can give employees the tools they need to help create a well-rounded CX and, ultimately, increase the company’s return on investment.

Setting Agents Up for Success by Supplying the Right Tools

With the rise of digital, contact center agents have been overloaded with a wide variety of communication channels, such as live web chat, messenger apps, social media, emails, and web forms, among many others. In order to deliver strong CX, agents must be engaged, impressively trained, and fully understanding of their role in the organization, and must have the confidence and competence to do their job satisfactorily.

For most contact centers, this starts with implementing autonomous CX technology solutions for their agents, which ultimately results in improved EX.

  • Dynamic and learning knowledge bases: When these knowledge bases are paired with robotic process automation and artificial intelligence, they can be used throughout the agent lifecycle to effectively hire, train, and retain top talent. 
  • Chatbot technology solutions: Most brands traditionally implement chatbot technology to help customers online, but it can also be utilized to help walk fresh recruits through the new hire process, assist with new hire training and onboarding, and relieve workloads from increased customer demand if implemented correctly. 
  • Analytics: By evaluating analytics, brands can monitor sentiment and performance in order to identify agents’ strengths and areas for improvement – which in the end, helps brands understand what innovations in tools, processes, and training agents may need to be set up for success. 
  • Operating as an incubator: A CX center of excellence that operates as an incubator can help brands speed up the development of cutting-edge processes, channel capabilities, and automation to stay aligned with rising digital expectations.

By improving agent’s experience, brands can more effectively reach their autonomous CX goals such as increasing revenue, meeting customer demand, and improving efficiency. 

Embracing Gig Working Principles

Outside of CX, the pandemic has also affected how employees approach their work.  As an example, HBR reports that employees are willing to trade 12% of earnings for complete flexibility to work and get paid on their terms.

While the gig working approach works in many areas, there is still a need for trained specialists to be available on a set schedule, or hours of operation, which results in a lesser need for true-gig-workers. However, many lessons can be learned and many of the gig-working principles can be implemented to provide significant flexibility in employee’s experiences into areas such as recruiting, training, and scheduling, engagement, and pay.

  • Recruiting: When evaluating potential employees who applied through social media or online job boards, brands can use artificial intelligence and recruit-bots to find the best candidates for the position. The same technology can then be used to screen and offer potential opportunities in a matter of hours, a process that traditionally could have taken days or possibly weeks. 
  • Training: By providing agent training on computer based self-paced platforms, as well as artificial intelligence enabled simulators, employees can be trained asynchronously, allowing for much more dynamic real-time ramping of talent. 
  • Scheduling, engagement, and pay: By using app-based tools and gamification, employees are given the opportunity to select and modify schedules. These same tools can also be used for employees to contact HR and IT for any needs, as well as access pay at the end of any given shift. 

By providing employees with a flexible workplace environment and offering a variety of choices, brands are able to create a more stable workflow for their employees, resulting in improved productivity and efficiency, as well as retention of its employees. 

Uniting CX and EX

70% of executives agree that improved EX leads to improved CX, which in turn leads to rapid revenue growth; however, only 47% of the same respondents stated that employee experience is among their top five priorities, compared to 65% for customer experience. 

Some of the top reasons executives cite for CX projects failing all relate back to brands not acknowledging the importance of implementing successful EX – these reasons include not having the correct talent to implement projects, lacking the process expertise to redefine operating methods in order to successfully balance technology and people, or an inability to measure the ROI of their initiatives, among others. 

To be successful, brands must emphasize the importance that both consumers and employees play in their organizations and leverage experts on demand to fill skill gaps, engage in design thinking workshops and ensure all initiative investments are clearly measurable leading to long term transformation.

By creating a successful balance between EX and CX, brands will see results across the company, including improved attraction and retention of employees, increased customer loyalty, and an increase in overall returns on investments in their people, their business, and their customer base.

 

 
Return to main news page