Why the Customer Experience Starts with the Employee Experience

Over the past few years, the term ‘customer experience’ has grown increasingly popular in the business world and is revolutionizing the way companies interact with clients.

 

 

Whilst customer service is a rather transactional approach to business, customer experience focuses more on the overall impression of your business and brand, utilising every customer interaction, from start to finish, to impress customers with your service and knowledge.

Happy customers are the best possible advertisement for your business and can become your most ardent advocates if you provide an impressive enough experience. Word of mouth marketing is essential for any business, especially on the Isle of Man, where recommendations to friends and family can easily become a lead for your business.

Most businesses recognise the power of a first-class customer experience but few realise that this starts with creating a first-class employee experience.

 

What Is Employee Experience?

Much like customer experience, employee experience is about the overall impression your company creates for itself through every interaction with employees, from onboarding right through to the exit interview. Everybody knows a company that has a great reputation amongst current and former employees; people want to work for them and companies want to be them. While it may seem like they have a magic formula for success, this often boils down to years of investment in the employee experience, as well as a carefully crafted company culture that makes people actually want to come into work.

 

Why Employee Experience Is so Important

Creating a positive company culture and employee experience doesn’t happen overnight; it’s something that requires consistent effort and attention and needs to be tailored to your team and industry. For those companies that go the extra mile, however, the rewards are plentiful. Here are just a few of the business benefits of putting employee experience at the top of your list.

 

Improved productivity and engagement

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that engaged employees are productive employees. Indeed, a study carried out by Gallup found that a highly engaged workforce is 20% more productive, which of course has a massive trickle-down effect on everything from customer experience to company productivity. The employee experience is a big part of increasing engagement amongst your work force. If your employees are truly bought into your business and feel valued and appreciated, chances are they’ll be happy to go above and beyond in their role, maximising your company productivity and helping your business grow and develop in the right direction.

 

Reduce absenteeism

Disengaged employees are more likely to be absent from work and are two times more likely to take a sick day than engaged employees, costing your company and the economy both productivity and money. Back in 2017, employee absenteeism costed the UK economy a staggering £18bn in lost productivity. While legitimate days off work are important for employee health and wellbeing, a CBI report estimates that around 12% of all sick days are actually fraudulent, meaning your business could be losing productivity and profit from disengaged employees. Increasing engagement through a better employee experience will ultimately help your business reduce absences and fraudulent sick days, ensuring your workforce feels energised and motivated-and not tempted to call in sick when they don’t need to.

 

Higher Retention Rate

Creating a positive company culture and engaged workforce is essential for a high retention rate. Attracting the best employees is one thing, keeping them is another. Disengaged employees are more likely to be looking for a new job or opportunity than their engaged counterparts. Indeed, a study estimated that 73% of actively disengaged employees were looking for new opportunities verses only 37% of engaged employees. Anyone working in HR knows all to well the cost of hiring employees. It’s estimated that it costs around 20% of a salary to recruit a new employee and further 7% to train them up, so ultimately it makes good financial sense to hold and nurture the talent you already have.

 

Better Profitability

All of the above means one thing for your business, better profitability. In this area the facts speak for themselves: disengaged employees cost their employers between £3,400 and £10,000 in wasted salary. With an engaged workforce supporting your business, you can ensure that your company benefits from higher productivity, increased employee retention rate and lower absenteeism, all of which will ultimately positively impact your bottom line. Indeed, whilst creating the optimal employee experience can take time, money and effort, all studies indicate that it’s certainly worth the investment.

 

The Employee and Customer Experience Are Intrinsically Linked

Another important aspect to consider is the impact that employee experience ultimately has on your customer experience.  Employees that take pride in their work and the company they work for will ultimately do everything in their power to ensure that the all-important customer experience reflects well on you and your business. In the ideal world, you want your employees to become the biggest advocates for your brand and company. To achieve this, however, you need to ensure you’re always focused on creating a motivating company culture and the best employee experience possible.

This will mean something different to every business; maybe it’s listening more to employee feedback, engaging directly with employees about their experience or setting up a dedicated team to make improvements. But for almost every company out there, it starts with ensuring your employees have the right equipment they need to do their job and to do it well.

 

Power Employee Experience With Technology

Creating a positive employee experience goes deeper than the odd team lunch or free tea and coffee; employee satisfaction is sadly not so superficial.  Having the right technology and equipment to deliver on expected work and productivity is vital to a happy workforce, ultimately making your employees’ working day easier by cutting down on unnecessary hassle and stress.

Whether that’s providing a hosted desktop and Teams to offer remote working options or a unified communications system for your customer support team, offering user-friendly and time-saving technology can help you achieve the engagement and buy-in you’re looking for.

These days, there’s a plethora of affordable and accessible technology and software options for businesses of all sizes available on the market, so there’s no excuse for businesses to ignore such an integral part of the employee experience.

If you’re business is looking to empower your employees through technology, get in touch with Elite Group IT today. Our experienced team of tech experts and account managers can provide all the technology your business needs to drive engagement and employee experience.

 

The Elite Group IT Employee Experience

At Elite Group IT, we pride ourselves on providing an exceptional customer experience to all our clients, and we recognise this starts with offering a superior employee experience. Don’t just take our word for it, however. Here’s what our employees have to say.

“The culture at Elite Group IT definitely sets a high standard of professionalism to ensure the highest quality customer service, as well as providing the right technology for easy communication and good relationships with customers. Ultimately, this enables us to provide quick and professional responses to customer enquiries/faults to ensure our customers are satisfied.”  -Jonny, First Line Support

“Ensuring customers receive the best possible service is key to having happy customers and in turn building a better reputation and encouraging other customers to get in touch. The Elite Group IT employee experience has definitely created a motivated atmosphere for us to work in”–Danny, Sales

 

Elite Group IT is one of the island’s leading IT and unified communication providers, supplying reliable and professional IT and telecoms services to organisations seeking Connectivity, UC & Voice, Cloud Service, IT Software and Security solutions.

For more information on how Elite Group IT can help your business flourish through technology, contact us today.