Creating a Positive Employee Experience
It’s been a couple of years since “customer experience” became a marketing buzzword. At this point, a great customer experience is no longer a differentiator but something customers have come to expect. In both B2B and B2C, customers have so many options that a great experience is often the difference between making a sale and losing one, or between making a one-time sale and gaining a loyal customer. In order to deliver the kind of experience your customers expect, you first have to create the conditions for a positive employee experience.
Employee experience is important because it feeds customer experience. It’s more than just making employees happy. It’s a way of doing business that requires a clear vision, consistent values, and well-defined processes that empower employees to make the right decision, get help when they need it, and grow as members of a team. This isn’t just for customer-facing employees, either. When every employee can have a consistent, positive experience at work, the whole business thrives.
It Starts With Strategy
Creating a positive employee experience begins at the top, with strategy and values. When we work on strategy with clients, we begin with three questions: Who are you? What do you do that makes you different? Why do you matter? The answers to these questions are the foundation of everything you do as a business owner, how you do it, and why you do it. They inform all of your processes, how your employees work, and what kind of relationships with customers you build. Your values will inform the way you pursue your strategy. If they are held to consistently, they will permeate company culture and provide clear and consistent expectations for every employee.
Build Processes That Reduce Confusion and Foster Collaboration
A “process” is a series of actions that leads to a desired outcome. Your business should have clear guidelines for typical processes that outline the right way or best way to complete a task or achieve an outcome. When these processes are thoughtfully mapped and thoroughly documented, employees know what they’re doing and how to do it, and if they don’t, they know where to find the right information. Employees become more competent, more empowered, and less frustrated by inefficiency. A better experience for them translates to a better experience for your customers.
Get Help from the Right Technology
There are tons of software products out there that will help you run your business more smoothly, resulting in a better experience for you, your employees, and your customers. The most important of these is a Customer Relationship Management system. CRM is a way of doing business built around a software system that brings all customer interactions and past purchases into one place, fostering communication and collaboration between teams and providing tools for automation, data analysis, and project management.
How do you know which tools are the right ones? What’s right for you depends on where you are and where you want to be. The right CRM, ERP, project management software, payroll, or communication tools for your business are the ones that, once implemented, help you achieve your goals more efficiently and with less stress.
Satisfied Employees, Satisfied Customers
As we covered in more detail in this article, most employees want some combination of the same things: competitive compensation, flexible scheduling, a pleasant environment in which they feel respected and welcomed, and the opportunity to grow professionally. When employees feel valued, when there is a sense of consistency and fairness, when they are encouraged to stay curious and keep learning, when they are given tools that make their job easier, the tranquility and good vibes that come from a working environment like that will filter through everything you do and result in the same experience for your customers.
