Creating a compelling customer experience, regardless of your industry, is required to stay competitive.
In a highly competitive world where products and services are becoming more commoditized, organizations have to constantly develop innovative ways to compete for loyal customers and the talent that will keep them loyal.
Going beyond mere price and service competitiveness, leading firms are now looking to create more engaging customer experiences as a way to differentiate and drive greater loyalty. They are looking to do this by providing not just a transaction at an attractive price point, but a complete experience that is aesthetically pleasing, highly personalized, and technology enabled.
Starbucks was among the pioneers in the brave new customer experience frontier. They emphasized aesthetics by designing stores to be reminiscent of a European café, and they offered loyalty cards (and now mobile apps) that could be scanned at the counter that not only helped speed check-out but also provided personalized rewards based on purchase history. They also provided Wi-Fi (now free!) to customers so they could hang out and check email or write a paper for school.
The actual product they were selling was certainly not new and consisted of a beverage (coffee) that was readily available to consumers in the home, office or through various other retail outlets; and they charged a significant premium for it.
And people flocked to their stores. The use of design and technology (point of sale, loyalty cards/apps, Wi-Fi) to create a compelling customer experience has led to explosive growth over the last 20 years. In 1993 Starbucks had 272 stores; now there are over 17,000 worldwide (a growth rate of over 6,000%).
What hasn’t been mentioned thus far is the people aspect to the customer experience – the employees that are on the frontlines ensuring that the experience is not diminished by surly, inattentive, inefficient, uninformed, or disinterested staff members.
A superbly technology-enabled customer experience punctuated with lousy service will not win the day. This is certainly true in the retail world as well as any other industry where some level of personal service is part of the total offering and critical to meeting customer/client expectations.
Starbucks did not achieve its phenomenal growth by having a lousy employee experience. With turnover rates roughly half the industry average, and placement on Fortune’s 100 Best Places to Work for the last 13 years in row, it’s safe to assume a strong correlation between employee experience, customer experience and high performing organizations.
Impacting The Employee Experience
To be successful organizations need to understand that creating a great customer experience first requires focusing on the employee experience. Organizations need to apply the same principles that Starbucks used (design, personalization, technology enabled) to create a compelling customer experience to deliver an outstanding employee experience.
There are many contributing factors to an outstanding employee experience and, just as customer experience can be measured by customer loyalty, employee experience can similarly be measured by employee engagement.
The research organization Gallup and consultancy Towers Watson have conducted studies on employee satisfaction for years and have developed models for measuring employee engagement. Gallup defines engaged employees as those who “work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward.”
Gallup argues (rightfully so) that effective leadership and great managers are the primary drivers of employee engagement. Technology solutions will not compensate for deficiencies in this realm. However, when you look at several of the factors in the employee engagement model it is clear that the effective application of technology solutions can help create happy employees and ultimately happy (and profitable) customers.
In our increasingly knowledge-driven and service-focused economy, “getting the job done” more often than not requires having ready access to knowledge stored digitally or in a co-worker’s head. Flexible work arrangements are becoming the norm, whereby employees can work from home based on some agreed upon schedule, or as part of their job description (e.g. outside sales).
Studies have shown that providing these types of flexible arrangements can have a positive impact on employee engagement. The key point is to provide flexibility without hampering their ability to do their job effectively. Irrespective of where employees are located, the appropriate application of technology solutions can improve the employee experience by helping to reduce communication “friction” by easing access to people and information, as well as “noise” by delivering relevant content personalized to the user.
Reducing employee frustration created by not being able to quickly and easily find the right information is a key way in which technology can help drive improved employee engagement.
