MC: 0:00

Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, Jeannie Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences. Ready set action.

Jeannie Walters: 0:31

It's the Experience Action Podcast, and experience is not just reserved for customers. When we talk about experience, we're talking about everyone, including employees, and that's what the question this week is, so listen up.

Listener Question: 0:47

Hey Jeannie. This is Krystal. We have a CX mission statement that outlines the experience we want to create for our customers, but sometimes our employee experience doesn't quite reflect that mission. When there's a gap between what we say we value and what employees actually experience, what steps can we take to bring the two into alignment?

Jeannie Walters: 1:10

Well, thank you, Krystal. This is a great question and you know, when we have a customer experience mission statement that outlines the experience we want to create, that really gets to the core of what is the promise that we're offering customers and what do we want to live up to every time. You are absolutely correct. We need to align that not just with what we're offering customers and the values we're bringing to the customer experience, but we also want that to happen on the inside of the experience with your employees. And in fact, that's so important because if we are not walking the talk of the values that we've identified, if we are not treating employees the way that we want customers treated, then we're basically creating a challenge before we even get to the customer. So let's break down a few things that we can do. First of all, let's start with a little bit of congratulations. The fact that you have a customer experience mission statement shows intention, shows that you want the experience to be meaningful, and that is really powerful. So the fact that that work has been done, that there is that foundation, that is really important, and I want you to give yourselves credits for that, because that isn't something that every organization has. So the fact that you're recognizing this Krystal, the fact that you are seeing the gap between the customer experience that you say you want to deliver and the values that go along that and the way that employees are feeling well, that's really important, and now it's time to bring that to more than just you. I would say, if you can find a way to raise that awareness, to recognize and simply name that this is happening, that you know what, without a strong employee experience, we cannot deliver a great customer experience. That is the foundation of what we do, and so we need to ask big questions like where exactly are employees feeling that disconnect? Where are they feeling friction in the journey that they're experiencing every day? What systems, processes, policies, sometimes people, I hate to say that, but it's true are unintentionally undermining the customer experience mission. If we talk about having a convenient and frictionless experience for customers and yet every time I do something, I need to sign into a clunky system that isn't frictionless and doesn't feel good to me as an employee. That might be one of those things.

Jeannie Walters: 3:39

Now, if you are recognizing that and also recognizing that you might not be able to change that overnight, that's okay. You can talk about it, you can identify it and let people know. We're aware that this misalignment is happening. And if you don't know if people are feeling this way, this is where employee surveys can be very helpful. Simple polls. A lot of us use Slack for quick communication. You can do a poll in Slack in many cases where you could ask some of your colleagues how do you feel about this, what are you seeing? Get some information that helps you build the case to really address it.

Jeannie Walters: 4:16

And then, of course, if you are a CX leader, we want to reinforce the why behind that CX mission. Employees need to know not just what the mission is and the words included, but the why. Why it matters when people understand how our individual work impacts the larger experience that means so much. That's what people are looking for when they talk about alignment with values. So if we do this well, if we can live up to our mission not just in the customer experience but also in the employee experience, the organization will be more successful. So paint the picture of what it would look like if we could get that alignment. We would maybe have some more sharing. We would make sure that we are delivering to customers in the way that is most meaningful to them. Everybody would feel good about that and employee morale would go up as well. And then another way to think about this is to design the employee experience around the customer experience mission.

Jeannie Walters: 5:22

One of my favorite approaches, once we develop that customer experience mission statement, is to get people who are onboarding employees, training employees, to really include that as part of the regular process. We want to introduce employees to the customer experience mission early and often. We want them to see that this isn't something that we just talk about. This is how we behave. This is a tool we use to evaluate are we living up to this mission or not. So when we design around that, we can ask questions like is onboarding really reflective of this mission and our values? Are our internal tools and workflows representing the ease, the intuition, all of the things that we want for our customers, and do we reward behaviors that align with the mission? That's a great thing to ask too.

Jeannie Walters: 6:18

We have a whole process around what we call mission moments. That's really about recognizing and rewarding the employees who live up to that mission and over-deliver on it, as well as being honest about those moments when maybe we didn't live up to that mission. Maybe it's time that we look at this differently, try to figure out how can this never happen again? It becomes less about the employee and it becomes more about our shared vision and goal around the customer. It can be a very powerful tool.

Jeannie Walters: 6:52

And then, of course, we want to empower employees. We want people to feel equipped to make better decisions based on that customer experience mission. And so if you identify that, sometimes that's enough to shrink the gap, if you will, between what the employee experience is and what that mission is promising. If people can feel empowered to make better decisions, to sometimes use their judgment based on the mission, then instead of having a whole bunch of individual judgment calls, you can look at that decision and say did we live up to the mission or not? Once you start making decisions that align around the customer experience mission, that's when you see real outcomes happen.

Jeannie Walters: 7:35

And then the last thing I want to encourage you to think about is can you look at the employee experience and the customer experience together when you're measuring success, because we need the employee experience to be aligned. We need people to feel like they are empowered with the right information, the right tools and, yes, the right mission to really deliver on the customer experience. There are so many connections between how your employees feel and what your customers feel, so can you look at employee engagement and how people are feeling in that moment along with what are customers telling you about that moment? Once you start aligning that data, you start seeing some real connections that either aren't there, that should be, or connections that you want to make. When we look at things like customer feedback and it's related to certain teams or departments, we're going to start seeing patterns. Sometimes we want to celebrate that team and say, look, this team is getting it right. Take those behaviors, those best practices, those actions and start seeing if you can incorporate that throughout other parts of the employee experience. And if you have a team that's maybe struggling or a department that is giving you negative feedback about both the employee experience how they're feeling as well as what they're doing, then it's time to really go over that feedback, create action plans around what you can do to bring those things into alignment.

Jeannie Walters: 9:13

Now, the whole purpose of a customer experience mission statement is to allow everybody to understand that they have an important role to play in providing a meaningful customer experience to the people that you serve. Now notice I said the people you serve, because sometimes that means internal customers, that means employees, your colleagues, your leaders, different teams. We have to make this cross-functional and we have to have that cultural commitment. That is part of our framework cultural commitment because it is so important. So I encourage you to look for places in your culture where you could connect those dots a little bit more and then connect more dots and more. And as long as everybody's singing from the same choir book, as they like to say, you will start seeing that alignment. You will start seeing people feel better about the work that they do, feel prouder about delivering those moments for customers and ultimately, your customer experience will improve as well.

Jeannie Walters: 10:14

Good luck with this. Let us know how it goes, and thank you for asking. And thank you for being out there and all the work that you're doing every day to improve customer experiences. It is meaningful and it matters and I appreciate you spending a little time with me on the experience action podcast. Now, if you have a question, I encourage you to go ahead and record that for me. Do what Krystal did here. You can do it on your laptop or phone. It's super easy. Go to askjeannievip and record your question and maybe we'll feature you. Thanks for being here, everybody, and we'll see you next time. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience, check out free resources at experienceinvestigatorscom, where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.