The origins of customer experience (CX) go all the way back to the marketing and consumer theories established in the 1960s. Around this time organisations began to consider putting their customers at the heart of their approach. Since then the field of CX has become well-established and embedded. And of course in more recent times organisations have made the link between employee experience (EX) and customer experience.
But it’s useful to reflect on the world of CX when developing your approach to EX and consider what you can learn and apply. This article from Kerrie Hughes, who is a Service Design Consultant at SPARCK, shares what she calls some “CX nuggets for EX”. She shares some great advice and lessons you can apply straight away to your work in EX. Over to Kerrie:
I’ve been working in the field of CX since 2001 when the company I was at had the vision to set up a customer experience team. As a new team we were passionate and ready to fight the fight on behalf of our customers. But being a very new discipline this wasn’t something you could buy a book about or google, in fact google was barely a thing! So we went with our gut and what felt right. Our early focus was on defining our brand and translating that across our touchpoints. We did journey mapping sessions and banned our SMEs from talking process and instead asked them to ‘be the customer’. I loved it and have never looked back. So, as a veteran of CX I’ve been asked ‘what can EX learn from CX?’
- A good place to start is at the beginning. If you google ‘design process’ you will see that all good design starts with words such as research, analyse, understand, listen. In the design thinking process this step is known as “Empathise’. Essentially this step is about developing a deep understanding of the people you are designing for and the problem you are trying to solve. As a CX practitioner this can be the trickiest, and most difficult part to get an organisation to commit to. There is an urgency, and therefore a tendency to jump straight to solutions. It takes time, and money to empathise. But spending time up front to get out there and find the people you are designing for is critical. Utilising one or more of the many methodologies to truly understand and discover who they are, what their needs are, what frustrates them, what motivates them, what the real problem is that needs solving is perhaps the most crucial step.
This is where my jealousy kicks in as in the world of EX, this Holy Grail of insight, that is the difference between good design and well, guess work, does not even require you to leave the (virtual) building! No expensive recruitment, just your employee’s time. So, seize this opportunity with both hands. Build in this time to your work. I promise you that time spent here will make a significant and positive impact on your employee experience design. It also has the added benefit of providing research and insight to call on when dealing with HIPPOs (highest paid persons opinion).
- My next tip for EX design is…don’t be afraid of emotions. It’s an often used quote because it’s too perfect not to call on but as Mary Angelou said ‘People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ This emotional layer is something that should always be captured when creating the ‘as-is’ journey map. Personally, I always capture ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ separately and use these in the write up to draw the emotional curve and identify the good, bad and neutral points. A great tool I use when designing new experiences is the Dramatic Arc, also referred to as ‘Boom. Wow. Wow! WOW! BOOOM! Taken from film, stories and plays, it makes you consider how you want to design the emotional experience and be deliberate and appropriate with where your Booms and your Wows are.
- Finally, remember it’s a marathon not a sprint, the work is never finished and things always change. So, identify the key experiences, the moments that matter and prioritise to avoid being overwhelmed. Monitor and manage the experiences by building in mechanisms for employees to easily feedback and continue to iterate, refine and adapt.
If you’d like to learn more about using empathy, gathering employee insights or getting comfortable with emotions in your EX then get in touch today.
