The State of CX 2023 Report by NTT revealed some interesting insights about the interplay between employee experience and customer experience, and how improved employee experience leads to better CX delivery and ultimately, higher ROI.
Employee experience, aka EX, is essentially the employees’ journey within the organization. This includes the physical, technological, and cultural environments that employees engage within all aspects of their employment.
The report revealed that while 97% of CEOs said they had a CX strategy in place, only 81% had an EX strategy. In the CX context, highly motivated and trained agents will generally deliver a higher quality of CX in all interactions they handle.
However, not having a strong EX strategy works in direct opposition to general organizational goals. A strong agent experience can lead to productivity improvements, increases in innovation, and reductions in turnover rates of agents—resulting in higher returns across the board.
How does EX result in better CX?
Apart from the aforementioned benefits, a solid EX strategy can also result in better CX delivery, as evidenced by the data in the Report.
70% of CX managers said that human-led support is a critical channel in CX, despite the seeming popularity of AI. More than two-thirds of all customer experience interactions require some form of human support.
In this environment, EX has played a pivotal role in enabling technologies that allow employees to be more effective, drive empowerment, and create optimal efficiency. The report also found that top-performing organizations had significantly improved their employee satisfaction. Top-performing in this context were organizations that had over 10% YoY revenue growth and over a 15% operating profit margin compared to the last financial year.
EX directly impacts the organization’s bottom line. When agents are more satisfied with their working environment and conditions, they are more likely to provide a better customer experience and contribute to positive CX outcomes.
Additionally, EX’s focus on collaboration and mobility tools further improves efficiency and effectiveness—translating to improved CX.
An MIT Technology Review Insights report developed in partnership with Genesys revealed that employees are also looking for similar things as customers from businesses—personalization, value, and efficiency.
The NTT Report also found that 70% of organizations are looking to implement hybrid work enablement to drive these EX results. This makes it essential for organizations to move their contact center operations to the cloud.
While agent experience has to be managed during CX migration from legacy platforms CCaaS, this can be effectively ensured through comprehensive agent training and change management so that agents are ready, motivated and proficient to work well within a cloud CX environment.
The benefits of having a fully-fledged CCaaS operation staffed by competent and well-trained agents far outweigh the costs for organizations that are willing to make this investment.
What should businesses prioritize for better EX for better CX outcomes?
Organizations must focus on the implementation of new technologies that enable their employees, drive empowerment, and create optimal efficiency.
This includes both CX and EX, as 95% of organizations said that cloud enablement is vital to derive favorable CX and EX outcomes. In this instance, CCaaS migration must be a key consideration for any business looking to ensure continuity and establish a competitive advantage.
Embracing new technologies to evolve CX delivery and utilizing the insights brought about by the newly prioritized EX can help organizations directly improve their bottom lines.