Banks know the importance of providing an exceptional customer experience because it can help attract and retain customers in today’s competitive landscape. But what about the importance of delivering exceptional employee experience?
Rather than letting a good employee experience happen by chance, it’s time for bank leaders to map out and improve their organization’s employee experience proactively.
Employee experience comprises the entire experience a worker has with a company, from interviewing through departure. These can include significant milestones like getting hired or promoted, as well as day-to-day interactions with bosses, co-workers and customers, or anything else to do with corporate culture.
In today’s modern work environment, it’s also essential to factor in the digital employee experience. Digital experience management (DEM) refers to measuring and optimizing how employees interact with technology in their work environment – everything from physical hardware to collaboration applications and tools. The concept is critical because modern workers rely on technology to get their jobs done. A lack of technology or technology issues can negatively impact their performance and employee experience.
In fact, according to a recent study from Dell and Emotiv, a bad technology experience impedes employee performance by more than 30 percent on average, regardless of a user’s perceived computer literacy. On the flip side, the same study found, employees can achieve 37 percent more in a work day when using technology that is not only newer, but supported with the correct software and services.
Together, these interactions and experiences culminate into an overall employee experience that drives engagement and productivity. Leveraging the concept of DEM and developing a system of tools and processes that create a positive digital experience increases workforce engagement and drives more robust performance.
The Link Between CX and EX
It should come as no surprise that a bad employee experience could lead to a bad customer experience. There is an inextricable link between CX and EX. As a starting point, banks should treat employees like customers and prioritize their needs and experiences to create a supportive and engaging work environment.
By improving the employee experience, banks will see greater employee engagement, which leads to better retention and ultimately a better customer experience. This can be good for business. According to a recent survey from Forbes Insights and Salesforce, companies that prioritized EX to deliver a premium CX achieved 1.8 times faster revenue growth.
On the digital experience side, technology performance also impacts the customer experience. When customers visit a bank in person or online, they prioritize speed and efficiency. Customer experience can be negatively affected if business platforms and applications lag. By improving the performance of the bank’s technology, financial institutions improve the customer experience.
Improving employee experience creates organizational benefits, including:
- Retaining and attracting new employees: Happier employees stay longer, which reduces costs for new employee hiring, onboarding and training. A better work experience also attracts new talent.
- Retaining customers: Happy employees deliver the highest level of service to customers. Banks that align their workers’ needs with their digital workspace make it easy to provide excellent customer service.
- Encouraging advocacy: Customers who are happy with their experience with a company can become brand advocates over time, helping the company acquire warm leads and generate more sales.
- Strengthening revenue streams: An excellent customer experience can lead to more revenue contributed by individual customers, as they choose the company they’re already satisfied with for related services and products. By retaining customers, banks can upsell higher-margin services like home loans, auto loans and college education plans.
What’s important for bank leaders to understand about the connection between customer experience and employee experience is the underlying thread that connects them is digital experience. The line between customer experience and employee experience has become blurred because they both rely on a strong digital experience.
Gone are the days of just training your front line staff to have good customer service. You need to guarantee that both your employees and customers have a strong digital experience to ensure employee productivity, customer satisfaction and retention on both fronts.
By cultivating a positive employee experience, happier employees will go on to provide a positive customer experience. Pleasing your customers and employees will keep your business on the right track in any market, no matter what the future holds.
Fernando Castanheira is chief customer officer at Aternity.
