Part 2: Understanding CX, EX, and how to measure Return on Experience

In this 3-part series, I discuss what we mean by return on experience, the link between customer and employee experience, and how to operationalize great experience in a way that is repeatable and adaptive to change. These concepts are taken from my book, The Center of Experience, available in print and digital versions.

In this second part of the series, I’m going to discuss how customer and employee experience are related, as well as how to measure return on experience.

The link between customer and employee experience

Let’s start  by talking about how your customer experience and employee experience are connected, and why that is so important.

In my recent book, The Center of Experience, customer experience and employee experience can be combined to what I term “brand experience.” Just as customer experience is the customer’s perception of every interaction they have with a company, and employee experience is the same from the employee’s perspective, this brand experience encompasses all audiences and all touchpoints.

The link between customer and employee experience is clear. Think about the last time you went into a store. What was the experience like when you interacted with an employee? Were they representative of how the company positions themselves in their marketing communications?

How about the last time you used a SaaS platform? Did you think to yourself: did the person who designed this product ever actually have to perform my job before? Or was it, instead, an intuitive experience, created by someone inspired and engaged to understand their end customers.

Whether an employee is behind the scenes or a front-line employee, they have an effect on the customer experience. Thus, customer and employee experience are linked.

This is not to say that a company can’t have a good customer experience without great employee experience, or vice versa. In fact, sometimes companies treat their employees well to the detriment of pushing them harder to do their best work for customers. 

Likewise, companies can sometimes drive their workers hard to serve customers, despite not treating them to the best employee experience. They can sometimes make up for high turnover rates with rigid processes and other workarounds.

All of that said, in the case where CX and EX are not both optimal, the results are rarely sustainable. For the best results, companies should focus on their overall brand experience.

How to measure return on experience

Now let’s discuss how to measure return on experience by talking about the components of creating a great measurement program.

Define Your KPIs

First, remember that the things that are often easiest to measure are not always the most valuable. Start first with your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) before deciding what and how you will measure. As you dive into your platforms and measurement tools, you will undoubtedly run into statistics and metrics that you can plot out on charts, but just because there is a pre-formatted report that might look impressive, doesn’t mean it will show you meaningful measurements of your customer experience.

Types of CX Measurements

While we don’t have time to go into a lot of detail on each type of measurement, I’ll summarize each here, as well as how you can think of each:

• Qualitative, or things that can be subjectively measured like Net Promoter Scores (NPS) or sentiment analysis.

• Quantitative, or things that can be objectively measured like repeat purchases, referrals, visits, or complaints. Note: this is often the easiest set of things to measure, though often must be tied to multiple touchpoints and/or platforms to be most meaningful.  

• Product, or how a product or service performs, such as the up-time of a mobile app or website, effectiveness of search engine functionality. These types of measurements are often diagnostic in nature.

• Process, or the workflows and systems that enable a customer experience to occur. This includes how long it takes to respond to a customer request, or the number of steps or “hands” that need to touch a request in order for it to be fulfilled. A lot of this is based around efficiency and waste.

Mapping the customer journey

A critical part of improving the customer experience is to truly understand the path a customer takes to get from start to finish. For this, the tool of customer journey mapping is incredibly helpful and increasingly used by all types of organizations. 

For large organizations, the thought of mapping all customer journeys can be overwhelming, so it’s best to start small, with only a handful. It is more important to be thorough in mapping only a few, instead of trying to capture every possible persona, journey, and edge case.

How to prioritize measurements

Finally, with all of the potential data you can measure, and a good understanding of your customer journeys, you will be left with a potentially daunting amount of metrics that you can use to measure your customer experience.

This requires a method to prioritize your measurements, and your reporting on those metrics. Different companies approach this in different ways, but your KPIs should help point the way here. Create a method to prioritize your measurements by taking into consideration the following:

• Alignment with KPIs

• Potential audience(s) they impact

• Potential for improvement when measured

• Cost and difficulty to measure

In my experience, creating a weighting system based on those categories and similar ones can help you easily prioritize and determine what measurements will have the biggest impact.

As you can see, while the specifics may vary from business to business and industry to industry, there is a clear link between customer and employee experience. It is also important to understand the types of customer experience measurements available, as well as to be able to prioritize them for your organization and your return on experience initiative. 

In the next article, I’m going to discuss how to operationalize programs and systems that enable return on experience in your organization.

You can read more about all of these topics and more in my book, The Center of Experience, available in print and digital versions.