“How can I get our employees more engaged in our customer experience efforts?” That question was raised in a networking meeting with about a dozen customer experience professionals from various companies in our local area. All agreed that it’s a tough issue. After all, to really be effective with your CX programs you need to get people on-board.
To tackle the issue, each person at the meeting reviewed 10 cards, each listing a common obstacle to employee engagement and scored each one with a 1 (not a big deal), 2 (kind of a big deal), or 3 (definitely a big deal). In the same manner each person reviewed and scored a set of cards listing ideas for getting employees engaged using the same 1 – 2 – 3 scoring system.
After calculating the scores, here’s how our group ratings came out:
TOP OBSTACLES TO EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT:
- Employees hear about focusing on the customer but don’t really know what they are supposed to do.
- Employees don’t see how customer experience initiatives connect to their role in the company.
- The company is more focused on something other than customers – such as products, sales, or productivity.
- Employees are simply unaware that customer experience initiatives exist.
- Employees know about customer initiatives but don’t really understand the goals of the program.
TOP IDEAS TO BUILD EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT:
- Promote your CX initiatives – come up with a name or “brand” so that it stands out.
- Make sure customer issues are on all meeting agendas, particularly ones with broad exposure.
- Distribute customer comments so employees can understand customers in their own words.
- Conduct customer “ride-alongs” or shadow customers to understand their perspective.
- Share journey maps to communicate what a customer experiences.
Can you related with the obstacles listed? Have you tried some of these ideas? While every company is unique and has various levels of customer centricity, its safe to say that we all need to work hard to engage our employees in our customer experience strategies.
