Employees are your first customers: How to treat them like it
Do you remember your first smart phone? Were you #TeamiPhone or #TeamAndroid? Whichever operating system your phone used then, there is over an 85% chance you’re still loyal to that provider now. Whether it’s the ease of navigation, the three-click rule, or the blue text bubbles, your phone provider intentionally created an experience that impacted your future buying decisions for years to come.
Now do you remember your first job? Who did you work for? Whomever it was, there is less than a 25% chance that you stayed with that company for more than a year. Whether it be the lack of promotion opportunities, the “grind” culture, or the not-so-competitive benefits package, your workplace unintentionally created an experience that impacted your career decisions for years to come.
Companies like Apple and Android have been studying the customer experience for years. They spend billions of dollars on research and development in order to better understand what customers need and want to continuously provide the best quality products and services. Over the past 10 years, companies have prioritized learning about shopping habits, scrolling habits, and living habits to create the ultimate experience for their customers. In the same breath, however, many of those same organizations struggle to create the ultimate experience for their employees. The good news? The call to action is the same. Understand your employees like you do your customers. Although you may not have on-demand access to Big Data for your employees, you’re lucky enough to spend approximately 8 hours a day, 5 days a week getting to know them. Here’s how to start:
1. Start with what you have
There is already data readily available to kick start your research on the employee experience. Don’t reinvent the wheel, start with what you have. The two best (and easiest) places to look: Performance and Turnover. Even if you have to go digging, most organizations have some key data points accessible-
When do you see most employees start to meet their goals?
Where do you see performance peaks and valleys in employees' careers?
At what point in their career are employees leaving your organization?
Where is the organization is that happening most frequently?
Let’s go back to the phone example. The first step those companies are taking to improve their customer experience is observing current and potential customer actions. What series phones are they buying? When are they trading in their phones for new ones? What applications/features are they using most often? These questions tell them simple, yet effective information about their customer experience to help point them in the direction to improve.
2. Identify who to focus on
Now that you have an idea of where to focus, it’s time to explore who to focus on. Expert marketing agencies, like HubSpot, call this process creating personas. Employee personas are created by looking at trends in demographic data, education, employment history, career paths, and performance to identify the different groups of employees who are working for you. Who are the employees that are most likely to be promoted? Which employees perform the most consistently? Targeting personas and building identities around them will help you enhance the experience of the employees that move your business forward, and make more of them in the meantime.
3. Map your current processes
Just as products interact with customers through the marketing, buying, and using process, your employees interact with your organization every day. Look at the current processes your organization has in place for these interactions, including, but not limited to, recruitment marketing, onboarding, training, and performance reviews. When are these interactions happening? Who (and what) are the employees engaging with? And what’s expected of your employees before, during and after each interaction? You can get this information from your leaders, trainers, and HR professionals to get an idea of what’s working and where there is room to grow.
If a phone company is trying to improve their B2B sales process, they might look at the experience of a business owner who may be purchasing multiple phones for their employees. They would analyze what types of advertisements that audience is receiving, the sales professionals they’re interacting with, and the frequency of outreach by customer service representatives once they’re onboard. From there, they can figure out how to enhance their approach or find a new one.
4. Listen to your employees
Now that you’re got an understanding of where your opportunities may be, who your employees are, and what’s happening during their employment, it’s time to take off your “doing” hat and just listen. The same processes that you inquired about with your leaders, trainers, and HR professionals, bring to your employees and ask them how they feel about them. What do they think is working? Where do they see room for improvement? Host focus groups with employees and learn from the source how you can better improve their experience. Keep your eyes and ears open for trends across groups that you can take action on. Many times the answers are right in front of you, you’ve just got to give them a chance to speak.
5. Take action
The final step might seem the most obvious, but is actually the most missed. Doing something. Taking action on what you hear and learn from employees is the key foundation of improving their experience. Let your employees know that you heard them and that you value their input by actually doing something about it.
If Apple or Android chose to ignore their customers they wouldn’t have the loyalty they do today. Instead, they listen and take action to bring customers the best camera quality, the best messaging features, and the most innovative app-navigation based on how customers move their fingers on the screen.
Your employees build your processes, engage your clients, and drive your bottom line. They are the ones truly responsible for propelling your organization forward. Without employees, you wouldn’t have the customers you do today. So that leads me here… Employees are your first customers. So how can you treat them like it today?
Catherine is an Industrial and Organizational psychologist with a background in human resources, sales, marketing, and organization development.
While receiving her Master’s degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Catherine began her career as a top sales executive at a national marketing firm. She used her success as an individual contributor to transition into management and training roles where she discovered her passion for people. She then made the move to a leadership coaching start-up where she developed a sales and marketing strategy from the ground up. In addition to Core Engagement Group, Catherine works as an Organization Effectiveness consultant across a Fortune 100 company fostering employee engagement, orchestrating org design projects, and managing Talent and Succession Planning processes for 4,000+ leaders.
