Welcome to the August edition of our HX Roundup where we’ll be delivering you the best experience-related articles and reports from the last month. From big brands to small independents you’ll find a curated list right here (or sign up here to have it delivered directly to your inbox).
Sources this month include Campaign, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Marketing Week, The Drum, CXM and People Matters.
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The Key To Happy Customers? Happy Employees.
First up is a Harvard Business Review article jointly written by Andrew Chamberlain and Daniel Zhao. They ask the question “Can companies help to achieve high customer satisfaction by investing in employees and ensuring that those who deliver goods and services are themselves satisfied with their jobs?”
They found a clear statistical link between employee wellbeing reported on Glassdoor and customer satisfaction among today’s largest companies.
This article is well written and clearly outlines the link between the customer and employee experience and delves deeper into their research to show how and why to measure and improve both.
Source: Harvard Business Review, Andrew Chamberlain and Daniel Zhao, August 19, 2019.
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Did you know we can analyse Glassdoor reviews to give you insight into your employee experience?
How To Cultivate Human Connections?
Campaign published an article this month tackling what they call the “disconnect between creative and media agencies”. The article and the associated video explain the importance of human connection within content creation. Author Jennifer Small uses insight from industry leaders to talk about the art of storytelling within the media and how creating stories connects with customers’ humanity and in turn, leads to a connection with the brand.
The article includes real-life examples of human connection done well with brands such as Bodyform, Barcardi and Cadbury’s. There is much more to this article than what i have laid out, a definite must-read this month.
Source: CampaignLive, Jennifer Small, June 19, 2019.
The Internal Perception Gap That Is Holding Back Your Employee Experience
Customer Experience expert and author of Punk CX Adrian Swinscoe takes to Forbes to talk about the perception gap that exists between how companies think they are perceived by customers and what customers actually think. He uses PwC’s recent Tech at Work and Employee Experience research report to back up his insight.
One example is “73% of the 12,000 employees from around the world that were surveyed say that they know of systems that would help them produce higher quality work. But, they also report that executives and leaders are not tapping into their collective intelligence.”
His article outlines 3 actionable recommendations to business leaders to improve employee productivity and satisfaction. You can find this at the end of the article linked below.
Source: Forbes, Adrian Swinscoe, August 11, 2019.
Built for Tomorrow: Employee Experience Playbook For The CIO And CHRO
In this article by PeopleMatters, they discuss the importance of creating employee experience as a strategic priority for CIOs and HR leaders. They take a lot of their insight from Forrester’s EX Index which outlines the three top areas in EX as Empower, Inspire and Enable.
They outline how EX involves delivering distinctive experiences for employees that inspires them to do their best job every day. They suggest doing this by applying the principles of customer-centricity to each employee’s task.
Source: People Matters, Ruma Batheja, August 19, 2019.
Is It Time To Audit Your Customer Experience Transformation?
Next up is CX expert and thought leader Annette Franz with a Forbes article all about customer experience transformation. She talks about the “building blocks of successful CX transformation” and how following these steps leads to a win-win scenario for the customer and the company.
I really recommend reading this article if you are looking clear steps to overhauling your CX program or even if you’re just interested in the subject area. Annette lays out nine steps for auditing your current CX practices and ways to improve upon them.
Source: Forbes, Annette Franz, August 16, 2019.
How Digital Is Shaping Customer Experiences In The Beauty Industry.
With this post, we are getting industry-specific with Marketing Week exploring digital’s impact on CX in the beauty industry. The beauty industry is saturated with high-end and drugstore brands with influencers giving (sometimes) honest reviews online beauty brands have to excel at customer experience.
Author Nikki Gilliland claims the most important task is for brands to create a seamless experience across all channels. Read the full article to find out more.
Source: MarketingWeek, Nikki Gilliland, August 15, 2019.
Reimagining Employee Experience In The Age of AI
Next up is an article in Customer Experience Magazine discussing how artificial intelligence impacts today’s workforce. They claim that with so many businesses focusing on the customer experience that employee experience becomes an afterthought. Companies know that if they want to compete with CX heavyweights like Amazon they need to go “above and beyond to ensure superior CX.”
The article also calls out the urgency of improving employee experience claiming “if businesses don’t focus on employee experience, they will be diminishing their success, in the long run, creating lasting inefficiencies for the bottom line.”
Source: CXM, Christopher Savio, August 21, 2019.
Exploring The Customer Journey From Emotion to Logic: Using Psychology In Your Video Sales Funnel
Our final article comes from The Drum’s Simon Green, who is going all scientific on us to prove the power of emotion and using psychology in video marketing. He outlines real-life examples of brands that have incorporated emotion well and not so well. Brands include Dollar Shave Club, Medivet, Codeacademy and Dove.
He breaks the article down into suggestions and examples from each level of the sales funnel especially middle and bottom. The power of emotion is something we are partial to here at Adoreboard, you know being an emotion analytics company and all. Overall, Simon gives a clear and evidence-backed account you can read via the link below.
Source: The Drum, Simon Green, August 19, 2019
No time for reading? Why not listen to this podcast on your commute all about blending customer experience and employee experience hosted by the EX Podcast