Customer Experience is central to a business’s development, but it is dependent on various aspects of the organization. It can only be as good as the employee experience, as this reflects the business culture. Nowadays, organizations are shifting from physical workplaces to digital ones, and this transformation is impacting every aspect. While AIOps services and IT operations management software can take care of the system changes, enhancements are necessary at multiple levels. Employee experience is closely linked to customer experience, and therefore, the changes need to apply to and improve both.
Understanding Customer Experience (CX) and Its Importance
Customer satisfaction is crucial to the growth of a business, and it needs to be holistic. Customer Experience or CX involves customer interactions and feedback and helps businesses understand how satisfied the clients are and what their requirements are. CX encompasses the perceptions of customers as they engage with a particular brand, use its products, and benefit from its services. It is not limited to just a customer browsing through what businesses offer and making a purchase. CX helps to determine customer involvement and develop long-term relationships between clients and brands.
While understanding Customer Experience or CX, it is important to also understand that it is similar but not the same as customer service. This is an important distinction that businesses need to make. Customer service is a part of CX, but it primarily involves services made available to the customer during and after purchases. CX includes several more aspects, including the customers’ mindset, what informs their judgments, and their decision-making abilities when approaching a brand, buying a product or service, and then continuing that relationship with the brand.
As businesses start to move into digital or hybrid workplaces and implement digital transformation services and solutions, CX is also changing. It is becoming more dependent on all technological advancements that impact entire systems. This means that processes that enable CX also must be optimized, and the most integral of them are employee interactions that boost organizational productivity.
How Can Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Enhance Customer Experience (CX)?
A business can only grow if it continues to bring in and hold on to its customers. But for that, it is important to ensure that the business itself has a great internal culture. It is the employees who help improve processes and ensure good customer service and experience. If there is a gap between the senior management and the employees, the productivity levels are not going to be as high as expected, and this will reflect in the customer experience. Employee satisfaction often determines the quality of service provided and how existing and potential customers view the business. Therefore, Digital Employee Experience (DEX) can have a significant impact on CX.
Many businesses, especially following the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, have shifted to online workplaces. While this shift has been beneficial in terms of saving costs and improving processes through AI-led Automation, it has also been challenging for employees. With this transformation, it has become critical for businesses to ensure the best DEX possible, as such changes could lead to a drop in productivity levels, which will affect CX.
CX is dependent on support, which is usually facilitated by the employees. Improvements to DEX can ensure that the support offered by employees will be superior. For example, a good business culture within the organization can help employees be more patient and empathetic towards customers seeking assistance. Enhancing DEX can also help provide proper training to employees. Training sessions can be tailored to their work and their needs. This will allow employees to provide better service or come up with innovative ideas that improve CX.
Communication is an aspect of CX, and it has an important role to play in terms of establishing a connection between clients and the brand. One of the first instances in which a customer needs to communicate with a business is when they are looking at products and have certain questions. Now, at times, customers must wait for support employees to get back to them and such manual processes take a lot of time. These also increase the pressure on employees, who must tackle several other tasks. A major part of DEX is to automate mundane tasks, thus allowing employees to focus on other important work. So, if customer queries can be handled by implementing machine learning and other artificial intelligence, it would reduce wait times considerably. This would also allow employees to focus on critical services. This improved DEX will immediately enhance CX.
As businesses continue to utilize technological solutions and move away from traditional work methods, work culture must change. Internal changes that impact DEX will need to involve reviewing company ethics, HR, and employee needs. As the internal culture improves and adapts to digital transformation, it will impact and improve CX.
Conclusion
Most organizations are now customer centric. But to offer the best services and products to customers, the employee pool needs to be motivated and efficient. Thus, enhancing DEX is critical, and that enhancement will make significant improvements to CX. Implementation of new AIOps services and adoption of digital transformation is necessary. To ensure that this happens, organizations are now utilizing and benefitting from AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT operations) and other AI solutions like learning, predictive analytics, and natural language processing.