5 steps to improve your employee experience for happier customers

Studies show that there’s an undeniable link between employee experience and customer experience. According to Forrester, companies with highly engaged employees score 81% higher in terms of customer satisfaction than their competitors. And new data shows that combining employee experience with customer experience can increase revenue by up to 50%.

Learn how to start improving your employee experience for a better customer experience with these 5 steps:

1. Give employees room to grow

There’s nothing less motivating than doing a job that’s too easy. Bore-outs are real, and if an employee doesn’t find the challenge they’re looking for within your organization, they’ll start searching elsewhere sooner or later.

Make sure that your employees reach their full potential by staying one step ahead and keeping them in the loop when new opportunities arise.

2. Don’t micromanage

Unhappy, unmotivated employees don’t deliver strong customer experiences. At TOPdesk, we are big on trust, freedom, and responsibility. We trust our employees to come up with cool initiatives and ideas. And they always have the freedom to tackle their tasks whichever way they want, as long as they take responsibility for their work.

By taking a step back and empowering your employees to make the right decisions, you’ll motivate them to take initiative and help customers, without fear of failure. Make employee wellbeing part of your organization’s DNA – not just an issue for HR.

3. Listen to your team

An engaging work environment looks different for every organization. Rather than relying on your assumptions, speak to your employees to find out what they need in order to feel happy and motivated at work. Nobody can provide better insights into your team’s needs than your team themselves – and you might be surprised at what you discover.

4. Highlight employee wellbeing

Make sure to consider your employees’ wellbeing in all aspects of your business operations. Remember: our working lives are influenced by numerous factors inside and outside of the office, including social interactions, community, and physical and mental health, so it’s crucial to make employee wellbeing part of your organization’s DNA – not just an issue for HR. In doing so, you’ll be much better positioned to create an outstanding employee experience.

Read about the ingredients of a successful organizational culture.

5. Focus on people before tools

Employees who use well-designed technology at work are 5.6 times more likely to report their company “has experienced extreme revenue growth” the past year. But with such an abundance of tools out there, it’s important to find tech that actually fits your people and makes their work easier. It might sound obvious, but lots of companies make the mistake of investing in flashy new tools, which employees have to work around, rather than choosing technology that supports their organizational needs.

Discover the 5 top things to consider when selecting an ITSM solution.

Want to take your employee experience to the next level?

Our workforce enablement e-book provides you with practical tips and strategies for getting started with employee experience and creating an engaging, flexible work environment for your team.

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These are just a few examples of amazing personalized customer experiences in the world of B2C (business-to-consumer) organizations

But why should you care? IT departments have nothing in common with B2C organizations, right? Think again.

Customer is king (and they have increased expectations)

At first sight, your IT department’s customer service may seem miles away from an average B2C organization. But they’re more alike than you think.

Think about it: every single one of your customers is also a B2C customer. They’ve all had great B2C customer experiences. It’s no surprise that they have come to expect the same seamless, personalized experience from your services. As customer experience improves in the B2C world, customer expectations of IT services rise as well.

The solution? IT departments have to think more like B2C organizations. Here’s how:

1. Provide omnichannel support

How can your customers contact your IT department? Do they have to email or phone you? Or even walk up to the IT service desk to get help? This will no longer do.

Customers are used to interacting with B2C organizations across several platforms, including the organization’s website, social media, chat, and email. And they expect the same from your IT department.

With omnichannel support, your customers can reach out to your department how and when it’s right for them. Whether they use WhatsApp, Skype, Microsoft Teams or prefer email or chat, all of their problems and questions can be handled in one place, creating a seamless omnichannel customer experience just like the B2C ones they’re used to.

2. Start customer journey mapping

“Know thy customer” is the number one rule of B2C marketing. And for good reason. But researching your customers shouldn’t be limited to B2C organizations alone.

When you develop a deep understanding of your customers, you can create a customer experience that’s tailored to their specific wants, needs, and problems. The more relevant you make your services, the more your customers will use and appreciate them.

But how do you get to know your customer?

Start customer journey mapping.

Customer journey mapping lets you step into your customers’ shoes and see what they experience when they request a service from your department. How easy is it to request a new laptop, for example? What are your customers’ interactions with your department like? When they pick up their laptop, is everything set up and ready to go? And how easily can customers reach your department when they have questions?

Customer journey mapping answers these questions and gives you insight into the biggest improvements and easiest quick wins when it comes to customer experience. As customer experience improves in the B2C world, customer expectations of IT services rise as well.

3. Invest in self-service

Your customers are busier than ever. And B2C organizations know this: that’s why they design customer experiences that enable their customers to make decisions on their own schedule. (Think, for example, of customers being able to choose their own time slot for a delivery.)

Your IT department can do the same with self-service. A self-service portal gives your customers the power to find their own answers in their own time – whether that’s during or outside office hours.

This makes life a lot easier for your customers. In fact, 67% of consumers say they prefer self-service over speaking to a company representative.

Start by making the answers to frequently asked questions such as “How do I log onto the company WiFi?”, “How do I set an automatic out-of-office reply?” and “How do I connect my laptop to a printer?” readily available for your customers.

Make your IT department truly customer-focused

Want to learn more about improving your customer experience? We wrote the book on it! Download our customer-centricity e-book for invaluable tips and tricks that make your services stand out.

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Want to know how to improve the way your customers experience your services? If you don’t ask them, you’ll never know.

In order to continuously improve customer satisfaction, it is important to keep the feedback loop active. How do you get a customer to continue providing feedback?

10 creative methods of obtaining customer feedback.

1. Set up a feedback mailbox

Set up a feedback mailbox and market it to your customers. You can use posters around the office, notes in your email signatures, or even include banners in your staff portal or self-service tool. To make this work, you’ve got to treat the mailbox as a two-way communication instrument. Always remember to reply to your customers and thank them for taking their time to give feedback.

2. Use sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis means you collect conversation data from your services and analyze key words and phrases to work out what the customer consensus is on your services. Brands often use sentiment analysis as a way of measuring their success on social media. Start by running support ticket email conversations through a free word cloud tool for a visual representation of what you and your customers are saying to each other.

3. Appoint a Customer Satisfaction Manager

Who is responsible for handling customer feedback in your organization? Do you know? Does anyone? If there isn’t a specific person who makes sure feedback is top priority in the organization, you should consider appointing a Customer Satisfaction Manager. Allowing someone to focus purely on customer satisfaction makes it much more likely you’ll see results. And while the Customer Satisfaction Manager takes the lead in handling customer feedback, the rest of the organization should of course follow suit and operate towards the same goal.

4. Broadcast surveys

One of the oldest tricks in the book: building a simple survey and publishing it as a form. You can send this form out in an email to your whole company, or to a select list of customers. Just make sure your survey is as user-friendly as possible. Take a look at these 4 steps to creating customer-centric customer satisfaction surveys.

5. Use an ‘in the moment’ approach

Apart from sending out full surveys on a regular basis, you can also ask feedback with embedded feedback tools. Such tools allow your customers to rate their experience with your services while it’s still fresh in their mind. It doesn’t get more ‘in the moment’ than this. Your customers won’t have any difficulties rating your services either: the rating process in these tools is like rating an app in the App Store or using those smiley face buttons you sometimes see at the airport.

6. Have a clear feedback process

Implement a feedback process if you want to keep the feedback loop running. Without a proper process in place, requesting and handling feedback becomes very unstructured. Is it rush hour at your service desk? Obviously, gathering feedback might not be everyone’s top priority. Your Customer Satisfaction Manager can set up a feedback process so your departments always know how and when to process feedback, even when they’re very busy.

7. Pay courtesy calls

Want to gain valuable feedback from customers that know your services well? Find out who your most frequent customers are and why they’re contacting you so often. Do this on a weekly or monthly basis: simply run a report of tickets from the past months and contact your top ten requesters. It’s quick and targeted, and word will soon get out that you’re taking a more proactive approach to feedback. A piece of advice: make sure to also seek out customers who have given negative feedback. It may sound counter-intuitive, but digging deep into those bad reviews will only help you understand your customer better. Start looking for angry customers with help of this blog on how to turn bad reviews into useful feedback.

8. Organize feedback sessions

Meeting your customers face-to-face is often the most effective way to get their opinion. Want to facilitate a platform for giving feedback? Organize a monthly workshop, an advisory board, or lunch-and-learn sessions with different sets of your customers. Make sure you invite a small, mixed group of people so none of the voices are lost and you receive the most representative feedback possible.

9. Swap jobs

Don’t judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Approach different people and departments in your organization and ask if you can spend some time learning about their job. This could be done in an hour, but you can also shadow a colleague for two whole days. Most people enjoy telling you about what they do – and giving you their two cents. Once you know what your customers think, you can help them become more productive, for example by removing any obstacles that are in their way.

10. Be transparent and share improvements

Sharing your feedback reports with your customers is a good way of showing your organization you value their feedback, and that you don’t shy away from being transparent about what you need to improve. Use your customers’ feedback to update your service catalogue, for example. This blog explains how your service catalogue can be key in increasing your customer satisfaction. When you show your customers you actually use their feedback to improve your services, they’ll keep you in the know. Happy customers, happy you!

Looking for more inspiration?

Encouraging feedback in the workspace leads to happier, more satisfied customers. The ultimate method of finding out what your customers really think and feel about your services is customer journey mapping. Customer journey mapping combines several of the tips above and will help you truly step into your customers’ shoes. Download our Customer Journey Mapping Toolkit to get to know your customers through and through.

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