Closing the critical gap in customer experience

Multiple studies in recent years have proven the intrinsic link between employee experience and customer experience: Companies with superior EX metrics tend to have superior CX performance. The logical corollary, of course, is that companies that make improvements on one side will see benefits on the other.

Malcolm Koh has studied the symbiotic relationship between the two disciplines for over two decades as a customer experience leader and innovator in many different industries, from airlines to banking. He now serves as Freshworks’ head of customer experience advisory.

While he’s seen dramatic progress in how companies are digitizing user experience (and personalizing that experience with AI), he also sees a frequent imbalance that needs correction: Companies tend to over-focus on customer experience, sometimes at the expense of employee experience—which ultimately undermines CX. 

In an interview with The Works, Koh explained some of the key differences in perception of EX and CX, and what smart companies need to do to deliver success on both sides.   

Companies are investing heavily in AI to transform customer support. What should their expectation be around ROI, and what does that mean for human agents?

The narrative around the AI journey in CX is that chatbots are going to be fully self-service any day now, but I feel like that’s a little future-forward. In a sense, the rubber hasn’t quite hit the road. 

Human agents are going to be in the mix for a long time because when there’s a problem, customers expect companies to “just fix it.” That’s the desired outcome, and no matter how fast self-service and bots evolve, delivering great CX is still going to remain outcome-based. Today, a lot of times a bot can’t close the last mile. That’s not the customer’s problem. The customer is only interested in the outcome.

The internal processes and complicated handoffs may not always improve experience, and the way organizations are built sometimes runs counter to building relationships and empathy. Efficiency, outsourcing, and partnering all have cost benefits and support scale, but they can also hinder execution, and some details of the outcome get missed. 

What’s an example of that? 

Efficiency, for example, is driving a lot of investment around self-service and chatbots. But efficiency is about ROI, profit and loss, and the bottom line. Efficiency isn’t necessarily about delivering the CX that customers not only want but expect. For a lot of customers, that’s going to come from delivering the human touch.

Companies are typically focused on efficiency and the promise of AI to deliver that efficiency, and they’re pouring resources into building out self-service chatbots—but not as much into their people. There isn’t anywhere near the same level of focus on employee experience. There’s a gap between CX and EX. But they’re symbiotic.

How should companies address that?

There has to be balance. In a lot of cases, we can drive customers to self-service and chatbots because they’re more efficient—and we should. But where’s the other side of that? Where does employee experience kick into the equation?

In a lot of cases, the human touch is going to deliver the outcome that customers want. If your employees aren’t satisfied internal customers, they’re not going to deliver satisfying outcomes to your external customers.

Leaders need to look at their people not just as employees but as their internal customers. There’s potential for these AI tools to enhance their experience, but it takes time and resources.

We have data points that say the investment in EX pays off, but the impact is harder to measure than the efficiencies from chatbots. Maybe it’s counterintuitive to think about CX this way, but the question becomes: How much effort are you willing to put into EX to boost CX? That’s where we need to find the balance and close the gap.

How should leaders make the case that more EX investment is worthwhile?

You see the return twice. You see it in customer retention and also in employee retention. That means less turnover and lower recruiting costs in recruiting, onboarding, and training. On the CX side, we know that customers are willing to pay more for better service. 

As long as a human being helps them solve their problem, they will pay for that experience. They will pay for it tomorrow and down the road with loyalty. We need to see how to measure this value or quantify it.

What does that mean for the future relevance of customer satisfaction scores?

Our focus on CSATs tends to be tagged to turnaround times, but from an outcome perspective, that perspective sometimes falls short. When we talk about measuring CX, we can’t ignore the human factor.

I love CX and I’ve been at it a long time. I get that the folks want to see real value in efficiency, and I don’t blame them—the support industry is geared that way. But we have to look at everything that contributes to the CX ecosystem.

It may be harder to peg it directly, but EX really does impact CX. We’re not geared to think that way when we’re focused so much on streamlining operations, but putting a light on that and putting resources toward that can lead to better outcomes for the customer and better business for the organization.