What Successful Customer Experience Leaders Can Learn From Human Resources

Customer experience as a discipline is constantly evolving because it has only been around since the mid to late 2000’s.  It is not surprising that where it fits in the organization is also evolving.   Over the course of my 10 year career in customer experience, I was part of different functions including a standalone department, a customer service & support team, a combined marketing & customer experience function, a customer success team and the human resources department.  Yes, Human Resources! 

I distinctly remember when I was told that I was going to be reporting into the Chief People Officer.   It was a both a low point and a high point in my customer experience career.   Like so many other customer experience leaders, I began my role in customer experience as a department of one.   I reported into an human resources leader early in my customer experience b career.   The Chief People Officer who I reported into had no idea what customer experience was and frankly, I do not think she really cared.  I was tossed in her group because the organization did not know exactly where customer experience fit.   I felt like the odd stepchild.

Like so many professional situations, the challenges that we encounter always come with opportunities.   While my HR manager did not know anything about customer experience, I was given carte blanche for my customer experience role.  I also learned a lot about human resources from my supervisor and my peers which helped shaped my perspective on customer experience.  

Here are my top customer experience lessons that I learned from HR:

1.       Employees Matter

The HR function focuses on the entire employee experience from attracting potential employees, hiring, onboarding, performance reviews, salary reviews, promotions, and employee turnover.   HR always knew that the success of an organization evolved around happy, motivated and engaging employees.

Many companies have jumped on the customer experience bandwagon since its conception in the mid 2000’s.  Many have succeeded in making progress but many have also failed.  Why?   Unhappy employees!  Without happy employees, any attempts to create a customer experience discipline will be futile.  Employees will sabotage your efforts.  Even if customer facing employees “go along” with it, customers recognize fake, disingenuous attempts of showing empathy.  It will definitely sound and feel like that they read from a script.

Fast forward to 2020, employee experience is now recognized as an important component to a customer experience strategy and execution.  Every company is now wrestling with it.

2.       Human Resources Own Employee Experience Insights

While I was sitting in my human resources leaders’ meetings, I was amazed at all the tools and data that we had on the employee population.  There were all the traditional things such as annual performance reviews and salary benchmarking.   However, I also discovered that we had an Employee Satisfaction Survey which evolved into an Employee Net Promoter Score Survey.  There were also valuable Exit Interviews conducted by our human resources team whenever employees left the organization. 

Why should a customer experience professional care so much about how employees feel?   Human resources related issues such as low salaries and incompetent managers should be left to the human resource professionals.   Employees will often provide insights about the company’s products, processes or policies which impede their ability to do their job.  This has a ripple effect downstream causing great pain to the customer.   Such great feedback is worth its weight in gold to a human resource professional.

Some examples of insights which I have seen from Employee Net Promoter Surveys or Employee Exit Interviews include:

- Sales over selling on what the product can do.  Implementation teams are left to deliver the bad news and customer expectations are never met.

- Customer success is a dumping ground for all the company’s troubles.  They face the wrath from unhappy customers even though they have no authority to fix the problems.

- The company work in silos.  The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

Do these issues sound familiar in your organization?   Take a closer look at employee feedback from your human resources department.  You will be amazed what you will discover to piece together the customer experience puzzle.

3.       Partner With Human Resources to Advance Customer Experience

Communicate the intersection between employee experience and customer experience to your human resources team.    Show them how a bigger story could be told when the connection between employee experience and customer experience is evident.   It brings the entire experience ecosystem to life.

Begin two way sharing.  Share key customer experience data with your human resources professionals especially ones that could be traced back to an employee experience.  For instance, long wait times for customers calling for help almost always mean the employees are understaffed. 

Volunteer to sift through employee experience data.   As a customer experience leader who loves data, volunteer to read through employee comments and assist in cataloging employee issues.  Your assistance will be greatly appreciated especially if there is no Voice of Employee text analytics platform.  Even if there is one, a second set of eyes will be most appreciated.

4. Build Human Resources Trust By Demonstrating Common Concern For Employee Experience

Rightly so, human resources professionals are very protective of their sensitive employee data.  They will not share what their employee data with just anyone.  So what does a customer experience leader do?  Build Trust.

Begin by asking for a small sample of employee experience data.  Accept a redacted version with employee names scrubbed if necessary.   Help to show them insights by connecting the dots between customer experience and employee experience.

If there is no employee satisfaction or employee net promoter survey, never try to launch one without the involvement of the human resources group.   Engage with your human resources team, explain why getting employee experience feedback is good for both human resources, and customer experience.