Want to increase your organization’s profits?
Did you know that the average annual growth rate of experience-driven businesses is 15% higher than companies that do not intentionally create a positive experience for their clients? The keyword here is intentionally. Your clients are already having an experience working with your firm. The only question is, what is that experience, and is it an experience that will drive loyalty?
So, where do you begin? Create a culture of strong employee engagement.
Your clients' experience is only as good as your least engaged employee. Your employees are your brand. They are the face of your brand—the face of your business to the client. It makes sense then that your clients’ experience working with your firm is the result of the engagement and behaviors of your employees.
Key Steps & Strategies: Creating a Culture of Strong Client & Employee Experience
Step 1: Evaluate your Employee Engagement
How engaged are your employees?
Before you assume you have a team full of engaged employees, consider this. According to a 2017 Gallup Employee Engagement Report, only 33% of employees in the U.S. are engaged. These are startling numbers. They speak to the impact that your employee’s experience has on the overall success, and growth, of your organization.
I’m not suggesting employee experience (EX) at your firm is poor. However, with the importance of your team’s engagement on your clients’ loyalty, making EX a priority makes financial sense.
Step 2: Create a strong EX initiative
There is more than a 14% turnover in the professional services industry each year. A key to keeping your employees engaged is making sure that they feel important in their role.
Here is an example of how a firm we recently worked with handled this situation:
The typical path for the engineers in this firm as they rose through the ranks included becoming project managers. They had some exceptional technical professionals who, they realized, were not well suited for the role of project managers. They valued these individual’s expertise and wanted to provide an equal, yet different, path to leadership.
So, they created the Technical Manager role to offer a path upwards without the responsibilities of managing projects. This made sense to the leadership of the firm. However, it was not as easy as they thought it would be. Those being recommended for a Technical Manager role did not feel they were as highly valued as those in the Project Manager role. With some focus on the employee’s perception in this situation, the firm overcame the challenge to everyone’s benefit and advantage. Following are three strategies they used that may help your organization as you seek to further engage your team.
3 Strategies to Further Engage your Team:
-
Identify and encourage self-improvement and growth paths
Everything in life changes, including people. Provide employees with room to grow and a path for success. Not only will their enthusiasm for their role impact your client’s experience. If employees do not see a clear path of growth or development in their role, they may begin to look for employment elsewhere. This leaves your firm with a gap. Encourage employees and provide opportunities for them to learn new skills. It’s a win-win for you and your team.
-
Be generous with praise and recognition
Let your employees know they are doing a good job. They want to know their efforts are appreciated and their hard work doesn’t go unnoticed. In the case of the firm above, this was one way they drew attention to the importance of the Technical Manager role. They created pride for those in that position. Recognizing your employees will also encourage them to continue to be innovative, to take action, and to solve problems. Catch staff doing something good and acknowledge them for it.
-
Encourage open communication
Do you have an open-door policy in your office? Do your staff members know they can talk to you or other managers when they have questions, ideas, or concerns? It’s important your staff members feel their input matters instead of a dividing line between management and lower-level employees.
The bottom line is firms that excel in Client Experience (CX) have 1.5 times more engaged employees than companies with a poor record of CX. The annual growth rate of experience-driven businesses is 15% higher than companies that do not have an intentional CX program. It should be clear that companies who invest in the EX will see a higher ROI than those who don’t.
Take the next step.
Ask us how you can implement a successful EX program today!
Email us Here or set up a 15-minute call with one of our CX experts, who will give you insight into the next steps that make sense for your firm.
