It’s more common than it should be: brands ask their employees to convey certain core values to customers, but those same values seem to have no place when it comes to employees’ own experiences. This kind of misalignment can spell disaster for an organization, but there’s a straightforward fix: hiring CX leaders who embody the values of inside-out thinking.
Employee Experience = Customer Experience
At the heart of “inside-out” thinking is a simple tenet: your customer experience reflects your employee experience. In other words, you can’t improve your CX function if those changes don’t align with your existing culture.
Research bears this connection out. According to PwC, 71% of customers say that employees have a “significant” impact on their experiences with a brand, and only 38% of US consumers agree that the employees they interact with understand their needs. On the other hand, MIT researchers found that companies ranked in the top quartile for employee experience not only derived double the profits from innovation as their bottom-quartile competitors, but also had Net Promoter Scores that were twice as high. When employees are happy, well-supported, and clear on the company’s values, they’re much better equipped to provide excellent service to customers and to be ambassadors for those brand values.
How does this look in the real world? One size certainly doesn’t fit all – and that’s the point. In general, though, CX leaders should evaluate whether the values they imbue into their internal culture clearly support their external goals, or if those values are misaligned. For example:
- A company that sells cutting-edge products and encourages customers to take risks with their purchases, like a software or tech company, also needs to encourage innovation and reward risk-taking among employees.
- An organization that prides itself on personal, immediate customer service must also have a culture that empowers employees to make decisions (up to a certain level) using their own judgement, rather than going through a long approval hierarchy.
- A brand focused on highly-specialized solutions, personalization, and high-level expertise also should have a culture that encourages employees to grow their knowledge and build relationships with their colleagues and customers.
Identifying CX Leaders to Drive Success
Of course, this positive connection between EX and CX can only happen with strong, thoughtful leadership at the helm. Successful CX hiring requires finding leaders who genuinely understand where EX and CX overlap – the KPIs, the cultural connections, the quantitative and the qualitative areas of concerns and how to measure them. It’s an approach that takes both a person-first perspective and a data-driven skillset and melds it into a single, integrated strategy for expressing culture and driving internal and external satisfaction.
Look for leaders with an expansive understanding of CX and a non-siloed approach to thinking about brand experiences overall. At the same time, consider how your organizational hierarchy supports this intertwining of CX and EX. For many organizations, this takes the form of one overall “experience” leader (a Chief Experience Officer or similar title) who oversees both CX and EX. For others, it might be two different roles, but with a strong collaboration to ensure coordination across both functions.
When searching for a leader to drive inside-out culture and positive experiences across the board, look for qualities such as:
- The ability to gather, analyze, and harness feedback for data-driven decision-making
- Experience interfacing with employee and customer functions
- An understanding of how core values like loyalty, personalization, and recognition mirror each other in CX and EX
- At the same time, an understanding of where CX and EX must be approached differently – complementary, but not identical
- A willingness to innovate and think creatively
As with any high-level search, working with an experienced, industry-trusted recruiter like Blue Rock Search can offer significant benefits. We understand the unique needs of your business and your industry, as well as the inner workings of the CX function. With that knowledge, plus our extensive network (including top passive talent) we’re well-equipped to present you with promising candidates – and to present the role to those candidates in a way that is most likely to appeal to them.
Ready to hire a CX leader who can transform culture from the inside out? Talk to our Blue Rock team to learn more about our recruiting solutions!