Happier Together: 4 Steps for Merging the Customer and Employee Journeys

2. Combine the data.

Once you’ve mapped the customer and employee journeys, it’s time to gather data together to study. A giant database or pile of raw data isn’t your goal here. The important thing is getting together useful, aggregated summaries of data that can be easily employed in analytics and modeling.

The key is to amass the types of data that will really help you understand your customer and employee journeys. Think broadly when you’re collecting data. It’s easy to forget many data elements that reflect important aspects of the journey. The most common categories of customer data include:

• What they buy
• Where they buy
• When they buy
• Customer value/spend
• Purchase motivators
• Customer engagement
• Digital interactions
• Social activity
• Attitudes and preferences

The most common categories of employee data are:

• Personal details
• Job details
• Work history
• Job performance
• Pay
• Benefits
• Digital interactions
• Recognition
• Attitudes and preferences

Bringing all this data together is the challenge. Begin with whatever data you can gather now and plan to secure the rest of it over time. Create a smart interface that knows where to get the source data you’re requesting.

3. Model what matters.

After you have your data together, the real fun begins—figuring out which of these journey points and data elements actually matter. You may need to engage an analyst or data scientist to help you determine what matters most across each journey separately, and then together. Start with the obvious points of customer and employee connection and analyze the data to see if those interactions really make a difference. If interactions are not big drivers, then look to see what is causing friction behind the scenes. What you learn may surprise you. For example, customers may not care about your company’s health benefits policy on the surface. However, if poor employee benefits trigger high turnover, and that in turn leads to more inexperienced employees, your customers will indirectly be affected.

How do you prioritize across dozens of interaction points? Surveys are a good place to start. They should span the entire customer journey and the entire employee journey. Surveys will give you direct feedback about how satisfied and engaged these populations are overall.

All of the data you bring together can do even more for you. Every digital interaction leaves a digital breadcrumb trail. You can use Big Data to model which components of the separate customer and employee journeys drive these journeys respectively. Once you understand what matters for the individual experiences—customer and employee—then you can identify the areas of overlaps and connection. For instance, a customer pain point (uninformed or uneducated employees) may tie directly back to an employee pain point (inadequate training).

4. Try something.

This step is pretty frequently overlooked or underappreciated. All too often, great insight leads to nothing more than—great insight. It goes nowhere. Outdated technology or overburdened teams are often the culprit. But it’s critical to just do something.

Organizations with thriving experience initiatives work to embrace and build a test and learn culture based on customer and employee data. To ensure you are acting upon what you know and making changes based on what you learn, you should:

• Customize tests for your business
• Emphasize learning over science
• Balance between broad and small
• Ensure resources upfront
• Monitor execution
• Secure executive support
• Have frequent check-ins
• Communicate up the chain

Commit to trying three different things that you know you can make happen with your existing team, technology, and budget. It’s impossible to speak to your brand’s specific situation, but examples might include empowering employees at a single store, modifying your call center script, or updating trouble-shooting guides. Chances are at least one of the actions you implement will work! When it does, make sure you share the results of those actions broadly to gain support for future change.

Your Biggest Assets Unlock the Biggest Value

It’s estimated that by 2020, more than 40 percent of all data analytics projects will relate to an aspect of customer experience. Considering what we know about the impact of employees on customer experience, I expect those projects will increasingly integrate elements of the employee experience. By implementing these four steps—map the journeys, combine the data, model what matters, and try something—you’ll be well on your way to delivering an experience that is better for both your customers and your employees.

Brooke Niemiec is chief marketing officer at Elicit, an award-winning consultancy that helps clients transform the way they use insight to improve the customer and employee experience. Fortune 500 clients include Southwest Airlines, Intel, Nestle Skin Health, HomeAway, Fossil, GameStop, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), Sephora, and Pier 1 Imports. Elicit’s team of technologists, data scientists, and strategists work together to architect business strategies that result in stronger engagement and increased profits.