Is it Time for a Human Experience Team?

CX needs EX & EX leads to CX

As a CX professional, I’ve been diving deeper into Employee Experience (EX) this year. After all, you need happy, motivated, and engaged employees to achieve excellent customer experiences.

For a while, I used to say that I didn’t know much about EX. But the more I read and hear about it—through conversations or at events—the more I realize I actually know quite a bit. My clients often confirm this after my workshops using the EX Game.

Simply put, you can drive change centered around the customer or the employee.

But… isn’t it really about both?

In short: happy employees lead to happy customers, and happy customers, in turn, create happy employees.

 

You can’t have one without the other

Employees need tools, development opportunities, knowledge, and a supportive environment. They need inspiration to make their work more enjoyable for themselves and more impactful for the customer.

When I talk with EX professionals, I hear the same drive and concerns that I hear from CX professionals. They’re working on the same things: mapping journeys, listening (sometimes through structured programs), building culture using promises and values, and applying design thinking to improve processes and services.

The hurdles and challenges are identical. Consider these:

• Management buy-in: how do you get the customer and/or the employee into the boardroom?
• Breaking down silos: you need each other, so how do you collaborate more effectively for the benefit of both the employee and the customer?
• Listening to understand: we’re often not listening enough to customers and employees to truly understand their barriers and needs.
• Addressing friction: how can we make things easier for both customers and employees?
• Change fatigue: no one seems up for it—other priorities, lack of time and resources, and unclear goals create hurdles. How do you set priorities and create opportunities? And how do you let the impact work in your favour?

Both CX and EX professionals struggle with:

• Bringing strategies to life and making them stick
• Translating values and promises into concrete behaviours
• Giving employees the tools they need to understand what’s expected and how to deliver
• Motivating leaders to model the right behaviours
• Aligning KPIs with organizational goals and strategies

And let’s be honest, it’s also challenging to engage customers and employees. An initiative only has impact if it’s developed in collaboration with them. When you listen and truly understand their needs, the initiatives you develop will have the desired impact.

 

CX and EX: similar yet different

Customer journeys are generally linear and well-organized toward a specific goal. Touchpoints often follow each other chronologically and can be short-lived, like becoming a customer, purchasing a product or service, filing a complaint, and parting ways.

Employee journeys, however, are far more complex. Apart from the recruitment journey, different journeys overlap and recur regularly. Once employed, employees experience onboarding, absence, development, vacation, and performance review journeys, among others. Some parts of the employee journey are universal, while others are specific to a role or function.

Is this what makes EX more challenging than CX? And why is EX so far behind?

 

Impact

The impact of CX on customers is easier to measure than the impact of EX on employees.

The impact of CX can be seen, for example, in loyalty, repeat purchases, and actual recommendations. But also in NPS, CES, or satisfaction scores. Customer feedback is collected at various moments, often continuously. There is also plenty of data available to measure impact, such as the number of complaints, calls, conversation times, chats, first-time-right rates, website visits, etc.

However, evidence of impact on employees is often lacking, with the best indicator being a higher overall satisfaction. But in the example I heard, employees were still leaving just as frequently, or they didn’t use the training budget available to them, even though the world of opportunity was open. Research from Weliba and HXWork confirms this: nearly half of organizations have no idea or are unaware of the effect of EX initiatives.

 

CX and EX: organized differently

The biggest difference, of course, is that CX is a more mature field, while EX is in its early stages. Many organizations focus on customer experience and work toward building a customer-centric culture. Some focus primarily on putting employees at the center, but only a few focus on both CX and EX.

Both CX and EX cross team boundaries. Directly or indirectly, everyone impacts the customer experience. Everyone influences EX as well, not just HR and managers—employees themselves also have a responsibility.

CX is structured in various ways within organizations, from one-person roles to entire teams, as a standalone function or a side task. It can be a separate unit or part of marketing, sales, or customer service. Most organizations in the Netherlands have at least one CX professional (Altuïtion research, 2024). Half of the organizations have now organized themselves around Customer Journeys. Multidisciplinary teams or departments are named after a (phase in the) Customer Journey and primarily focus on optimizing the touchpoints in their ‘own’ phase or customer journey.

EX initiatives often extend beyond the HR department, but responsibility usually lies entirely with HR. Only 20% of organizations employ an EX professional (Weliba and HXWork, 2024). The same research also shows that the EX index among HR professionals is below average. If HR is supposed to be the driving force behind EX initiatives for the entire organization, this is not a strong foundation! EX is high on the priority list, but it has yet to translate into practice. The score for the EX approach is barely passing. Collaboration with other supporting teams such as IT, Facilities, and Communications is still far too low.

 

The solution to bridging EX and CX

I don’t have all the answers, but after various inspiring days, online meetings, and reports on CX and EX, here are my insights and conclusions:

Everyone knows: together, you’re stronger. 1 + 1 can indeed equal 3, but it requires effort.

1. Stronger Together

Join forces. Embark on the journey together toward a people-centered culture—a culture where employees can thrive, customers receive the experiences they desire, and leaders empower everyone to make this possible.

Why do some organizations have separate EX and CX teams? Or why does that lone EX professional rarely collaborate with CX colleagues?

2. Talk and Involve Each Other

Let’s start by asking each other more often:

• What is the impact of what you do on the customer? And on the employee?
• What do you need?
• How can I help you?

Talking with each other can make a world of difference. In my workshops, like those with the CX & EX Game®, it often seems like people are discussing customers and collaboration for the first time. A lot is already happening, and many good things are in place, but no one knows, and we don’t say it out loud.

Involve employees from different teams in projects and innovation processes for both customers and employees. Co-create, experiment, and learn. Test and roll out. And of course, involve customers too.

Research by TI People shows that only 31% of employee initiatives are developed in collaboration with employees. Employees rank sixth on the list of most common partners and last on the list of recipients of EX data and project updates.

Honestly, I don’t get it. There are so many opportunities.

It may take time at first, but it will save time, increase enjoyment, and improve EX if you involve employees.

 

3. Make It Fun: Play a Game!

Want to explore the possibilities of CX or EX in a fun and playful way? Looking for a way to raise awareness, activate employees, and bring initiatives to life?

Join Nienke and me! We’ll show you that both the CX Game® and the EX Game® are the perfect tools to spark conversations through stimulating and creative assignments. These games always lead to insights and concrete actions to take the next step.

And the most important part of these games? Employees have fun, feel more connected afterward, and are motivated to take action.

 

4. Start Small: 100 Small Steps Make a Big One

Be honest about what’s possible, make choices, don’t do everything, share experiences, learn from each other’s mistakes and successes. Visualize it and keep it enjoyable.

Choose what energizes people the most because that’s where success is most likely.

Start by solving friction points. Why reinvent the wheel? Create standard texts and forms, and post the most frequently asked questions on the intranet.

I don’t need to tell you that the same applies to customer initiatives and friction points.

 

5. Tell Stories, Share Experiences

 

Stories and experiences inspire and connect. But they’re shared far too infrequently. My tip: start every meeting with a story about an experience with a colleague or customer. For more on sharing stories and how to do it, read this blog.

 

Finally

How do you see this? Do you recognize it? Or not? I’d love to hear your experiences! Share them on LinkedIn or email me at babs@blommaberg.nl

++ This blog is originally published on The Customer Experience Game: https://www.thecustomerexperiencegame.nl/en/is-it-time-for-a-human-experience-team/ ++

Babs Asselbergs is a Creative Changemaker and CX Activator. She brings customer experience to life in creative, interactive ways and activates teams to do even better for customers and make their work more enjoyable. Together with Nienke Bloem, she is the founder of the CX Game® and EX Game®, two examples of creative and engaging tools she uses to work with teams on customer and employee experience.