Connecting customer, employee and brand experiences to drive business growth

Experiences are at the heart of business success

The key to winning market share and achieving stellar business growth today isn’t just about delivering exceptional products and services — it’s about ensuring customers and employees have incredible experiences as well. 

After all, it makes good sense; right now, 8 in 10 customers switch brands because of poor experiences, while employees increasingly value organizations that invest in them. 

Every business leader intuitively knows that happy, satisfied employees are consistently more likely to go above-and-beyond for customers. Those same customers, delighted by their experience, either purchase more, leave glowing reviews or advocate on behalf of the brand. 

The result? Higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, improved employee wellbeing, and increased brand recall and loyalty. 

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The power of combined experiences

Organizations across the globe know that linking their employee and customer experience efforts isn’t just essential — it’s good business. Understanding which variables that contribute to certain outcomes is what enables organizations to scale experience management and achieve consistent success.

However, with shifting business priorities and decreasing budgets, the challenge for organizations is identifying which employee behaviors affect customer experience outcomes to drive bottom-line profitability and success. 

Think about it: organizations have a plethora of employee experience levers they can pull to influence the overall customer experience — from offering new well being packages to enabling psychological safety in the workplace or implementing technology that improves overall efficiency. 

Ultimately, leaders want to know which initiatives to focus on to maximize positive impact for both employees and customers. And they want to know how to do it at scale.

Introducing Qualtrics CrossXM

When organizations connect their customer and employee experience data, they can uncover and hyperfocus on the critical employee experience drivers of customer experience success.

Unfortunately, most lack the necessary tools and capabilities to connect their experience data sets effectively and usually run their experience strategies in a disparate fashion, making it tremendously difficult, costly and time-consuming to extract the most pertinent information.

But now, for the first time ever, organizations have a real solution with Qualtrics CrossXM.

Qualtrics CrossXM is a brand-new product line that — for the first time — allows organizations to see how their employee, customer and brand experiences affect each other, so they can prioritize the actions that will have the biggest impact on their business. 

It utilizes best-in-class technologies to combine employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) data sets automatically so that organizations can identify trends and highlight valuable opportunities. And it’s available right now. 

In early 2023, organizations will also be able to connect their CX and BX programs to identify the specific customer experiences that will positively influence brand equity. 

Ultimately, CrossXM enables business leaders to work together on the initiatives that most effectively retain and attract new customers. For example:

• CrossXM enables HR leaders to tie the employee experience to business outcomes, proving—with data—the value of their efforts toward the bottom line. 
• CrossXM enables customer experience leaders to better leverage their most critical resource—their employees—to understand how their experiences on the frontline can bring customers’ experiences to the next level. 
• CrossXM enables marketing leaders to identify key customer interactions that can boost brand equity, gain a competitive advantage and drive customer lifetime value.

Leaders instinctively know that engaged employees deliver great products and great customer service, positively impacting their brand’s reputation as well as boosting customer engagement and spend. CrossXM gives organizations the ability to predict how employee experience investments will pay off in brand value and customer outcomes, a powerful innovation that will change the way companies prioritize investments in their most important asset—their employees.”

Brad Anderson, Qualtrics, President of Products and Engineering.

Bringing programmes together to drive success

Understanding the potency of Qualtrics CrossXM is just the beginning — and we’ve already worked with several brands to help them leverage the power of combined experiences: 

LUMEN 

Lumen Technologies, a global enterprise technology platform, found that when their frontline service technicians feel recognized for delivering excellent customer service, they are nine times more likely to resolve customer issues in a single visit. When Lumen realized that there was an opportunity to grow their recognition program, the leadership team took deliberate steps to promote and recognize great customer service within their field organization. In turn, these insights and actions have helped Lumen save on operational costs and time, as well as keep their workforce more engaged and motivated to stay with the company longer term.

While we are in the technology space, we recognize that humans are key in the interactions customers want to have with us,” said Beth Ard, vice president of customer experience at Lumen Technologies. “Our partnership with Qualtrics is so exciting because the data and insights we’re uncovering are helping us drive the right actions and improvements, and helping us use our resources to serve the highest outcomes. It’s a win-win for everyone.

REVERA 

Revera is a senior living provider in Canada with over over 85 retirement residences. In partnership with Qualtrics, Revera discovered that in its Retirement Residences where their frontline employees feel their managers care about their well-being, their residents also feel more satisfied.

"As a Seniors Living provider, we’re constantly looking for opportunities to enhance our residents’ experience. Understanding the correlation between our employee and resident experience allowed us to uncover what makes our employees happier and more engaged, therefore having a direct impact on the overall care and well-being of our residents. One certainly affects the other,” said Andrea Carson, Director of Total Reward and Organizational Effectiveness at Revera. “In partnership with Qualtrics, we discovered that in our Retirement Residences where our frontline employees felt more strongly that their managers cared about their well-being, our residents also felt more satisfied. With over 85 Retirement Residences, we can identify the best actions to take for each location, ensuring employees have the management support and guidance they need to offer the best customer experience” said Cathy Fiordalisi Smith, National Director of Resident Experience at Revera.