Happy customers are the beating heart of any organization. Exceptional customer experience is what wins and retains loyal customers. So how do you make your customers feel valued and listened to? A lot of it relies on your organization’s culture and employee experience.

An exceptional customer experience tends to come out of an exceptional employee experience. So, companies must build organizational cultures of treating employees well, as if they are customers, too.

Employees will always be your first brand advocates. And employees are also the people who deliver your customer experience. So, there’s a simple equation to remember… 

EX = CX (employee experience = customer experience).

“Loyal employees in any company create loyal customers, who in turn create happy shareholders.”

Richard Branson

The link between employee experience and customer experience has been noted by many research studies. For instance, Gallup’s “State of the American workplace” survey recognized that happy employees are key to creating happy customers. It also found happiness does not guarantee what should be the bottom line of employee engagement: improved business outcomes. Companies tend to cultivate satisfied employees when they clarify work expectations, promote positive co worker relationships and provide the tools people need to do their work.

Disengaged employees globally costs organizations an estimated $7 Trillion per year.

Gallup

CX and EX—where’s the value?

• Companies that get CX right outperform their peers on a number of important dimensions, including customer loyalty (+17 percentage points) and revenues (+11 points), according to Forrester Research.

• Companies with highly engaged workforces (EX excellence) are 21 percent more profitable than those with poor engagement. In fact, companies with great EX outperform Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 by 122 percent.