Unlocking the power of employees to deliver amazing customer experiences

At Zone we believe that the quality of a firm’s Customer Experience (CX) is a reflection of their Employee Experience (EX). As financial institutions in the UK examine their processes, systems and products in readiness for the implementation of the FCA Consumer Duty regulation, Jacquie Leitch, Employee Experience Strategy Director at Zone, outlines the opportunity for organisations to move beyond compliance to power amazing customer experience by embedding a customer-centric culture throughout workforces.

This is part 2 of a 3 part series, unpacking the 3 key themes from our in-depth point of view on Consumer Duty.

Delivering great customer experiences requires an engaged workforce

The relationship between employee engagement and customer experiences is clear.

Organisations have the opportunity to go beyond Consumer Duty regulations to build a customer-centric environment in which employees thrive, and consequently win associated benefits for customer satisfaction.

An effective customer-centric culture permeates throughout by enabling and engaging those directly interacting with customers, such as call centres, as well as indirectly, such as the product designers, engineers and developers designing and implementing products and experiences.

This shared mindset reduces friction and enables collaboration between teams to produce a sharp focus on the holistic customer experience.

Getting to a customer centric culture

Whenever there is a change in consumer legislation or regulatory landscape, it inevitably impacts on what employees do and how they work. While it is clearly important to provide employees with effective training on changing requirements and the right tools and information to provide the right support at the right time, there are further opportunities to create a customer-centric culture.

Just as organisations map the experience of their customers throughout their financial journey — acquire to retire — the employee experience can be similarly mapped to assess the current state of customer centricity throughout the organisation.

By mapping the end-to-end employee experience, looking at both the current and desired employee experience, financial organisations will be well placed to understand the enablers and inhibitors of customer-centric employee behaviour and to develop the policies, processes, platforms and frameworks that put the customer at the heart of their interactions with employees.

Firms will benefit by honing into key EX moments that matter. These include:

· Employer brand sentiment — how do prospective customer- centric employees consider your brand?

· Customer centric behaviours — how do your select employees with innate customer centric mindsets?

· Onboarding — how effective is your onboarding at articulating customer-centric principles and practices?

· Enablement — how well do your training programmes, practices and systems enable employees to do the best for customers?

· Recognition — how effective are your recognition practices in celebrating those who deliver positive customer experiences?

Firms are invited to read our Zone Consumer Duty point of view for further insights on how to ensure employee behaviours are customer-centric.

How Zone can help apply effective EX to your firm

Our skilled EX Strategy team can bring clarity of thought to organisations considering how their employees can power great customer interactions. Culture change or amplification can feel daunting, especially when there is so much to do for Consumer Duty compliance, but by drawing on the wealth of our experience, firms can apply tangible actions to improve their EX.

As a starting point the Zone have developed an assessment framework to identify and measure areas of friction along the customer and employee lifecycle and assist leaders to:

· Consider best in class customer centricity practices from a range of sectors when setting vision

· Imagine and articulate their desired employee and customer experience

· Efficiently listen to employees and understand any gaps between the current and desired state

· Prioritise actions based on value and impact

· Build solutions for each priority across the employee life cycle

The solutions we deliver for our clients are bespoke and range from branding, attraction and selection strategy in the acquire phases, through recognition, reward, listening, and education strategy in the employment phase.

If you would like to get further insights on The Duty and our assessment framework, don’t forget to download the Zone’s Consumers Duty point of view here.