What Happens in Your Organization Does Not Stay in Your Organization

Author: Kyle Hudson Partner

A recent BCJ Group client engagement brought to mind an important point that often gets overlooked: your internal customers, more commonly referred to as employees, are no different than your external customers. They may have different wants and needs, but the approach an organization takes to each group should be the same, especially because in most cases those two groups will have direct interactions and a failure to give either of them complete attention and care will end up hurting both groups.

It is very rare that an organization will have their customer experience reps speak with their human resources professionals, which is a shame because often times they have similar objectives and use the same language. When a customer experience professional talks about retention, personalization or journeys, they are speaking about the same issues faced by the leadership inside your organization who are tasked with keeping employees happy, giving them the right tools at the right time, and thinking about employee movement in their career path.

An example of this is the knowledge that many people are drawn to self-service when faced with repeated tasks or something they think would be a waste of time to involve someone else in, whether it be self-service checkout at a store or filling out a request for a day off.

Having a customer-centric philosophy with your internal employees means thinking about how people act when they want to have human interactions – customers that are seeking a conversation with a salesperson, or an agent, or a service member prefer to initiate the conversations rather than being aggressively approached by someone. We’ve all had that unpleasant experience at a retail store, and it’s not a recommended model.

For this reason, think about the natural engagement points that happen over time at your organization – both for internal and external customers. For example, are there natural moments that will happen that will be conducive to talk about renewing a membership (or in an employee’s case, reviewing their performance? Does your organization survey customers/members/clients to understand what their preferences are and how they want to be managed? Do you do the same for your employees?

Regardless of whether your organization is faltering on the internal or the external side, the important thing is to do something about it soon because those two groups are the ones that interact on a daily basis. Having either customers or employees dissatisfied, or disengaged, or simply uninformed means that those daily interactions become a vicious cycle that cause any weak link to directly affect the other one – use changing COVID-19 protocols as an example – both sides have to be on the same page about this, and each sets the example for the other in terms of practice and attitude.

As always, the systems at work are complex, and the biggest mistake that many organizations make is trying to tackle one particular issue as the main problem rather than realizing that these issues are a symptom of a bigger ailment, one that BCJ Group can help you diagnose and cure.

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