Total experience is a business strategy that weaves different types of experiences into one. It is actually the understanding of the cause and effect between customer and employee experience and all other elements, like user experience or the product itself.
David Dungay, Editor in Chief, CX Today, hosts Genefa Murphy, Chief Marketing Officer, Five9, while they dive into what it takes to create a successful total experience strategy.
Referencing a Metrigy report which said that there is a direct correlation between agent turnover and CSAT, Murphy stresses the importance of context when measuring any customer or employee metric.
“When agent turnover is below 15%, CSAT increases by 26%. So, it’s not just about looking at the experiences separately, it’s about looking at the two in context.
“We at Five9 are definitely seeing more interesting areas like employee engagement, gamification, and interaction analytics, that allow our customers and brands to engage and empower their agents and to help retain them.
“They can see a cause and effect with their corresponding customer experience.”
When it comes to achieving balance between different areas of total experience, Murphy believes it may be tough because there is so much opportunity and companies often lose focus.
“It starts with a mindset and a metric change. Businesses need to make sure that employee engagement is an important topic and just as important topics at your executive meetings, as customer engagement. It’s not an afterthought.
“You need to look at patterns and derive meaning and insights from the data you collect.
“When you look at the data from CX and EX, don’t look at them in isolation but try to see if patterns are emerging between the two.”
The Three M’s
Murphy thinks the success of a total experience strategy depends on three M’s: mindset, metrics, and meaning.
From a customer perspective, metrics like CSAT and NPS continue to be the most popular, especially in the financial industry, says Murphy.
“Those are the metrics that businesses should be tracking as they’ll give them a good understanding of the customer side of the house.
“On the agent side, don’t just look at the business metrics for agents like first contact resolution, or time and queue abandonment rate. It’s much more important to look at engagement metrics like voice of the employee.
“You should also look at sentiment analysis to understand agent tone patterns on calls. This may reveal fatigue at the end of their shift which can then reflect on the experience customer has.”
With all the hype around the Great Resignation and economic shifts, Murphy senses an opportunity for companies to take total experience from theory into practice.
“We’ll see even more focus on employee experience and more investment in employee-led programmes.”
