Putting Employees At The Heart Of Your Business (With Annette Franz)

“When I first start working with a client, I interview customers, employees, and executives. You hear it right from the employees’ mouths. No one comes to work wanting to do a bad job... After I do those interviews I come back and say ‘If you focus on the employee experience, and all the things that entails, you would have very few customer experience issues…”

Read More: Q&A With TGI Friday's Chief Experience Officer

Annette Franz, CEO/Founder of CX Journey Inc. and Forbes Councils Member recently told me this last Friday at CCW Nashville, in reference to her new book, Customer Understanding. 

It’s interesting to note that Annette, one of the most renowned consultants and keynote speakers in the CX space (named to “The 100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider) focuses much of her customer experience consultation model internally with the companies she works with.

When she coaches or consults fortune 500 companies across a wide array of industries, she first looks at front-line employees, executive employees, their relationships, the corporate culture and other components of the employee experience (or EX). 

To her point, as seen in a recent CCW Digital report on agent engagement, motivated and engaged employees produce more, turnover less, and help their companies achieve greater financial returns than those who are disengaged. 

Read More: Special Report Series: Agent Engagement

According to the report’s findings, only 13 percent of employees worldwide are “highly engaged” at work. And while 90 percent of executives understand the importance of employee engagement, only 50 percent will tell you that they know how to fix it. 

The average employee only accomplishes 3 hours of work out of the 8-hour workday. To give you some perspective, it’s estimated that the cost of poor management, disengagement and lost productivity hovers around one trillion each year in the U.S.

It’s no wonder why Annette Franz studies internal employee experiences in determining better solutions for profitable customer experiences (CX). 

Simply put, if we want to fix our contact centers, customer service models, digital transformation initiatives, sales objectives, marketing campaigns or the customer experiences that encompasses all of these departments, we must first fix our employee experiences.

“The employees I talk to want to not just do a great job for themselves and for the company, but they want to serve their customers in a way that they want to be served,” whether it’s mirroring Chick-fil-A’s personable customer service strategies (consistently ranking at the top of the fast-food industry in CSAT scores) or the WSJ focusing on consumer data to tailor financial media products for each subscriber. 

As Annette will tell you, regardless of the services that you’re providing, there is an undeniable direct correlation between employee engagement and proven profitability.

Download our latest report on agent engagement to see how to turn this reality into a competitive advantage.