Digital Employee Experience (DEX) is the new Customer Experience (CX)

Customer Experience (CX) is well understood and widely practiced by now. Most businesses today understood the increased requirement to prioritize the experience of their customers. It’s no longer enough just to ‘sell’ to customers, you need to ensure they have a god experience with your organization. As such, many have implemented CX initiatives, e.g., established customer experience teams, and redesigned websites to better enable accessibility, support, and self-service, etc.

However, as many of us have come to understand over the last 18 months or so, a frictionless customer experience can create competitive advantage by decreasing churn, increasing engagement, and driving long-term loyalty. Organizations need those same attributes from their employees—which is why IT must treat employees and their technology just like the business treats its customers and products/services. This is where Digital Employee Experience (DEX) comes in. However, DEX has some catching up to do before it’s as effective as CX. Digital employee experience has a lot of catching up to do before it’s as mature and effective as customer experience.

Championing a digital employee experience culture

The almost overnight switch to a Work From Anywhere reality has shown us that technology really can connect employees, customers, and businesses seamlessly, without needing a central bricks-and-mortar base to operate from. And with 50% of employees placing workplace flexibility as a top priority for them, it’s safe to say that the new workplace is here to stay.
On the other hand, the very technology that connects and enables employees can also be a source of frustration and distress. 98% of remote knowledge workers believe the speed of their work-issued laptop is critical to their productivity, but over half (53%) believe they are performing slower since remote work began in earnest, according to research conducted by Vanson Bourne. 7 in 10 workers also say they are waiting hours, days, or even weeks for over-stretched IT teams to help resolve common IT issues.

For those employees, it can sometimes feel like their vital workplace technology has let them down. They cannot perform at their best and, naturally, engagement suffers. For most knowledge workers, the endpoint is the main tool in their toolbox that empowers them to stay engaged and create business value. It is the conduit we use to communicate, collaborate, consume, and create services to drive forward organizational goals and objectives. Companies that understand and can control the health and wellbeing of these critical business devices, regardless of where they are located or how they are connected, will be the ones to preserve and enable a connected and engaged digital workforce. Companies that champion a culture focused on a great digital employee experience will reap the benefits.

Leverage CX principles to enhance DEX

Digital experience monitoring strategies don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Some of the important lessons learned from enhancing the B2B customer experience can equally be applied to developing competitive advantage through an enhanced digital employee experience. In providing top-quality enablement and technology services to the end user, firms can retain and empower the best talent.

IT departments should adapt core customer experience principles to focus on delivering enterprise IT services that are:

• Omni-channel
• Personalized
• Predictive and proactive
• Convenient with self-service

There are several tools and technology solutions on the market that can help with part of the story, but the key to success in a Digital Experience Monitoring and Management strategy is to view it all from the perspective of the remote end user.

By utilizing proactive remediation and self-healing technology, many organizations learn to deflect a large number of common issues from occurring right at the source—the endpoint itself. Enterprise app stores, service portals and ‘virtual agents’ or chatbots provide the omni-channel, self-service consumption model that drives significantly better user satisfaction and productivity outcomes.

For IT departments to begin offering this level of service requires a well-defined strategy that brings together the needs of people and business processes with the appropriate application of technology to enhance the existing IT Service Management function.

Digital employee experience matters now more than ever

The bottom line is, employee experiences will continue to grow in significance as hybrid and remote working becomes the norm. Employees spell out long-term business viability and success, so treating them like the important assets they are must be a priority for IT organizations.

As Lara Caimi, the Chief Strategy Officer at ServiceNow, aptly noted:

“Covid has been the ultimate change agent…Companies that face this adversity head-on with courage, conviction and creativity will set the benchmark for modern business and become enduringly successful.”

When we look past the current crisis and see through the adversity, we find a glimmer of hope for a future that is much better than the past. But that is only possible if we let employees take the lead and IT organizations allow their employees to guide change based on their needs and desires. They are IT’s customers after all and, as the age-old adage goes, the customer is always right.