Why does the voice of the employee matter so much?

As a customer service manager of a start-up or an expansion stage software company, do you ever reach out to your customer service reps to see if they have any insight on improving customer service or improving a lingering issue? 

Customer Experience Professional Andrew McInnes of Forrester Research wrote a great blog last week about the value of employee feedback as it relates to improving customer experience. He shares the example of AmEX, where in the past, if you lost a card and cancelled it, but found it under your couch a few hours later you wouldn’t be able to withdraw your cancellation and would have to wait for several days until you received the card in the mail. However, AmEx’s formal Customer Care Program (CCP) allowed a customer care rep to report this phenomenon. Due to AmEx’s CCP program, this actually led to a policy change, where now if you lose your card, you can put a 24-hour hold on your card instead of cancelling it right away.

A lot of times, Customer Intelligence Teams do not formulate their customer service strategies based on employee suggestions. This is why it is critical to implement a proper program that allows customer care reps to submit suggestions and thoughts through a formal process.

Here are some reasons why it is so important to listen to your employees:

• Many employees have direct interactions with customers, which gives them the ability to spot customer needs and issues before they arise in traditional research• Since employees are familiar with company internal matters, they are in a better position to recognize the sources of customer problems and complaints• Finally, employees have tremendous power over how they formulate the processes and how their communications affect customers. As they act as intermediaries between internal strategic decision-makers and external clients, they can make quick alterations to processes if need be or make an impact faster

McInnes outlines a flowchart describing how to incorporate employee feedback into higher level strategic decision-making. The flowchart in the image strategically positions employees in the middle. They interact with both customers and the Customer Experience Team. They receive customer feedback and combine it with their business knowledge to form their own insights. They pass their insights along through the Customer Experience Team on to the Executive team. 

Such a program in the end pays off in terms of bettering customer experiences and ultimately business results.