Sam Tayan, Head of MENA at Zoom highlights the importance for organisations to provide a meaningful experience to both their employees and customers, and in such a scenario we need to reimagine our strategies to offer a unique experience.

The customer experience is more important than the products or services delivered in today’s modern business world. There has been a substantial shift in emphasis toward providing meaningful experiences to your customers as well as your employees. This “total experience” approach recognizes the link between happy employees and happy customers and strives to improve both to humanize how we work.

As the UAE’s “Great Resignation” trend continues, more and more organizations have come to realize the potential of this new approach in order to retain staff. Employees in the UAE no longer view salaries as the sole determinant of job satisfaction, employee experience is now more important than ever. Therefore, the true challenge is to elevate your company’s overall experience and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Enhancing the employee experience 
Gone are the days when the employee experience was considered distinct from the customer experience. Recognizing how both are inextricably linked to a company’s success, here are a few steps your company can take to provide the best experience possible for its employees:

• Expand your solutions, upskill your workforce
  As hybrid work models continue to thrive and teams continue working in distributed environments, expanding and diversifying company’s communication and collaboration tools can have numerous advantages including maintaining cohesion, enhancing productivity, encouraging creativity, and enabling your team to pick up new skills and tools as they go.
• Center your employees’ happiness
  The success of a company is driven by the satisfaction of its workforce. Giving employees the freedom to choose where and how they work, assisting them in maintaining a work-life balance, and providing them with user-friendly, inclusive, and accessible collaboration tools are all ways to increase employee happiness. Taking the necessary initiatives to make employees feel connected to your company’s brand will ultimately manifest itself in how they interact with clients.
• Help establish career paths
  One data-back method for retaining employees is to invest in their growth.  Employees will invest in the goal and vision of your company if you invest in them, whether it’s helping them determine the next steps in their careers or helping them level up in their skill set through learning opportunities and mentorship.

Reimaging the customer experience
The experiences you provide to your customers are one aspect of the customer success equation; the other is the value they get out of the products they’ve purchased, as promised during the sales process. Simply said, customer success is the result of customer outcomes and customer experience. To reinvent the customer experience, your company can put the following methods and guidelines into place.

• Go beyond transactional relationships
  Customers feel most valued when they have a partnership-like relationship with your business, as opposed to a transactional one. When companies are open and transparent, execute and deliver on their promises, and integrate proactive wellness into their interactions, partnerships are formed.
• Extending the principles of health, wellness, and mindfulness to customer engagements and employee experiences makes both the segments feel cared for, understood, and hence, happy. By introducing opportunities for joy within customer engagements and employee experiences, businesses can gain a competitive advantage, as it satisfies both of these essential stakeholders.
• Give customers the power of choice in how they connect
  No two customers are identical, and even the same customer may occasionally have different communication preferences. The best way to satisfy customers is to let them select how they communicate with your business, whether it be by SMS, instant messaging, phone calls, video conferencing, or a contact center solution that combines all of the latter.
• Personalized communications are a game-changer
  AI is transforming all aspects of communication, including the buying and selling experience.. Although it may seem counterintuitive, AI can humanize the customer experience by generating insights that allow for a more individualized experience for customers. Customers feel valued because of these personalized encounters, which supports the aforementioned points. Customers are more inclined to remain loyal when they feel appreciated.
• Don’t just talk the talk — demonstrate how much you care 
  The existence of a C-level customer success role at your business demonstrates the importance you place on the customer experience and your commitment to improving it. Creating a customer advisory board or ensuring that product, customer success, and other teams that interact with your customers have strong internal relationships are additional ways to demonstrate your concern for them.

Furthermore, by recognizing the achievements of your customer-facing personnel, you can enhance the overall experience. If you commend your employees for a job well done, they will feel more engaged and motivated in their efforts to support your customers.

Delighting employees and customers through the total experience 
The customer experience you provide mirrors the employee experience you promote internally. When your staff feels valued, appreciated, and seen, the customer experiences they provide will have greater value and impact.