A vital ingredient to business success is the importance you place on your customer experience. Making sure your customers go away happy is key to the transactions you are doing right now, but also future purchases, building and maintaining brand loyalty, and positive word of mouth feedback to future potential customers.
Entire departments are responsible for making sure a brand’s customer experience is paramount – have you ever stopped to think how many designers have been involved in honing the sensory experience of opening an iPhone box? Or what happens with all those pop-up surveys you complete after browsing a web page? It’s no secret that to be a market-leading brand, you need to offer a market-leading experience.
But whilst organisations recognise the importance of investing in their customers in this way, how many see the experience of their internal customers – their employees – with the same level of importance?
A key time that your actions as an employer can have an impact on an employee’s lasting experience of your organisation is if you have to make the difficult decision to let people go. If employees leave feeling ignored, cast aside or unimportant, this can lead to disruptive departures, negative feedback or reviews of your organisation. It also means a lot of time and resource is required to maintain business as usual, as well as mitigating the impact of the negative noise.
On the flip side, if this is handled well, despite the potential shock and disappointment, employees leave as continuing brand ambassadors and advocates of your business. Your brand identity can even be strengthened in these interactions if employees feel they continue to be well looked after on their way out of the company and retained colleagues can see that that your business truly values them and their contributions.