Customer and employee experience: key factors for corporate success

A Recent Study by Forrester highlights investments in Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) as the top two priorities for marketers in 2023.

Forrester's just-published study on optimal marketing budget allocation for 2023 identifies customer experience and employee experience as the most important success factors. The two together go best hand in hand.

More customer proximity for more brand loyalty 

The focus on customer experience is understandable, as CX-oriented companies can demonstrate better success: Customer loyalty is also becoming more relevant, especially in these uncertain times.  

Customer experience means being closer to the customer, focusing on the customer's needs in all branding measures, be they those of HCPs or patients; responding to customer wishes and expectations at every touchpoint, whether digital or analog; offering customers a special experience at all times and in all places - in short, making them feel this customer orientation. All this allows to build an emotional connection between customer and brand and to achieve brand loyalty.

An excellent customer experience needs committed employees. That's why a good employee experience has become so important from a marketing perspective.  

Stronger employee orientation for greater commitment

But the focus on EX measures also stems from the glaring labor shortage. Boomers are retiring, there are far fewer young people coming up, and they often don't want to enter the labor mills and toil away full time working overtime. But the problematic situation owes even more to the ever-faster spinning personnel merry-go-round: The pandemic-related "home office obligation" drove the increase in fluctuation to unimagined heights, because it makes it more difficult to build or maintain identification with the employer brand. In a tense economic situation and uncertainty, it becomes even more important to retain employees, to focus on retention, motivation and identification with the company in order to reduce the extremely costly and business-damaging fluctuation and to prevent internal resignations.

The term EX includes the topics of employee engagement, corporate culture, situational leadership, mission statement, working atmosphere, cultural change, new work, change, internal branding, and employer branding oriented toward employee benefits. The aim is to achieve a close emotional connection between employees and their work and the employer brand, i.e. identification with the brand, through consistently positive experiences throughout the entire employee journey from application to offboarding, but also in day-to-day work, in order to increase loyalty and retention. If EX is done well, employees will also be more committed, perform better, be proud of the company and can become brand ambassadors.ät zu steigern. Wenn EX gut gemacht ist, werden die Mitarbeitenden sich zudem stärker engagieren, mehr leisten, stolz auf das Unternehmen sein und können zu Brand Ambassadors werden.  

Complex challenges can only be mastered together 

Improving the employee experience is not always easy. The task is more like a marathon than a sprint and can only be achieved in close collaboration between management, HR, marketing and IT. The expectations of employees vary; for office professionals, the wishes for flexibility in working hours and location, self-determination, and an open, transparent feedback and leadership culture are usually at the top of the list.

In care facilities and hospitals, the problem situation is even more acute. A growing number of people in need of care is matched by a shrinking number of nursing staff, and the incentives to retain or recruit employees are even more relevant. The shortage of personnel in this area can threaten the existence of the company, and solutions are becoming far more difficult. 

There is room for improvement in the organization of duty rosters if consideration is given to the compatibility of work and family with flexible or reduced working hours. However, this proves to be extremely difficult with growing staff shortages and in times of crisis, such as the Covid 19 pandemic. Here, even EX-oriented managers had to ask for increased hours and overtime, or even order vacation closures, in order to maintain patient care in line with demand. 

In addition to changes in culture and leadership style, other opportunities for employer brands to improve EX include support for continuing education and training, monetary incentives, company pension plans, both physical and mental health promotion, job tickets, company housing, childcare, burnout prevention, reduction of bureaucracy, or a simple application process.

In nursing, the emergency results not so much from the personnel merry-go-round between organizations, but from the fact that employees leave the professional field completely or do not want to enter nursing in the first place. The generally poor working conditions make the profession unattractive. To improve the lousy image of the profession as a whole, there is a long list of wishes for politicians, payers and associations. Only with sufficient and qualified personnel can the nursing infrastructure and thus the still good standard of our health care system be secured in the long term.  

In addition to appreciative image campaigns, approaches could include programs to qualify professional nurses, i.e., upgrading through university or comparable degrees similar to those in many other countries, support for vocational training, recognition of foreign degrees and facilitation of migration. 

In addition, there is the desire to reduce the high documentation effort and the bureaucratic requirements of different cost units. Perhaps the realization is finally gaining ground that Taylorism (long since abandoned in industry) and strict Perhaps it will finally be realized that Taylorism (which has long since been abandoned in industry) and strict clocking only ever achieved anything in the case of work that could also be performed by robots! Economic considerations should always include the opportunity costs that arise in the case of negative EX orientation and the resulting demotivation and fluctuation among employees, as well as the costs or loss of revenue that arise for the individual company as a result of the lack of customer and patient orientation, but above all for our entire healthcare system.

Investment in the future 

For all these reasons, this contribution is also a call for the state, but marketing managers in companies and agencies can also contribute to improving the image of an entire profession with appreciative campaigns, awards and other creative ideas. The recommendation of the Forrester report on marketing budgets and priorities cited at the beginning of this article also fits in with this: Its vice president warns that frugal decisions in a crisis ultimately harm one's own brand, customers and employees, and society as a whole. In the long run, it will cost more to repair the negative effects. It is more beneficial when companies invest in corporate social responsibility. This commitment helps to attract both customers and talents and, above all, to retain them in the long term.