The link between customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) is well-known. Research consistently shows that engaged employees lead to happy customers. Companies that recognize and adopt a holistic approach to the total experience are better positioned for internal alignment.
By utilizing this mindset, businesses can increase their chances of achieving positive results like higher revenue, profits, and customer and employee satisfaction. So, How can you make use of this approach?
In this blog, we’ll explain what total experience is, its advantages, and how you can start including it in your strategies.
What is total experience?
Total experience (TX) is a business approach that seeks to enhance the overall experience for everyone involved with a brand, including customers, employees, users, and partners.
You can consider the TX as a business strategy that fosters positive, shared interactions among customers and employees rather than focusing on a particular product or platform. Instead of combining all experiences into one, the aim is to keep each experience unique while improving collaboration across different functions.
By integrating employee and customer experience, organizations can gain insights into how each affects the other. It’s about understanding their interplay and identifying concrete actions and improvements that can be implemented.
For instance, enhancing employee training can ensure exceptional customer service, ultimately shaping customer attitudes and behaviors.
Total experience is portrayed as a new concept. Still, in reality, world leaders have long been using a combination of customer focus, employee engagement, and digitalization to elevate their businesses well beyond the market average, positioning them at a level that other companies find hard to reach.
Elements of a Total Experience?
Your organization’s total experience includes all digital interactions across departments, regardless of the individual’s role or connection to your company. It brings together four disciplines to create a unified and exceptional shared experience.
01. Customer experience (CX)
Customer experience is how customers connect with a brand from the beginning, during, and after they buy something. The main aim is to make customers feel control over what they want to do.
- The journey with a brand starts when customers first learn about it and go through the purchase and post-purchase phases.
- A good customer experience means customers like the brand, are happy, and return to buy more.
To make sure customers have a good experience, here are some important satisfaction metrics to keep an eye on:
- Making things easy to use
- Having helpful customer support
- Using personalized marketing
- Ensuring interactions with the brand are smooth and leave a good impression.
Creating positive experiences for customers means taking care of these things, which leads customers to brand loyalty and coming back for more.
02. Employee experience (EX)
Employee experience covers everything an employee goes through, from joining to leaving a company. The aim is to help employees do well and be happy at work.
- Tools and Support: Give employees what they need to do their jobs.
- Career Growth: Provide chances for professional development.
- Positive Environment: Create an atmosphere where employees thrive.
When employees have a good experience, they’re happier, perform better, stay longer, and feel more loyal.
Key things for a great employee experience:
- Clear Communication: Make sure everyone understands each other.
- Career Opportunities: Help employees grow in their careers.
- Balanced Life: Support a balance between work and personal time.
- Recognition: Appreciate and reward employees.
- Positive Culture: Encourage a friendly and collaborative workplace.
Focusing on these things ensures a good overall employee experience, leading to a team that’s productive, happy, and committed in the long run.
03. User experience (UX)
User experience is how people feel when they use products, services, websites, or apps. The aim is to make this experience easy, quick, and enjoyable. When users have a good time, they are happier, more involved, and more likely to do what the product or service wants them to do.
For a Good User Experience:
- Easy Navigation: Make it simple for users to find their way around.
- Responsive Design: Ensure it works well on different devices and screens.
- Clear Content Presentation: Present information in a way that’s easy to understand.
A positive user experience makes users happy and gets them more involved and more likely to take action. So, easy navigation, responsive design, and clear content all work together to create a great overall user experience.
04. Multi-experience (MX)
Multi-experience is all about making things smooth and connected for users. It means understanding the right ways to interact with different types of people.
MX is like creating a digital web that ties together all the multiple touchpoints like websites, mobile apps, chatbots, AR, VR, and more. The goal is to give users a seamless experience as they switch between devices and channels without any interruptions or confusion. In simple terms:
- Various Ways to Connect: People use different things like websites, apps, and more to connect with brands.
- Everything Works Together: MX wants to ensure everything fits together neatly so users can easily switch between different digital things.
Multi-experience is a smart way to keep everything connected and smooth for users as they move around in the digital world.
Advantages of total experience
Organizations adopting a total experience strategy gain several key benefits that go beyond just making customers happy. One significant advantage is the boost in brand loyalty.
By actively using customer feedback, improving products, and maintaining a consistent brand image, companies can create a positive impression, leading to more loyal customers. TX also helps companies become more memorable, with consistent messaging across different interaction points.
Teamwork and Breaking Down Barriers
TX is like teamwork on steroids. It breaks down the usual barriers between different parts of a company, like customer experience, employee experience, user experience, and multi-experience. When everyone understands each other’s needs and works together transparently, it makes everything smoother.
Teamwork Perks:
- Everyone talks and understands each other better.
- Things get done more efficiently.
- People come up with better solutions when they work together.
Sparking New Ideas
TX is not just about business; it’s also a breeding ground for creativity. It sets up a place where employees, customers, and users can share their thoughts. By getting rid of the usual barriers it lets you mix different ideas, which creates a culture where people come up with cool new stuff together.
Creativity Boosts:
- Everyone can share their thoughts in one place.
- People from different parts of the company work together on ideas.
- It’s a great way to solve problems and come up with new things.
Happy Employees, More Work Done
TX is good news for employees. When your employees have a smooth experience using internal tools (like better computer programs) and know how everything works, they feel good about their job. This good feeling means they’re more likely to do their best work, creating a culture where everyone is productive.
Employee Happiness Hacks:
- Easy-to-use tools and systems at work.
- Training that helps everyone understand how things work.
- Recognizing and supporting everyone’s hard work.
People Trust You and Tell Others
Total experience consistently gives people a good experience—from when they first hear about your company to whenever they need help. It builds trust. Trust makes customers stick around and even recommend your company to others.
Trust-Building Moves:
- Always making customers’ experiences positive.
- Being quick and helpful when customers need support.
- Doing things that make each customer feel special.
Making More Money by Treating People Right
TX is like personalizing a playlist but for business. When your company treats each customer as an individual, it’s a win-win. People like it, and research shows they’re willing to spend more. So, by using TX, a company can change things up to make each customer feel important and happy.
Money-Making Moves:
- Changing things up based on what each customer likes.
- Giving each customer the kind of help they want.
- Making customers happy so they stick around and spend more.
Key Steps for the Total Experience Approach
Taking the TX path means making strategic moves to lift your brand. Start by looking closely at your business:
- What do people think of your brand?
- Are things working smoothly?
- Does your brand match its mission and vision?
These questions help set the stage for a big change.
While you’re figuring out where your brand stands, the next step is to dream big about where you want it to go. Get together with your team leaders and imagine what you want your brand to be known for.
Make plans that everyone can act on. It’s crucial to break down any walls between teams to work together seamlessly. By using the total experience strategy, your business can work as one, which makes the customer experience smooth and connected.
Here are important steps to start the total experience journey:
- Check Your Brand: See what people think about your brand. Make sure things are working well, and check if your brand matches its mission and vision.
- Dream Big for Your Brand: Think about the future and decide what you want your brand to be famous for. Work with your team leaders to turn your ideas into plans that you can act on.
- Get Teams Working Together: Break down barriers between teams by talking openly. Share plans with each team so everyone knows how to improve the brand.
- Look After Employees: Use the TX strategy to improve employee experiences. Show that your workforce is supported through marketing, making your company look good and perform better.
- Think About Customers: Happy employees make happy customers. Share good customer stories to bring in more business – almost half of people trust reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family.
- Make sure to follow closed-loop feedback: Connecting with important systems is crucial for various reasons, such as forming closed-loop processes that take action based on feedback from customers or employees. Simply asking for feedback isn’t sufficient. If you don’t take action and only give empty assurances, it’s better not to ask for feedback at all.
Empowering Total Experience with QuestionPro
QuestionPro is a comprehensive survey and feedback platform that provides tools and solutions for businesses to gather, analyze, and act upon valuable insights from both customers and employees. The platform offers a range of features designed to enhance various aspects of the TX for an organization.
Implementing the TX approach in your business becomes seamless and effective with the support of QuestionPro. Here’s how QuestionPro can play a pivotal role in enhancing your organization’s holistic customer and employee experiences:
01. Comprehensive Feedback Mechanism
QuestionPro provides robust survey and feedback tools. It allows you to gather insights from both customers and employees. This comprehensive feedback mechanism helps in understanding the strengths and areas for improvement across different touchpoints of the total experience.
- Conduct surveys to capture customer satisfaction levels.
- Implement feedback mechanisms to gather employee insights.
- Utilize analytics to identify specific touchpoints that need enhancement.
02. Customer Perception Analysis
You can leverage QuestionPro’s analytical capabilities to explore customer perceptions. You can understand how customers view your brand through detailed surveys and sentiment analysis. It will enable informed decision-making for refining and aligning your brand with its intended image.
- Implement sentiment analysis tools to gauge emotional responses.
- Design surveys that delve into specific aspects of customer perception.
- Use analytics to identify patterns and trends in customer feedback.
03. Employee Engagement Surveys
QuestionPro’s real-time monitoring and reporting features allow you to stay on top of evolving trends and address issues promptly. This ensures that your business adapts and aligns dynamically with customers’ and employees’ expectations and experiences.
- Tailor surveys to assess employee satisfaction and engagement.
- Identify areas for improvement in the employee experience.
- Implement strategies based on survey results to enhance employee well-being.
04. Real-time Monitoring and Reporting
QuestionPro’s real-time monitoring and reporting features allow you to stay on top of evolving trends and address issues promptly. This ensures that your business adapts and aligns dynamically with the expectations and experiences of both customers and employees.
- Set up alerts for real-time notifications on critical issues.
- Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) related to the TX.
- Generate customizable reports to track trends over time.
05. Customized Total Experience Solutions
You can customize QuestionPro’s versatile tools to align with your specific goals in implementing the TX approach. Whether it’s designing customer satisfaction surveys or employee well-being assessments, QuestionPro offers customizable solutions to suit your business models.
- Tailor survey questions to align with specific business objectives.
- Customize dashboards to visualize data relevant to your overall experience goals.
- Leverage QuestionPro’s API for seamless integration with existing business systems.
Conclusion
Businesses are here to serve customers, and customers care about the ethics of their purchases. If customers notice a company with a well-treated workforce, they are more likely to choose that company. This is because they believe they will receive better service compared to companies with underpaid or overworked employees.
Total experience is crucial as organizations continue their digital transformation journeys. Ensuring everyone in an organization is on the same page requires time and good alignment. When business leaders focus on creating a comprehensive overall experience, they position their companies for long-term success.
Adding QuestionPro to your plan helps you improve and use the Total Experience framework effectively. With its various features, the platform enables you to collect, study, and use important insights. This promotes a holistic experience to enhance your overall business experience.
