in the road. Africa is known for its great hospitality, based on a high context culture of warmth, honoring guests, welcoming strangers and the need to have everyone‘ feel at home’. That internal customer experience excellence is not the bedrock of external service delivery is particularly concerning. Employee experience data that is needed to advocate for improvement from a solid position also unfortunately remains elusive, and commitment is now needed from institutions to actively seek employee metrics to ensure a culture of experience excellence remains on home ground.
Making Invisible Culture Visible
Culture is not what is nicely documented and framed on walls, published on websites and placed in handbooks. It’ s the invisible threads that tie‘ the way of life around here’ together. It is what is considered the norm whether positive or negative. The ICX research requested respondents to describe their company culture in three words and the responses painted a dual picture.
On the positive side, employees described cultures as fun, caring, empowering, inclusive, diverse, innovative, collaborative, customer-focused, creative, progressive, and agile. With this in place experiences internally and externally would thrive because of the autonomy that yields, creativity, care and concern. However, the negative culture descriptors have been below par including key words as: hierarchical, bureaucratic, profit-oriented, toxic, unsupportive, micromanaged, discriminatory, aggressive, and manipulative. These describe environments that are psychologically unsafe and not wired toward great experiences. No amount of customer journey mapping magic can override toxic culture that tolerates silencing of expression and disenfranchising staff.
Of the total word count in the research, 68 % fell into the positive culture spectrum. This may seem encouraging as it is above half, but not where experience management is concerned. The Net Promoter Score would chalk these down to passives- the most dangerous customer category who are lukewarm and care not. Ultimately when you strip away the metric, EX and CX are matters of human interest- nothing more and nothing less.
Auditing culture is thus no longer a decorative piece on the table but a functional piece of silverware. Regular check-ins to identify what’ s causing grief that needs attention, and what’ s causing inspiration that needs to be sustained should be the order of the day. Culture needs gardeners who are great at tending soil, battling weeds, pruning dead matter, adding manure and celebrating fruit. As this study also looked at the baseline from 2017, culture and change management were at the time identified as the biggest barriers to embedding customer experience excellence. This calls for rapid change for having the same issues at play over such a long period does not make for collective organizational success.
Seen and Unseen Leadership Experience
Leadership brings in the weather and specifically the temperature of the organizational culture. It determines if the environment will be one of great radiant sunshine or bitter winter. No amount of staff self-motivation and attitude adjustment can win the battle against leadership that has tolerance for culture that depresses. The ICX EX to CX research had a specific question that generated reflection on the magic wand that leadership could wave-“ If you were the CEO for a day, what would you do differently?” The deliberate use of the word differently triggered thoughts on strategic turn around and the findings clustered around the more“ softer issues”: improving employee experience and engagement( 32 %), embedding customer-centricity( 22 %), and reworking organizational culture and leadership( 18 %). The harder matters such as processes, systems, products and structures took a back seat. The hypothesis was that increased remuneration would take the lead, surprisingly it did not make it to the podium finish.
Leaders thus need to reconfigure their thinking toward the realization that employee experience is not anchored primarily on radical tangible visibly physical matters, but the more human centered areas. Employees want a culture where empowerment, positive values, open communication, healthy conflict and team alignment are held up high as banners of identification. Culture starts and is driven from the top, and needs deliberate and continuous action to ensure it cascades and is embedded to become the day-today norm. Monkey see Monkey do needs to come alive where the lead Monkey does the correct‘ do’.
Aspirational leadership, as brought out by the study, is not about charisma and positive posturing. It is about accountability, empathy, inclusion, and consistency. Employees want leaders who propagate a culture of inclusion and affirmation. Experience management is not about managing experiences at all. It is about creating internal conditions- through culture and leadership- where great experiences can naturally and consistently emerge. The workplace continues to be inundated by Gen Z players who are very big on finding meaning at work, investing in activities that make a difference from a visionary perspective, and who value a culture of internal growth and excellence. Leadership needs to come to the proverbial table and dish these out in equal measure.
From Insight to Intentional Action
The voice of the internal customer as expressed in the Employee Experience to Customer Experience survey are both a mirror and a map, providing the opportunity for reflection as well as the aspiration to chart new paths that are more inward looking for outward success. The captains of the employee experience voyages need steer these culture ships from choppy waters of handling employee matters as one off projects, to the ongoing practice of really listening, learning and leading with intention. Culture is the connective tissue between employee experience and customer experience, and leadership is the force that shapes it. Organizations that will truly adopt the practice of delivering excellence internally will beget great external experiences naturally for when the inside glows, the outside shines.
This piece is premised on a survey done by ICX Kenya on Employee Experience to Customer Experience. You can access the full study report on: https:// icxkenya. co. ke / ex-for-cx-survey-results /.
Carolyne Gathuru is the founder and director of strategy at LifeSkills Consulting. She has several years of experience in customer experience strategy development and training. You can commune with her on this or related issues via mail at: CGathuru @ life-skills. co. ke.