Most leaders say customer experience is a priority. Far fewer connect the dots between what customers experience on the outside and what employees experience on the inside. But here’s the truth:
You can’t fix what’s happening on the outside if you don’t fix what’s happening inside.
The disconnect between EX and CX is one of the biggest blind spots in business today. Despite years of research, case studies, and common sense pointing to the connection, too many organizations still treat these as separate strategies. Why do so many leaders fail to recognize the link between employee experience and customer experience?
Here’s why – and what needs to change.
They View Them as Separate Strategies
Many leaders see EX and CX as two different tracks, owned by different departments (e.g., HR vs. CX). As a result:
- Strategies are developed in isolation.
- Employee needs get treated as HR issues.
- Customer needs get treated as business outcomes.
- Metrics don’t align.
- Feedback loops are broken.
When EX and CX are treated like separate conversations, they become separate realities. In reality, they’re deeply intertwined. The customer experience is the product of your internal culture, systems, and support. Happy, engaged employees deliver better service, are more productive, and build stronger customer relationships. (I’ve written some conversations to get you thinking differently.)
They Haven’t Built a Culture That Supports Both
If you’ve designed and built a people-first or customer-centric culture, then you won’t have to worry about this; you know that in order to have a customer-centric organization, you must put employees more first. Sadly, too many CEOs don’t recognize the importance or the impact of such a culture. And that’s another story.
In cultures driven by command-and-control leadership, internal politics, and fear of failure, employees are unlikely to feel empowered or inspired to go above and beyond for customers.
Culture is the bridge between EX and CX. And business outcomes.
The Culture Equation: Culture → Employee Experience → Customer Experience → Business Outcomes
Fix the culture, fix the outcomes.
They Don’t Prioritize Employees
Sadly, “employees are a priority” gets a lot of lip service. In too many cases, they are persona non grata, as crazy as that sounds. But here’s the truth: without employees, you have no one to design, build, sell, service, implement, install, deliver, etc. your products and services. Who’s going to deliver the experience? In that case, there would be no need for customers. Employees are what make the world (well, your business) go round and round.
Chief Executive Group recently polled CEOs in the US about their top priorities in 2024, and 60% of them said that retaining and engaging employees is their top priority because unemployment remains low, and skilled employees are both hard to find and to retain. That number is up slightly from two years ago, when 57% said that was the number-one priority. Unfortunately, retaining and engaging employees remains a top challenge for CEOs, too, as well as recruiting and training employees.
That challenge doesn’t appear to be anything new. A few years back, in their 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report, Deloitte found that 80% of executives rated employee experience as important or very important, but only 22% said their companies excelled at building one.
They Lack Visibility into the Day-to-Day Employee Experience
The further removed leaders are from the front lines, the easier it is to miss the friction and frustration that employees deal with daily:
- Systems that don’t talk to each other.
- Employees who do talk to each other – about the brand, the politics, etc.
- Departments that don’t talk to each other.
- Broken processes, frustrating tools, or inflexible policies.
- Metrics that reward speed over quality.
If you haven’t spent time listening to employees or shadowing their work, it’s impossible to understand how their experience is shaping your customers’. And if your employees feel unsupported, customers will feel it, too.
They Focus Too Heavily on External Metrics
Customer satisfaction scores, loyalty metrics, and retention rates are visible, reportable, and often tied to revenue; hence they are prioritized, causing leaders to miss the internal levers (e.g., culture, empowerment, engagement) that drive those outcomes.
Employee experience, on the other hand, is more nuanced. It lives in things like:
- How empowered employees feel.
- Whether systems help or hinder.
- Whether people feel heard and supported.
- Whether employees have the tools, training, and resources to do their jobs.
Because these things are harder to measure and don’t always show immediate ROI, they’re too often de-prioritized. But ignoring them is like painting the house while the foundation cracks. Poor employee morale or misalignment will eventually show up in customer feedback and business performance.
They Put Customers First – At the Expense of Employees
“Customer first” is a mantra in many companies. But when taken to an extreme, it backfires. And sometimes it doesn’t even have to be taken to the extreme; it’s just spewed daily to half-hearted/half-believing employees because… When leaders prioritize customer happiness without investing in the people delivering those experiences, they create burnout, frustration, disengagement, high turnover, and low morale. And ultimately – a customer experience that suffers anyway.
Great CX starts by putting employees in a position to succeed. (What does that entail? See my definition of employee experience.) The best companies put people first, i.e., employees more first so that the customer wins.
THEIR Lack of Data Integration Masks the Relationship
Companies have plenty of data on both employee and customer experiences. But those datasets rarely talk to each other. Employee engagement scores sit in one system, while customer satisfaction scores are in another. No one is connecting the dots: most companies don’t track how things like employee engagement, turnover, or training correlate with customer satisfaction or retention.
But when organizations overlay employee sentiment with customer feedback, powerful patterns emerge. Where employees are struggling, customers are, too. Where employees feel engaged and empowered, customers feel it.
Data isn’t the problem. Integration and interpretation are.
Next Steps for Leaders
If you want to create better outcomes externally, you have to start internally. For starters, that means:
- Designing and building a culture that empowers, supports, and listens to employees.
- Understanding employees, their needs, preferences, and problems to solve.
- Auditing the employee experience both through the employee’s and the customer’s lenses.
- Involving employees in both employee experience and customer experience design.
- Removing barriers (e.g., outdated policies, broken processes) that prevent employees from delivering great service.
- Ensuring that employees have the tools, training, resources, and more to deliver the service customers desire and deserve.
- Aligning incentives, tools, and systems around what creates value for both employees and customers.
- Regularly updating training, tools, and coaching to help employees adapt to new customer expectations.
- Establishing a governance structure that HR, CX, and other key teams.
- Connecting EX and CX data – and metrics – in dashboards.
- Celebrating internal wins that lead to better customer moments.
- And so much more.
It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway!): the first thing you have to do is recognize that employees are the heartbeat of the organization! Leaders who get it need to educate other leaders on the EX — > CX link.
If you’re a leader looking to improve the customer experience, start by asking this question:
What’s it like to work here – and how does that show up in the customer experience?
Until you fix what’s happening inside, you’ll keep hitting the same walls on the outside.
In Closing
The organizations that win on customer experience aren’t just investing in better surveys, faster response times, or omnichannel tools; they’re investing in their people. Because they understand a simple truth: your customer experience will never exceed your employee experience. If your people are disengaged, dis-empowered, or navigating a broken system, your customers will feel it in every interaction.
So if you’re serious about transforming CX, don’t start with a new initiative – start with a new lens. Look inward. Fix the culture. Support your employees.
Just remember: you can’t fix what’s happening on the outside if you don’t fix what’s happening inside.
That’s not just an insight – it’s a strategy.
By putting the employee first, the customer effectively comes first by default, and in the end, the shareholder comes first by default as well. ~ Richard Branson
ABOUT ANNETTE
Annette Franz is an internationally recognized employee and customer experience thought leader, coach, speaker, and author. In 2019, she published her first book, Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business); it’s available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats. In 2022, she published her second book, Built to Win: Designing a Customer-Centric Culture That Drives Value for Your Business [Advantage|ForbesBooks], which is available to purchase on Amazon, Books A Million!, Target, Barnes & Noble, and thousands of other outlets around the world! And, finally, Annette’s third book, Employee Understanding: A Three-Pillar Framework for Designing a Great Experience and Driving Business Success, is now available on Amazon! Sign up for our newsletter for updates, insights, and other great content that you can use to up your EX and CX game.
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