Linking Customer Experience with Service Employee Engagement
Executive Summary Big Data, and especially the ability to turn data into information and knowledge, makes it possible to stop guessing and start knowing what works and why in Facility Management (FM). Service Management is a field that has so far relied primarily on theories and case studies to explain how excellent service is both delivered and perceived. This is now changing.
Emily Stanley, Front of House.
For the purpose of this paper, we have explored a number of large and unique data sets comprising service employee engagement scores, customer experience scores, customer profit & loss data, and user experience surveys. Our analysis led us to three conclusions:
1. Employee engagement correlates strongly with customer experience. The more engaged the service employees, the more likely it is that customers will be satisfied with the service provided even to a level where they will actively recommend the service provider to others.
2. The primary drivers behind customer experience are:
Motivation and engagement of service staff
Amount of training and quality of service staff
Knowledge of, and the ability to act on, customer expectations by service staff.
3. Customer experience (as measured by the Net Promoter Score) is closely linked to contract profitability. The more likely the customer is to recommend a service provider, the more profitable the contract.
This has several implications for an FM customer. By considering the above findings, we have devised three customer recommendations. The customer should:
Actively request and monitor metrics on service employee engagement; these should, as a minimum, include the eNPS (employee net promoter score), employee churn, absenteeism and training hours
Resist the temptation to focus solely on cost savings when outsourcing but instead leave financial room for the Service Provider with the clear expectation that some of the realised savings should be reinvested into new and innovative service delivery models and employee engagement initiatives
Explore the opportunity to enter into a vested outsourcing partnership with the service provider.
Successful outsourcing relationships are not easy to achieve. However, if both parties work together to design a service delivery platform, which focuses on engaged service employees, the probability of the relationship being a success is multiplied.
