Do you know your customers better than your staff?

To continue reading please register or login to your OHW+ account.

Organisations invest millions in building their customer engagement strategies, but rarely know much about their employees. Yet putting staff at the centre of the business is key to sustained competitive advantage, argues Fairsail CEO Adam Hale. I speak to business leaders of mid-size multinational organisations every week and there is no denying that the vast majority know far more about their customers than they do their own workforce. But why? The customer’s impact on growth has always been central to business strategy, while the bottom-line impact of people is usually considered as a cost and hence impacts margin. With the ongoing war for talent and the need to retain employees, knowing your people as well as – if not better than – your customers is essential for success and ongoing competitive advantage. For the past 15 years, there has been an increased focus on optimising the customer journey and the associated customer experience – a trend that has been accelerated by the move to digital business. Given that 70% to 90% of the buying process now takes place online, it is no surprise that customer relationship management and predictive customer analytics tools have become commonplace in the marketing, sales and services functions. Companies have realised that they need to think about the buyer’s journey in its entirety in order to deliver a better brand experience to customers and beat their competitors. What is fascinating to me is that we have seen nothing like the same level of attention as to the employment journey and th