Employee Experience: The Engine of Customer Experience

Have you ever had your alarm ring at 3:30 a.m. because you have an early flight booked? With your eyes still half-closed, you arrive at the airport, go through the check-in counter, drop off your luggage, go through security, and finally take your seat on the plane. And when you think the worst of the morning is over, you hear the captain's voice: "Attention, dear passengers, we are sorry to inform you that your flight has been canceled due to a situation outside the airline's control."

From seat 21A, your mind goes straight to stress and chaos: calls, messages, rescheduling meetings, improvised accommodations. And it's easy to see it as a complete system failure. After all, you did your part: arriving on time, complying with the rules, and following the airport and airline regulations.

However, if we change our perspective, the story appears differently. Behind your experience, there was an invisible choreography: employees from different companies — some of whom didn't even know each other — coordinated processes such as check-in, security, boarding, baggage loading, supplying supplies, and fueling the plane. Everything had to happen promptly and with exact quality assurance. And suddenly, with the cancellation, the entire machinery must spin into crisis mode: rescheduling, reassigning, and containing the anger of dozens of passengers.

Now, try walking in those employees' shoes. Maybe they ran out of forms, the reservation system crashed, and while their manager asks for reports, a passenger demands explanations they can't provide. They must prioritize, make decisions in seconds, and maintain a standard of service that customers — you and I — take for granted will always be perfect.

Seen this way, flight cancellation is an uncomfortable reminder: as customers, we always measure our experience by its outcome. As employees, we live by the conditions and support we receive to do our job well. And on either side, what happens behind the scenes is much more fragile and complex than it appears.

The Invisible Link Between Employee and Customer

Nowadays, it’s a competitive business world, where technology advances by leaps and bounds and consumer expectations are rising quickly. Customer experience (CX) has positioned itself as the key differentiator for survival, growth, and revenue. However, behind every memorable customer interaction, there is a less visible but equally crucial story: the employee experience (EX) in delivering those experiences.

Recent studies confirm that the quality of the internal employee experience is the driving force behind excellence in external customer experience. For example, a 2022 Gallup report showed that companies with highly engaged employees report 21% higher profitability and 17% higher productivity, figures that directly impact customer perception and loyalty, positively impacting retention and reducing costs associated with hiring and training new staff.

What does human capital have to do with CX?

If I ask you who is the first person to consider to provide an extraordinary customer experience, you'd probably think: the customer. It´s obvious, right? But here's the twist: Before looking at the customer, we should look at the employee.

The equation is simpler than it seems: Happy customers often come from happy employees. The problem is that "happy" doesn't mean what many leaders believe. Salary, compensation, and benefits are essential, but they're not the only things that truly retain an employee and push them to give their best. It's the combination of professional development, challenges, advancement opportunities, inspiration, and a healthy work environment. Without this, not even the best benefits package will prevent talent from seeking immediate departure.

Customers, for their part, play on a different level. Of course, they look for the best price, but they also expect courtesy, credibility, trust, and consistency between what the company promises and what it delivers. And here's the dilemma: These qualities are impossible to sustain if the people who deliver them feel they're working in a toxic environment, where people are disrespected, promises are broken, or support is lacking.

From my experience, human capital can influence this invisible connection through three levers:

• Focus on all the people. It's not just about the customer receiving courtesy. Organizations measure customer satisfaction with surveys, but few measure employee satisfaction with the same rigor. The value perceived by the customer starts with the value perceived by the person who is serving them. An employee inspired to give their best in every interaction is the best example of commitment and experience, which is perceived and makes a difference. This is what an organization needs most to face a crisis and distinguish itself from its competitors.
• Built culture and experience. Attracting, developing, and aligning talent with the company's culture requires constant micro-changes: in communication, in processes, in how employees are supported, even upon leaving the company, and by example, in removing those who are not part of that culture, and in being consistent. Just as a customer notices the difference between hiring a service and canceling it, an employee notices and values whether their work experience is humane from the moment they are them to the moment they leave.
• Reinforce loyalty and reputation. A company's reputation can take decades to build and seconds to destroy. The same goes for an employee's sense of belonging, who knows that the value proposition is real and not a lie. And that pride is contagious: an employee who feels part of a strong community conveys credibility to the customer, even without intending to.

In other words, the customer journey begins long before they make a purchase, it begins the day an employee walks to work for the first time, with a contract in hand and expectations in mind. If human capital manages this first step well, the customer experience isn't a promise, it's a consequence.

To face this challenge, human capital must support the sales team, work directly with the customer experience team, and understand what it's like to be in contact with customers. Solving and helping to improve the employee experience shouldn't be just their frontier within an organization. I challenge them to lead from the outside.