How Experience as a Service bolsters high-performance: Andy Hardy, Genesys

The Experience Economy is revolutionising the way employers and employees have come to define their notion of work in recent years.

Genesys, the software company focused on contact centre solutions, is focused on changing the game by creating an entirely new employee and customer experience with empathy underpinning everything going forward. That’s why the company created a new category – Experience as a Service – where it shifts the focus to what truly matters: people.

"In the experience economy, it’s no longer just about what’s good for business. It’s thinking outside-in. It’s thinking people-first," says Andy Hardy, Strategic Director - Employee Engagement, Genesys, in an exclusive interview with People Matters.

What is the ROI when companies put greater emphasis on a positive employee experience?

There are so many different parts to what makes up employee experience (EX) and these are evolving as employee engagement technology becomes much more accessible and connected. This again comes back to previous departments working in silos of each other – for example, the resource planning team would use service levels accuracy, adherence, Average Handle Time (AHT). The Quality team would use Quality assurance (QA) results, and calibration data. The Analytics teams would look at First Call Resolution (FCR) and Customer Satisfaction. The Coaching & Learning team will use learning impact. The Sales teams would leverage gamification for sales conversion results.

This is the optimal way of looking at the employee. However, this is evolving. As we work with organisations to bring together their processes and strategies, it allows organisations to move towards more of an employee experience index that utilises all metrics available to them whilst also measuring more holistic areas such as attrition, Net Promoter Score (NPS), new hire percentages, etc.

You will see more and more organisations who are introducing new roles specifically focussed on Employee Experience that sit above those traditional metrics of the contact centre – giving a more holistic view of the employee across all those business areas. Genesys in particular has actively changed its stance from viewing employees not as assets but as powerful differentiators to delivering an exceptional experience.

And these things can be achieved with minimal investment when we start to implement connected strategies.

What are some lessons from customer experience management that companies can apply in designing their employee experience?

At Genesys, we believe that powerful experience orchestration’ is at the heart of delivering superior CX and EX. The biggest ‘area’ that can be adopted and something that’s critical in providing excellent CX is planning what we want the experience to be like, be it for the customer or employee. It's a similar process. The agent almost becomes your customer. What experience do we want them to have, how do we want them to feel, what does success look like, not just individually but collectively as well. What does real engagement look like? 

This is where the concept of Experience-as-a-Service comes into play. At its core, Genesys combines systems of listening, understanding & predicting, acting, and learning into highly scalable cloud services that support the entire customer lifecycle across marketing, sales, and services engagements.

An example of that was the introduction of things like chatbots a few years ago. So many companies didn’t get it right initially as it wasn’t thought through and planned. In turn, the experience was poor, and the customer could become disengaged easily. It's the same with employees. Bring your teams together and collectively agree what ‘good’ looks like for your employees. Then work together to achieve that goal – using the technology as you need to drive your employee strategy.

How can we ensure that technology enhances EX instead of contributing to digital burnout?

I think simplicity, personalisation and a solution – with the primary goal is about employee wellbeing and overall experience – are critical. That has evolved as we move away from just optimisation and more towards engagement. Historically a lot of technology that was deemed as being about the employee was actually about the optimisation of the workforce and getting more from your business. This is absolutely still relevant today but has now evolved so much further towards engagement.

Providing processes and tools that empower your workforce, engage your people. A new lens on what it means to engage your teams will certainly help with that. If you put the employee first and provide the flexibility they demand, the recognition they deserve and the development they require will provide the best possible experience for all your employees.

Recently, we teamed up with AI-powered behaviour change technology platform developer Thrive to help address the growing workplace issue of employee burnout. The joint solution was created to allow businesses using Genesys to help their employees course-correct from stress in 60 seconds based on proven neuroscience methodology. It starts with reshaping the employee experience by giving employers tools to foster individual wellbeing.

It is imperative for organisations to transcend business centricity, and scale empathy across their organisations to deliver positive experiences to customers, partners and employees — and to drive the trust and loyalty that sets them apart.