HR Lack of Engagement Strategies Harm Customer Experience Management

According to a study by the Temkin Group, most HR departments are not helping their companies with customer experience management (CEM), indicating a lack of employee engagement strategies which heavily contribute to outstanding customer experiences. The survey found that while most HR pros acknowledge the importance of customer experience management and that employee engagement is a key component of CEM, most have not assisted in creating customer-centric company cultures.

The survey found that while 32 percent of HR professionals said employee engagement was critical, and a further 42 percent said it was very important, just 19 percent considered their efforts in that arena to be excellent; 42 percent said their efforts were good.

“If you think about customer service, from the dimension of improving customer interactions to the engaging of employees, it’s really hard to do that without having some structural changes in how you handle human resources,” said Bruce Temkin, author of the study.

Instead of focusing on CEM, most HR departments are focusing on matters such as hiring, training, and retaining employees, the survey said. It goes on to state that in order to improve CEM, HR departments must work to create employee engagement strategies, which involves hiring people with CEM experience, mandating customer experience training, creating competency models for jobs, and developing CEM performance incentives.

“To the extent that you think of human resources as the gatekeeper of the people in your company, it’s really hard to embrace the cultural change around customer experience and have human resources standing on the sidelines,” Temkin said. “I think lots of HR leaders want to play more strategic roles in their companies. This is a huge opportunity for a chief people officer [HR] to be more strategic.”