Genesys offers workforce management tool to measure EX
A contact center management firm uses a Genesys tool that collects information about employees' experience to uncover organizational weaknesses and identify ways to improve.
Contact center workforce management vendor Genesys wants to give customers an experience measurement tool that's better than the Net Promoter Score.
Peter Graf, Genesys' chief strategy and operations officer, said he thinks the Net Promoter survey question is worded poorly.
"It is very selfish to ask, 'How likely are you to recommend me?'" Graf said. "It's a very inward way of asking a question."
As it stands now, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a survey metric produced by one question: "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?"
The New York Times bestselling author and business strategist Fred Reichheld created the NPS in 2003 as a way for companies to measure customer loyalty.
Reichheld divided the 0 to 10 scores into three separate groups to categorize the loyalty level of each customer. Respondents with a score of 9 or 10 are considered the most loyal. Those with 7 or 8 are considered more at risk of fleeing to a persuasive competitor. And those with 0 to 6 are seen as liabilities who are likely to spread negative reviews.
These numbers are also used to calculate other scores and compare them with industry averages about customers' perceptions of a company's products and services and to illuminate areas in which a company can improve.
The Net Promoter Score uses number responses to measure customer loyalty.
An alternative to the Net Promoter Score
Genesys offers an alternative tool to the NPS called the Experience Index to measure employee experience in the contact center. Specifically, it is an alternative to the eNPS, which stands for employee Net Promoter Score, and measures employee experience.
InflowCX, a contact center management and consulting services company, deployed the Experience Index in January.
Tommy Mullins, InflowCX's vice president of operations and service delivery, said the index gives managers the opportunity to hear employees' honest thoughts and evaluations about their experience with the company. He compared it to a performance review in which the employees get to evaluate their employer.
"It flips the script," Mullins said. "It says, 'How are we doing for them? How are we deploying tools that help?'"
Survey tools such as the employee Net Promoter Score and Genesys' Experience Index are among the many methods that aim to identify inadequacies in the employee experience and correct them.
Understanding an organization's weaknesses
Mullins used the Experience Index in the two departments he oversees. One is managed services, a customer support team, and the other is service delivery, which provides deployment assistance when a customer installs a new tool or platform.
The Experience Index is an anonymous survey with standard questions that you can tweak, eliminate or supplement, Mullins said.
At InflowCX, the survey addressed questions about employees' attitudes about onboarding, work environment, interactions with customers, well-being, company involvement, manager support and professional development.
These questions really brought everything to the surface.
Tommy MullinsVice president, operations and service delivery, InflowCX
"These questions really brought everything to the surface," Mullins said.
For example, Mullins learned that the onboarding experience in these departments was strong in some areas and weak in others. For questions about new employees feeling welcomed and receiving clear expectations about the job, InflowCX scored high.
But for questions about understanding how to use a knowledge base and feeling prepared to perform the job after the initial onboarding, the scores were low.
"We feel like we hired the right person, but we also feel like maybe we didn't give them all of the tools they specifically needed out of the gate," Mullins said.
Identifying ways to improve
What makes surveys such as the NPS and Experience Index effective is their ability to identify how companies can take action to improve their organizations.
To mitigate the low onboarding scores at InflowCX, Mullins' team started a new program called FAST, or First Approach Skills Training.
The program enables employees to communicate to their managers what skills they will need as soon as they start working to perform their jobs in the most effective way. It gives staff a channel for support after the formal hiring process is complete.
Organizations can continue to use the Experience Index to track their progress as they introduce new initiatives to improve the employee experience.
"I can't wait to go back and ask the same questions again," Mullins said. "I want to see that increase."
Mary Reines is a news writer covering customer experience and unified communications for TechTarget Editorial. Before TechTarget, Reines was arts editor at the Marblehead Reporter.
