Focusing on B2E Can Drive Business Value

When people think of a modern digital experience, they often think of customers interacting with a brand. It’s true that businesses must deliver a great customer experience (CX) to earn customer loyalty and stay competitive. But as companies digitally mature, they realize that providing a great employee experience (EX) is also essential. In fact, according to Gartner, 47% of HR leaders cite employee experience as a top priority for 2023.

A strategic business-to-employee (B2E) approach can help redefine the employee experience. B2E holds the key to enhanced productivity, unwavering loyalty, and profitable growth. Here’s what you need to know about why this transformation matters, how businesses can enable it, and how a business-to-employee mindset drives business value.

What Is B2E and Why Does It Matter?

Business-to-employee (B2E) strategy prioritizes the employee experience. Agents and broker owners are more likely to stay at a company if they are satisfied and have the tools and support they need to excel in their roles. The business will benefit through increased productivity and reduced turnover costs. The clients will be thrilled that they’re getting better service. And happy clients send additional business to their agents.

Employee Experience: The Key to Customer Loyalty and Increased Revenue

Have you ever sought help at a retail store only to end up talking to an aloof salesperson with limited knowledge of the product? How well did that employee answer your question or resolve your concern? Did you leave the conversation feeling valued? Did you feel you had received sound advice? Were you motivated to shop there again?

Now think back to a time when you spoke with a salesperson who not only was a pleasure to deal with at a human level but also had the right tools and knowledge to do their job. How well did that person handle your request or solve your problem? How did you feel about the company after your interaction? Was your experience so pleasant that you decided to visit the retailer again — and to encourage others to do the same?

The difference between these two customer scenarios is like night and day — and customers are utterly clear about which they prefer. According to Zendesk’s CX Trends 2023 Report , 66% of consumers who interact often with support said a lousy interaction could ruin their day. In an ideal world, they’d have a positive interaction with every employee they speak with, no matter what their role in the company might be.

Companies with engaged employees who consistently give clients a great experience have a far better chance of garnering improved customer loyalty and increased revenue. According to Forrester, customers are 2.4 times more likely to stay when companies resolve customer problems more quickly — and they’re 2.7 times more likely to spend more when companies communicate clearly.

What’s the State of the Employee Experience Today?

Since happier and more fulfilled employees, agents, and broker owners do better work and provide a better customer experience, the clear takeaway is to improve the employee experience. But how can business leaders do that — especially considering the headwinds they face?

According to the 2023 Employee Experience Trends Report, more than one-third (38%) of employees are experiencing symptoms of burnout, leading to lower productivity and reduced ability to provide that dream experience clients crave. The top cause of this burnout is ineffective processes and systems. In fact, the percentage of employees who say the technology they use enables maximum productivity fell from 68% in 2022 to 63% in 2023. Something’s heading off-track, and businesses need to address the problem sooner rather than later.

If you ask about reduced productivity, many employees will point to available technology. The consumer technology they use in their personal lives has allowed them to be more productive and communicate more seamlessly than ever before. The technology they use at work doesn’t do that. By comparison, employees’ workplace technology is outdated, inflexible, and much more complicated than consumer technology. Furthermore, it fails to facilitate strategic business outcomes.

Employees consider access to the right technology at work an increasingly urgent issue, especially since they’ve seen how profoundly it can benefit their productivity and job performance. Businesses are seeing a cultural shift, with new expectations coming from their employees. To unlock business value at this stage of their digital transformation journey, business leaders need to invest in the employee experience just as intentionally as they invest in the customer experience. One powerful path to doing so lies in embracing a B2E strategy.

How Can Businesses Enable a B2E Approach?

Businesses already know that their customer data is currency, and it has value. What if they thought about their employee data similarly, leveraging this information to improve agent and business outcomes? The answer is using a digital experience (DX) platform to enable a business-to-employee approach. This composable platform, which sits at the intersection of processes, content, and applications used at the company, can unlock the necessary insights for this endeavor.

Just as in a CX scenario, the journey to enabling a business-to-employee strategy begins by understanding the current state of employee, agent, and broker owner experiences. This encompasses how the company communicates relevant information to employees, how intranet admins are empowered to create journeys for agents, or how agents access training on demand. Points of friction encountered while trying to carry out job responsibilities should be given intentional focus.

The next step is to specify the outcomes that drive the most value for employees and the business. These outcomes may include providing agents with a platform that is accessible across all devices, integrating existing business applications via API, and providing agents with adaptable tools to create meaningful experiences and support better transactions.

Lastly, the company must unlock the intelligence necessary for these improvements. This step goes beyond simply leveraging data to create a personalized experience. It requires understanding user interactions (in this case, employee interactions) and storing the data associated with them in a manner that is easily accessible; enriching that data with insights to improve context and relevance; and continuously learning from user interactions — for example, by looking to make new connections, drive new learnings, and enhance employee engagement.

A business that pursues this strategy can enable an employee experience that improves the lives of its employees and drives better business results. The company could discover a new method for broker owners to query and display structured data necessary to provide personalized support and resources to agents. Not only that, but it could ensure that all employees undergo a thoughtful, robust onboarding tailored to their job function. Lastly, the company could communicate opportunities for reskilling or upskilling with its employees from a more informed, insightful standpoint — improving the relationship between the business and those working there.

Satisfied Employees Drive Business Value

A company’s ability to succeed depends on the quality of its CX. Businesses are beginning to appreciate just how vital a good employee experience is. Just as customers have been increasingly vocal about their expectations for a great customer experience, employees now strongly desire meaningful improvements in their workplace experience. By embracing a business-to-employee strategy — for example, by implementing a digital experience platform — businesses can be more responsive to their employees, unlock increased productivity, and raise the bar on the CX they deliver — all at the same time. That’s a business outcome everyone can feel good about.

Contact us to learn more about our digital experience platform.