No one understands customer experience like a front-line worker. Cashiers, bank tellers and call center agents are the ones shaping the brand experience day in and day out — and the ones receiving feedback right from the source.

Many CX, or customer experience, leaders don’t think they need to own anything about the employee experience, according to Steven Bailey, commercial excellence leader at EY Americas. However, employee experience ultimately “infuses itself into the product, into the service and into the brand experience,” he told CX Dive.

Leaders need to listen to and work with front-line employees if they want to perfect their strategies, according to Judy Weader, principal analyst at Forrester. It’s not enough to talk to a manager running the call center. The people working the phones have valuable insight, too.

“They’re emotionally invested in things being better for the customer because when things aren’t going well for the customer, they’re always the ones bearing the brunt of it,” Weader told CX Dive. “They want things to be different. They just need help.”

Collect a range of feedback

The baseline for gathering employee feedback is standard sampling tactics, Weader said. Find a representative sample of employees in a particular region, conduct interviews to hear their thoughts and look at how their testimony backs up other relevant data.

Companies should supplement polling with a formal, always-open feedback process, according to Bailey. The system should be very easy to use, and it should encourage reporting negative experiences as well as positive experiences to collect viewpoints beyond what surveys turn up.

“You’ve got to have a quiver full of arrows — of these different tools — that you’re using to collect feedback constantly,” Bailey said.

From there, CX leaders can work with technology teams to turn any raw information they collect into actionable insights, according to Weader. Employee stories are specific to their role and context, and it can take a bit of work to tease out the feedback that points to wider problems.

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