Episode 9: Building True Customer and Employee Experiences

“I strongly believe that there’s a strong connection between employee experience and customer experience. Employee experience drives the customer experience,” says Annette Franz, the CEO of CX Journey Inc. She joins Alex Raymond to talk about how putting employees first fuels customer success. Annette challenges the typical focus on metrics, asking us to consider: Are we truly supporting our employees to deliver the experience our customers expect?

 

Annette’s perspective is clear: collaboration—especially between sales and account management—is the key to equipping teams with the resources and support they need to meet customer needs. She shares stories from her work that show how a lack of support for account managers can directly impact customer satisfaction and retention. 

 

They also touch on survey fatigue and the value of a smarter approach to customer feedback. Are we measuring what matters most? Annette suggests customer effort scores and lifetime value over traditional metrics like NPS, which often miss the bigger picture of loyalty and engagement. By centering on the employee journey as much as the customer’s, this episode sheds light on how a collaborative, well-supported employee experience can elevate customer satisfaction and drive long-term growth.

 

Quotes

• “I strongly believe that there’s a strong connection between employee experience and customer experience. Employee experience drives the customer experience. If we don’t have employees to design, build, service, install, implement, and deliver all of these things, then who’s going to do it? And who are we doing it for? We’re doing it for the customer.” (04:48 | Annette Franz)
• “Customer experience is not technology. Technology is a tool; it supports and facilitates. The experience that customers have is very much human. And this feeling’s part of it. It really puts the human into the experience. And I think that’s an important thing.” (07:13 | Annette Franz)
• “You’re not customer-centric just because you’ve got a slogan on your website that says you are. You’re customer-centric when you truly understand who your customer is, what they need and want, and where they’re going.” (08:03 | Alex Raymond)
• “One of the questions I ask during interviews, and I think it’s fair for leaders to ask too, is: do you have what you need to do your job? That is the bottom line.” (12:29 | Annette Franz)
• “I’m not a fan of NPS for a variety of reasons... It’s just a metric... And to me, NPS only makes sense if your business is truly 100% driven by referrals... So for me, things like customer effort score, customer lifetime value, those kinds of things. Let’s talk about those kinds of things.” (25:09 | Annette Franz) 

 

Links

Connect with Annette Franz:

Website: https://annettefranz.com/

 

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://amplifyam.com/

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm