For all the time and energy that companies invest in improving their customer experience, many are unknowingly sabotaging those efforts.
How? Simply by using two words that should be stricken from every business leader’s vocabulary: back office.
It’s a term that many executives throw around without regard to its influence on the culture and mindset of their organization.
Creating a work environment that fosters customer experience (CX) excellence requires getting everyone in the organization to view their role as a critical part of the CX equation. The moment employees start to feel that their work is invisible to the customer — that they are somehow “hidden” in a back office — they lose appreciation for the impact they have on customer impressions.
That’s an unfortunate outcome, and one that can undermine employee engagement. It’s also based on an inaccurate premise, because every job in a company influences the customer experience, in one way or another.
Every Organization Has Just Two Roles
As I explain in this video clip from a recent CX workshop, there really are just two roles in any organization: You’re either serving the customer, or you’re serving someone else who does.
Think of it this way: Within every company there is an internal “value chain,” a set of business processes and people — all links in the chain — that work together to form a service or solution for the customer.
Everyone in the organization represents a link in that chain. And, even though your link might not be the one at the end of the chain (the one that actually “touches” the customer) every link still needs to be strong and solid if your downstream colleagues are to have any hope of delivering an impressive customer experience.
That final link in the chain represents what are typically viewed as “customer-facing” roles — sales, customer service, or field technical support, for example. Individuals in those roles need no reminder that they have a very real and direct influence on customer perceptions. After all, they interact with customers every day, either in person, on the phone or online.
It’s a different story, however, for individuals in supporting roles (i.e., earlier links in the chain) that involve little if any regular contact with customers. Examples of those roles would include jobs such as transaction processors, warehouse/fulfillment personnel, manufacturing staff, sales support specialists, marketers, business analysts, and legal/contracting staff.
It is all too easy for individuals in these behind-the-scenes roles to lose sight of how their actions influence the customer experience and shape brand impressions. That risk is heightened when the “back office” label is attached to any employees performing these supporting functions.
The Toxic Impact of a Single Term
What makes matters worse is that the back office term can have a negative connotation for those to whom it is ascribed. (Business leaders who use the phrase rarely consider how rank and file employees might feel about it.) The term implies a degree of inferiority, seemingly relegating “less important and less polished staff” to some back office wasteland where they safely perform their duties, shielded from customer view.
Beyond the term’s unfavorable connotation, however, is an even more serious problem. For any job to which the term is applied, it effectively frames that role as being completely dissociated from the “front office,” where company and customer connect.
That’s a recipe for customer experience disaster, as it robs these behind-the-scenes employees of any sense of customer-facing purpose that would help inspire them and favorably shape their behavior.
How To Unite *All* Employees Around the Customer Experience
If you’re serious about creating a work environment that encourages customer experience excellence, then consider the following actions to advance that goal:
- Never say “back office” again. Strike this term from your organizational vernacular. It shouldn’t be uttered in hallway conversations or town hall meetings. It shouldn’t appear in reports or e-mails. And it most certainly should never be embedded in any position title or job description. (Search LinkedIn for “back office” and you’ll start to get a sense for how pervasive this misguided approach really is.)
- Distill all roles into two categories. Not all employees are customer-facing, but they are all most certainly customer-impacting. That’s the key message that should be conveyed to anyone in a role formerly characterized as “back office.” No matter where an employee sits in the internal value chain, their work influences the customer experience. Take the mailroom, for example — a functional area that is about as far away as you can get from the front line. Mail sorters never speak with a customer. Yet, if they don’t excel at their part of the value chain (promptly delivering incoming customer correspondence to the right company department), then the quality of the resulting customer experience will undoubtedly suffer.
- Broaden the definition of “customer.” Even if employees don’t have direct contact with the end consumer of your products and services, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a customer. Their “customer” may be an internal one – perhaps a colleague in another department, or a teammate just a few steps away. Encourage employees to think in terms of the external and internal constituencies they serve. Then, suddenly, everyone becomes customer-facing in some fashion (either serving the customer, or serving a colleague who does). That’s a good mindset to promote, because behind every great external customer experience lies a great internal colleague experience.
Watch Your Language, Because Words Matter
It’s a widely accepted fact of human cognition that our thoughts shape our language. We think of something we want to communicate, and then our mind translates that into the words we vocalize.
Less appreciated, however, is the converse concept – that language shapes thought. This is the notion that the words we use actually influence, if not constrain, our view of the world.
To see how this works in a business context, consider how an employee’s view of their job might differ when they’re called a “food service clerk” versus a “barista.” Or a “transaction processor” versus a “service specialist.” Or a “staff recruiter” versus a “talent scout.”
These contrasting terms can evoke very different feelings in an individual about their role and its importance, potentially shaping their on-the-job behavior in more (or less) desirable ways.
Words matter, so referring to a role or an entire unit as “back office” can inadvertently create a culture that is anything but customer-centric.
If you’re striving to elevate your company’s customer experience, then it’s time to retire the “back office” label and choose your workplace terminology more carefully. By doing so, you can show everyone on your team that when it comes to forging great customer impressions — we’re all on the front line.
Jon Picoult is founder of Watermark Consulting, a customer experience advisory firm that helps companies impress customers and inspire employees, creating raving fans that drive business growth. Author of “FROM IMPRESSED TO OBSESSED: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans,” Picoult is also an acclaimed keynote speaker, as well as an advisor to some of the world’s foremost brands. Follow Jon on LinkedIn or Instagram, or subscribe to his monthly eNewsletter.