For all the talk of customer experience, very little is given to the employee experience. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge believer in creating a great customer experience. It’s crucial for any kind of repeat business and long-term success, it’s critical for word-of-mouth endorsements and buzz, it’s a necessity to differentiate from competing businesses. And so what?

It’s been said that the customer experience never exceeds the employee experience. I shorthand that into a simple math formula: CX<EX. If the employee experience is unpleasant, micromanaged, and rigid I can hardly expect the customers to receive a warm, open, uniquely customized experience. On a scale of 1-10, if the employees have a “1” experience, the customers will NOT receive a “10” experience.

It’s funny how we talk so much about creating the customer experience, but the employee experience seems to be an afterthought or we take a shotgun approach.  We forget that, no matter what our intentions, strategy, or CX metrics, it’s the employees who deliver the customer experience. Yes, work has to be done, high standards need to be met (exceeded), profits must be made. But somewhere along the way we get confused and think that work, standards, and profits are at the expense of the employee instead of because of the employee.

The great thing about employee experience is that it doesn’t have to be based on hope, chance, or luck. We can actually design it. We can give focused intentional thought to the experience we want them to have and how to create it.

We don’t often think about creating an intentional employee experience, so if you want an easy place to start ask yourself this: What is our ideal customer experience? How do we want customers to describe their experience with us to their friends?

Now build that experience for your employees.