Building a Solid EX Foundation for CX Optimization

SSON’s April CX and Service Excellence for GBS Virtual Summit 2025 has successfully wrapped up, leaving behind invaluable insights and key takeaways for our audience, from a lineup of passionate industry experts. In this session on ‘Building a Solid EX Foundation for CX Optimization’, our panellists, Fausto Grelli, PepsiCo, Stefan Schmidt, Allianz Services, and Farley Fernandes, Adidas, shared their specialist perspectives on the top priorities organizations need to adopt for long-term employee satisfaction that intertwines with customer satisfaction. 

Prioritizing EX as a Strategic Priority: 

To achieve exceptional CX, EX must be put at the forefront of an organization’s priorities. Grelli supported this point by stating, “Employee experience cannot be just an HR priority… it should be a company objective.” Automation can drive efficiency within this area by incorporating intuitive, easy-to-use digital tools that assist customers who have interacted through self-service options, allowing employees to focus on more value-adding tasks. This ultimately reduces frustration and elevates the employee experience.

As Grelli highlights, “Happy employees equal happy customers.” When human intervention does take place, employees can offer more empathy and patience, which in turn enhances service quality. Schmidt supports this sentiment, urging organizations to “start with employees first... and you will get the results as a formula of the equation,” emphasizing that it is important not to separate the two, as the correlation is key to achieving excellent customer service. Schmidt states that this is evidenced by the frequent employee engagement surveys they perform at Allianz Services.

Overcoming Obstacles when Blending CX and EX: 

The evolution of the GBS model was first established from the perspective of being cost-effective and efficient, however, this perspective can often create a tunnel vision view on just process efficiency and cost-savings, overlooking employee and customer experience. Fernandes follows on from this point, stating that “the most high-performing world-class models tend to be more experience-led,” which ensures more integrated end-to-end experiences. Additionally, he states that an overreliance on digital tools from an operational level can be counterproductive if not blended with a focus on relationships and interactions, which tends to be more of a key focus for employees.

Fernandes highlighted that “it’s important that companies try to evolve their understanding and see themselves as platforms to deliver a great experience for both employees and customers.” Schmidt concludes this point by reminding the audience that, as a GBS provider, it's easy to get caught up in a “transactional space”, and if you give your employees that impression, they will never “understand the bigger picture of what is important... for customers."

Fostering an Employee-Focused Culture: 

Building an employee-focused culture is a key driver in fostering customer-centric behavior within an organization. Grelli emphasized this point, stating, “If employees feel valued, supported, and engaged, they will naturally transfer this positivity to their customers.” A key aspect Grelli mentioned is empowering employees to make decisions and, to a certain extent, be "creative" in their service delivery.

This can lead to faster and more personalized customer service. Grelli also encouraged prioritizing employee well-being, which includes flexible work arrangements that can boost employee satisfaction, as well as incorporating employee satisfaction into service design through measuring surveys and digital footprints. This approach allows organizations to create a culture that drives both employee and customer satisfaction simultaneously.

If you would like to find out more about this topic, please see the discussion above from our speakers on demand.  If you would like to see more great insights from SSON, join us for one of our upcoming digital events, the Record to Report Virtual Summit.