From Learner Experience to Customer Delight – Forging the path to Technology-aided Learning through Learning Experience Platforms

Millennials are the largest demographic in the workplace today and hence, studying their attitudes, beliefs and behaviour at the workplace is of upmost importance. Not surprisingly, with the increasing number of millennials in the workforce, employee experience has become the cynosure of all forward-thinking organizations. The good news is that a lot of studies and researches are been conducted to get a deep insight into the Millennials at the workplace. According to Gallup Research, Millennials are the first generation of Digital natives and feel comfortable with all technology – especially mobile and smartphones. They are also easily accessible and are spend almost an inordinate amount of time on the internet. So, engaging the millennials shouldn’t be a problem, right? Well, not so much.

According to the same research, Millennials are the least engaged generation in the workforce. As per a survey conducted, a whopping 55 percent of millennials confess being not engaged at the workplace while a disturbing 16 percent are actively disengaged. They are also notorious about changing jobs more often – as a result the modern workplace faces an increased phenomenon of attrition..

The biggest impact of employee disengagement is seen in operational performance and customer experience. This has direct influence on the quality of service that the organization provides to its end-customers – finally bringing down profits.  This is a direct result of a scenario where employees are not personally invested in their jobs and organization.

Thus, to make sure that employees are engaged at the workplace, modern organizations should seriously consider investing in employee experience within the organization structure.  A sustained policy of improving employee experience can lead to employee engagement – and finally, superior customer experience.

There are various ways and means of ensuring an improved employee experience within an organization:

• Collect and Collate Feedback: Employee surveys, polls, focus groups and similar ways of collecting employee feedback can form the backbone of an ‘Voice of the Employee’ program, helping organizational stakeholders to understand the issues faced by employees and make successful efforts to improve employee experience.
• Inculcate a Customer-centric culture: Most engaged employees always have the intention to be customer-centric but often lack the skills and/or decision-making power. They are often trained on customer-centric values, but the lack of autonomy often clips their wings in terms of improving the customer experience through proactive behavior. The culture of providing customer-centric values and enough steam to take proactive actions to improve customer experience can not only bring about customer delight but provide a sense of satisfaction to the employees as well. This culture strengthens employee experience and engagement.
• Learning Technology: Finally, modern technologies can also enhance employees experience – especially technology which helps employees gain efficiencies and help them perform better. Learning technologies at the workplace are fast changing – keeping in pace with the needs of the modern workforce. While the ‘push’ approach of yesteryears, which followed a one-size-fits-all method of learning delivery, the new ways of workplace learning focus on an interactive experience which draws from skill gaps, learning preferences, learning history and more.

The new-age learning systems – aptly called ‘Learning Experience Platforms’, align to the Learner – in contrast to ‘Learning Management Systems’ which aligned to Managers or Stakeholders. The learning curve of these new-age technologies is short – enabling a quick and seamless integration of learning within everyday work life. Strengthened with mobile delivery and features like easy-to-use analytics — Learning Experience Platforms help employees not only learn better but also help them make better learning decisions through data. Individually customized learning paths create an avenue of personalized learning which elevate the learner experience – through varied learning content, including video nuggets, podcasts, simulations, games and more. From the boredom of the same monotonous page-turner of a learning module to an exciting array of learning options – Learning Experience Platforms drive home the power of learner-led training.

G-Cube Learning Experience Platform (LXP) is a new-age platform of creating and driving employee experience that helps them not only gain knowledge but empowers them with skills as per their job role and preferences. Powered by a custom-made Suggestion engine, it curates all available learning content from internal as well as external sources and channelizes it to learners, as per their attributes – their role, learning history or self-driven choices. It is also equipped with a Virtual Learning Assistant to help employees navigate the system, guide them to the best selection of curated content as well as keep them abreast of all upcoming learning events.

It is evident that employee experience is the magic potion drives customer experience and delight. The trifecta of Feedback, Proactive Work Culture and Technology helps organization creates a positive employee experience and helps maintaining engagement. This is turn strengthens the link between the customer experience and the employee experience – finally benefitting the overall business and performance of the organization. Organizations should thus continually make efforts to create newer and effective avenues of employee experience to improve their overall customer engagement.