In brief
- The things that frustrate customers are the same things that frustrate employees when they deal with HR: no one to talk to, being bounced around, different answers, surprises and promises nobody keeps.
- Most companies have designed the customer experience on purpose. Very few have designed how HR is experienced.
- How your people are treated shows up in how your customers are treated.
A while back I ordered something online and the company sent the wrong size. Easy fix, I thought. It wasn’t.
There was no phone number that led to a person. Every call sent me to a website or a social media page to submit my complaint. When I finally got a response, they wouldn’t refund me, even though the mistake was theirs. They promised a credit instead. The credit never came. And somewhere in the stream of emails I’d been sent, I’d been signed up for a membership I didn’t know about until the charge showed up.
By the end I didn’t want anything else from that company. I just wanted to be done with them.
You’ve had an experience like that. Everyone has. And if you run a business, you’ve probably spent real money making sure your customers never feel that way about you.
Here’s the question I’d ask next: what does it feel like when one of your employees needs something from HR?
Five things customers hate. Your employees hate them too.
1. Not being able to reach a person
A customer with a problem wants to talk to someone who can fix it. When every road leads to a form, a chatbot or a page that says “we’ll be in touch,” they stop believing anyone is there.
Employees feel the same thing with HR. A portal they can’t navigate. A shared inbox nobody seems to own. An HR person who covers three locations and is never at any of them. The question goes in, and nothing comes back.
2. Being bounced around and repeating yourself
In one Twilio survey of 2,000 Americans, 45% named having to repeat their issue to a new representative after being transferred as a top frustration, and 42% named having to contact a company multiple times to fix one problem.
Now think about an employee with a benefits question. Their manager sends them to HR. HR sends them to payroll. Payroll sends them to the benefits carrier. By the fourth conversation, they’ve told the story four times and still don’t have an answer.
3. Different answers depending on who you ask
Customers notice when one rep says yes and the next one says no. It tells them the company doesn’t really know its own rules.
Employees notice it faster. One location approves the schedule change. Another one doesn’t. One manager says the policy allows it, and HR says it doesn’t. People stop trusting the answer and start shopping for the person who will tell them what they want to hear.
4. Surprises buried in the fine print
The membership I didn’t know I’d joined is the customer version. It’s the feeling of being caught by something you were technically told about.
The employee version is a policy change that went out in a handbook update nobody read, or a benefits change someone discovers on their paystub. It may have been communicated. It wasn’t delivered. (More on that in From Paperwork to HR Experience.)
5. Promises nobody keeps
The credit I was promised never showed up. That one stung more than the wrong size, because it was the moment I realized nobody was keeping track.
Employees hear “let me get back to you” from HR all the time. About a raise, a promotion, a concern they raised. When nobody gets back to them, they don’t just lose the answer. They lose the belief that asking is worth it.
Side by side
| What your customers say | What your employees say |
|---|
| No one to talk to | “I couldn’t reach a real person.” | “I don’t even know who to ask in HR.” |
| Bounced around | “I explained it three times.” | “My manager sent me to HR, and HR sent me to payroll.” |
| Different answers | “The last person told me something else.” | “It depends on who you ask.” |
| Surprises | “Nobody told me about that charge.” | “I found out when I saw my paycheck.” |
| Broken promises | “They said they’d call me back.” | “HR said they’d follow up. They never did.” |
Why this matters to your customers
This isn’t only an HR problem. The idea that how employees are treated shapes how customers are treated has been studied for decades. Harvard Business School researchers laid it out in “Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work”, which links the internal experience of employees to customer loyalty and, from there, to growth and profit.
The numbers have held up. Gallup’s Q12 meta-analysis, which covers more than 183,000 business and work units, found that teams in the top quartile of engagement see 10% higher customer loyalty and engagement than teams in the bottom quartile, along with 23% higher profitability.
You don’t need the research to see it, though. An employee who just spent a week chasing an answer from HR walks into their next customer conversation carrying that week with them. People who are treated like a ticket number have a hard time treating anyone else like a person.
Why most leaders never see it
Customer experience gets measured. Reviews, ratings, repeat business, complaints. When it slips, someone notices.
How HR is experienced usually doesn’t get measured at all. Customers who have a bad experience leave a review. Employees mostly don’t. They quietly stop asking, stop trusting the answers or leave.
So it’s possible to have a company that has worked hard on how it treats customers and has never once looked at how it treats its own people when they need help. Your customers may be getting a better experience than your employees, and you’d have no way of knowing.
The verdict
You already know how to do this. At some point you sat down and decided what you wanted your customers to feel when they dealt with your company. You thought about who they’d talk to, how fast they’d hear back and what you’d never want them to go through.
The same thinking applies to the people who work for you, every time they need something from HR. That’s what HRX™, the HR experience, is about: designing how HR is delivered so it feels like your company, not like a maze. If you’re not sure where your HR is breaking down, HR Service Delivery Model vs. System is a good place to start, and What Happens When HR Delivers Without Identity shows what it costs when nobody designs it.
Questions worth asking
- If an employee had a question for HR this morning, how many people would they have to talk to before they got an answer?
- Would two employees at different locations get the same answer to the same question?
- Do you measure how HR is experienced the way you measure how customers are treated?
Read next: Your Customer Experience Can’t Be Better Than Your HR Experience
Frequently asked questions
What is the connection between employee experience and customer experience?
How employees are treated shapes how they treat customers. Research going back to the service-profit chain, and Gallup’s engagement studies since, links a better internal experience to higher customer loyalty and profit.
Why does HR affect customer experience?
HR is where employees go when they need help with pay, benefits, schedules, problems and their careers. If getting that help is slow, confusing or inconsistent, employees carry that frustration into their work with customers.
What is HRX?
HRX™ is the HR experience: how HR is delivered and experienced by the people in your company, every day, in every interaction. It’s a designed system that carries your culture into how HR works.
How do I know if my employees are having a bad HR experience?
Look for the same signs you’d look for with customers: people who don’t know who to ask, get different answers, have to follow up repeatedly or stop asking altogether.
