In brief
- Your customer experience depends on your employee experience. Your employee experience depends, more than most leaders realize, on how HR is experienced every day.
- That’s what I mean by HRX is the new EX for CX: the HR experience is one of the most direct ways to shape what your customers get.
- Designing it isn’t HR’s job alone. It starts when the company decides that the experience its people get is part of the experience its customers get.
When you started your company, you thought hard about one experience. You decided what you wanted customers to feel when they found you, bought from you and came back. You probably still think about it every week.
What almost nobody plans for is that there’s a second experience to design. The one your own people have, every time they need something from the company. Nobody tells you that when you start. It shows up later, as the company grows, and by then it’s already been shaped by default.
So it’s common to find a company where customers are getting a better experience than the people serving them. Not because anyone decided it should be that way. Because nobody decided anything at all.
This article pulls together why that matters, what it has to do with HR and what changes when you design it on purpose.
What the line means
“HRX is the new EX for CX” packs three ideas into six words.
- CX is how customers experience your company.
- EX is how employees experience working there.
- HRX™ is how people experience HR, and through HR, the company. Every day, in every interaction.
If the terms are new, I break each one down in HRX vs. EX vs. CX: What’s the Difference? The short version is that they connect in a line. How HR is experienced shapes how employees feel. How employees feel shapes what customers get.
Why EX alone isn’t enough
Most companies that work on employee experience focus on the big moments. The first day. Open enrollment. A promotion. Those moments matter, and they deserve attention.
But most of working somewhere happens in between them. The question about a paycheck. The schedule change. The concern someone raises with their manager and then waits to hear back on. That’s where people decide whether the company means what it says, and nearly all of it runs through HR.
That’s why HRX includes EX instead of replacing it. Design the everyday HR experience, and you’ve designed a large part of the employee experience along the way.
Why your customers feel it
The link between how employees are treated and how customers are treated has been studied for decades. Harvard Business School researchers laid it out in “Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work”. Gallup’s Q12 meta-analysis found that teams in the top quartile of engagement see 10% higher customer loyalty and engagement than teams in the bottom quartile.
You can see it without the research, too. The frustrations customers have with a company look a lot like the frustrations employees have when they need help from HR. No one to talk to. Being bounced around. Different answers depending on who you ask. I lay that mirror out in What Your Customers Don’t Like, Your Employees Don’t Like Either, and the beliefs that keep leaders from seeing it in Your Customer Experience Can’t Be Better Than Your HR Experience.
Why it isn’t on HR alone
It would be easy to read all of this and decide HR needs to do better. That misses what’s usually happening.
In most companies, HR was never asked to deliver an experience. It was set up to keep the company compliant, answer questions and keep the work moving. It wasn’t given a seat in the customer experience conversation, or the room to design anything different.
HR delivers the experience. The company decides what it should be. Until the company treats HR as an extension of the experience it wants customers to have, HR can only do so much on its own.
What changes when you design it
| When HRX happens by default | When HRX is designed |
|---|
| People aren’t sure where to go for help | People know where to go and what to expect |
| Answers depend on who you ask | The same question gets the same answer anywhere in the company |
| Processes feel like paperwork | Everyday processes feel like the company |
| HR sounds like any company’s HR | HR sounds like yours |
| Managers work around HR | Managers rely on HR |
| Customers feel the strain | Customers feel the difference |
None of this requires a new org chart or a new piece of software. HRX is a system, not a model, and it works with the structure you already have. I explain the difference in HR Service Delivery Model vs. System.
Where it starts
You can’t deliver a culture you haven’t named. Before HR can make the experience feel like your company, someone has to be clear about who your company is: how it makes decisions, what it rewards, how it treats people when things get hard.
That’s why HRX starts with the Culture Code™. Once your company’s personality has a name, HR has something to deliver toward. I walk through what that changes in 3 Ways Culture as a Personality Changes How HR Is Delivered.
The verdict
You already designed one experience on purpose. Your customers get the benefit of that every day.
The second experience, the one your people have every time they need something, is getting designed either way. It’s either designed on purpose or by default. When it’s designed on purpose, around who your company actually is, your employees feel it first. Then your customers do.
That’s what I mean when I say HRX is the new EX for CX.
Read more on HRX™
If you want to go deeper, here’s the full set, in the order I’d read it:
- What Is HRX™? The definition and the big picture.
- What Your Customers Don’t Like, Your Employees Don’t Like Either The mirror between customer and employee frustrations.
- Your Customer Experience Can’t Be Better Than Your HR Experience Five myths that keep leaders looking in the wrong place.
- HRX vs. EX vs. CX: What’s the Difference? The three terms, and how they connect.
- Why It’s Time to Rethink How Your Company Delivers HR The layer reorganizations and software both skip.
- HR Service Delivery Model vs. System How to tell which one your problem is.
- What Happens When HR Delivers Without Identity What generic HR costs.
- 3 Ways Culture as a Personality Changes How HR Is Delivered Why naming your culture comes first.
- From Paperwork to HR Experience Turning everyday processes into part of the experience.
- Why Big-Company HR Models Don’t Fit Small and Midsize Businesses For companies of 50 to 500.
Questions worth asking
- If you described the experience you want customers to have, would your employees say they get the same thing?
- Who at your company decides what the HR experience should feel like?
- What would change for your customers if every employee could get a clear, consistent answer from HR this week?
Read next: What Is HRX™?
Frequently asked questions
What does “HRX is the new EX for CX” mean?
It means the HR experience is one of the most direct ways to improve customer experience. How HR is experienced shapes how employees feel, and how employees feel shapes what customers get.
How is HRX different from employee experience?
Employee experience programs usually focus on big career moments. HRX covers how people experience HR every day, in every interaction, so it’s broader and includes EX.
Do we need a new HR structure or new software to improve HRX?
No. HRX is a system, not a model or a technology. It works with the HR structure and tools you already have.
Where does HRX start?
With naming your company’s culture. HR can’t deliver a culture that hasn’t been named, which is why HRX starts with the Culture Code™.
