Episode 185 - Connecting Customer and Employee Experience with Tamar Cohen
As I have been working on my book “The UN-WOW,” I’ve been talking to a lot of people in experience design and experience management about whether or not my idea for the book makes sense. Two things have emerged from these conversations. First, people generally are very supportive of the principles behind The UN-WOW. It seems that people see a lot of opportunity in exploring more mundane aspects of everyday life for design opportunities. It has been great to hear that vote of confidence as I work on the project, and people being excited to hear more about it as it is coming together.
The second thing to emerge is that on a certain level, none of this experience design work should be that hard because our goals are pretty simple. At its foundation, we ideally are trying to make life better for our design audiences. Whether it is user, customer, patient, employee, student, client, or any other experience design space, we want to improve the experiences that people have (regardless of whether these experiences are mundane or metamorphic).
How we create these experiences, and the scale that it is done, becomes the work of the designers.
What should be easy becomes more challenging when other organizational priorities take over. Organizations can become fixated on outcomes that run counter to the goals of experience designers. Caring about customers, employees, users, and others can be seen as a luxury when the only focus is profitability. Thus, many experience designers feel frustrated when trying to do their work, running into barriers that either minimize the scope of their work, or completely block it from happening. Leaders may want to talk about being human-centered, but don’t necessarily see the need to treat people like human beings.
To talk about the challenges and opportunities, I welcome Tamar Cohen to the Experience by Design studios. Like many people in experience design, Tamar had a very non-linear path to her work. Starting out as an Art History major, she worked in galleries and auction houses. She found herself at Citibank for 16 years, applying the skills she acquired from art history to her work in customer experience. She also shares her work leading other companies like Zoetis as the Head of Global Customer Experience Strategy and at Travelers as VP of Employee Experience.
We talk about the importance of connecting employee experience and customer experience, making your employees your first customers. We also talk about the importance of ethnographic research to understand the full employee and customer journeys.
We also discuss her new project with Michael Lowenstein as well as work with James Killian (both former guests on ExD). She describes what she calls the Halo Effect, which includes conducting qualitative research based on the Four E’s Framework: educate, empower, engage, and energize. Her company HaloEffect works by diagnosing the human system first, working with organizations and leadership to put people first. Again, a simple idea that companies struggle executing, which Tamar tries to help them accomplish.
It was a great conversation about the importance of employee experience (especially in relation to customer experience), how to lead with a people-first strategy, and how even a degree in Art History can lay the foundation for better experience designs.
LEARN MORE:
Tamar Cohen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamarcohen
HaloEffect: https://www.myhaloeffect.com/
