Successful companies have always understood that happy customers buy more and that they buy more often. They also understand the happy employees stay longer (which costs a company less money over time) and contribute to happier customers.

This means that customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) have a lot to do with one another. Let’s explore three ways that customer experience and employee experience intersect and can work together.

Feedback is best when timely and relevant.

Greg Kihlstrom from Forbes Magazine tells employers to make sure that employees get to see customer feedback where and when they can take the most action. This means having the tools and methods to listen for both internal and external feedback, as well as the processes and discipline to review and respond.

Listening to customer feedback is critical to understanding both what they love as well as what they wish to see improved. But it’s not enough to simply listen. Ensure that you have systems and processes in place to not only collect the information but also do something meaningful with it. When working with brands, make sure to understand what silos or bottlenecks might be getting in the way of the right information getting to the best place.

When you actively listen to employee feedback, it empowers employees to be able to make the type of changes in the organization that keep them both productive and happy and that can lower attrition. The best part of this is that companies with satisfied employees often have an easier time creating satisfied customers.

Both customers and employees love rewards.

One point of commonality between both happy employees and loyal customers is that they feel loved and rewarded. Whether this is through personalized customer experiences or meaningful recognition at the employee level, they feel both valued by and valuable to an organization. In fact, this is definitely a case where the methods and tactics used to reward each group (customers or employees) will vary greatly, but the fact remains that employees who feel valued contribute to making customers feel valued.

Also important to understand is that the same type of incentives and rewards may not make all of your employees more engaged or happier in their jobs. Keep in mind that everyone is different and is motivated by different things. A successful implementation is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Make sure to account for a variety of tastes and motivators.

Experience is everything, and everything is part of the experience.

Let’s end with perhaps the most obvious, but also the most inclusive, tie-in between CX and EX. Not only is experience worth a lot to both employees and customers, but both audiences consider an experience to be a combination of everything that they experience.

This means that focusing on having a really good experience part of the time, or on a few channels, likely isn’t enough. Many customers have grown device agnostic and rarely use a single device to communicate with you. They probably won't care that your website gives a phenomenal user experience if they try to call someone on the phone and are treated rudely.

The same goes for employees. The employee experience starts from before their first day and extends throughout their employment, including their last day at work. Companies that embrace CX and EX understand that the details matter, and that every moment helps make up an overall experience.

Understanding the important link between customer experience and employee experience can give brands an important competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace. Focusing on both ends of the experience can be a win-win for all.