Experiences condition our decisions
Gustavo Manglish has written recently, for the Journal of Cuyo, a note in which he explained that Sentimentis a word that eighteenth-century philosophers used to distinguish thinking and reflection -products of reason- from the product of feeling.
People have the ability to feel, perceive and experience subjectively and, based on this ability, make new decisions.
For instance, I perceive a scent and it reminds me of the painful moment in which my tonsils were extracted 59 years ago, or I hear a sound and I instantly relate it to those vacations in the beach when we played the hidden treasure with my children and their friends.
Experiences are the sum of our perceptions
This is what we talk about when we talk about Customer Experience or Employee Experience. Throughout this “journey” in which we make contact with facilities, people, offices, common spaces, products, services, advertising, conversations, documentation and all other interaction we have with an organization, we are treasuring perceptions.
Sooner or later these perceptions emerge and unconsciously lead us to make decisions that may or may not coincide with the rational conclusion.
It is not a moment, nor satisfaction or dissatisfaction with something. It is the sum of perception with the complete experience that forms a mental groove.
Satisfaction and loyalty are not enough to explain the customer’s journey, we can only understand it by analyzing the experience as a whole. Likewise, we need to understand the “employee experience” comprehensively, and not just measure it with performance and climate indicators.
The experience of the employee -what finally makes people want to stay in a company and recommend to work in it, buy or operate in or with a certain organization- is highly conditioned by the day-to-day policies and practices that the organization has.
How to ensure practices that improve people’s experience?
From my point of view and contrary to what is said in many books and articles, there are no practices that ensure a first level experience.
Technology companies are today the envy of the rest. For the general public, with exceptions such as Toyota, Coca-Cola, Mercedes Benz and a few more, Google, Amazon and Mercado Libre are seen as “the place to work.”
But Google and Mercado Libre cannot be more different. While in California, Google encourages people to spend leisure time by providing spaces for their staff to grow vegetables, sports fields, a swimming pool, and other recreational spaces, Mercado Libre does not have those diversions and resources because it intends a complete dedication to work activity. And yet, both have very good levels of employee experience.
There is a common factor. The speed with which they face, resolve and even cause changes that positively impact on the experience of both their customers and their own employees.
But how to ensure that the culture of the organization reacts well to changes? Anticipation, methodology and measurements are needed to help people incorporate transformations with the least possible suffering. That methodology, fortunately, exists, and is called Change Management.
Author: Raúl Molteni
