This article first appeared in the Jacksonville Daily Record.
Customer experience. User experience. Employee experience. So many “experiences,” one simple truth: people just want things to work
Everywhere you turn, someone’s talking about experience. User experience. Customer experience. Employee experience. Total experience! “Experience” is a buzzword, but it’s also a really important one. Convenience is today’s currency, and people–from customers to employees and everyone in between–just want things to work. We want clear, smooth, authentic interactions, whether we’re buying a product, logging into a portal, or running a daily report.
But with so many different “experiences,” here’s the real head-scratcher: if software users are all human—and all connected—why are we still treating experiences like they belong in separate silos? Why do we act like someone ordering a product and someone managing the backend of that order deserve completely different standards of clarity, ease, or personalization?
Salesforce came out with a report recently that found that companies who connect employee and customer experience strategies can boost revenue by 50% or more. (Not a typo. Fifty. Percent.)
That kind of impact doesn’t come from launching a loyalty program. It comes from recognizing that we’re all in the same boat, and experiences are interwoven and need to work together!
Real-world proof
We worked with a mid-sized animal health company that had a frustrating problem: customers kept calling support for things they should’ve been able to do online. Everyone pointed fingers at the website.
But when we dug in, the real culprit wasn’t the front-end. It was an outdated internal portal with a buggy enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration that made it impossible for staff to track inventory or view status updates in real time. That’s not innovation—it’s burnout!
So, we started behind the scenes. We rebuilt the internal tool—not flashy, but effective. The employee experience smoothed out overnight. And guess what? Support calls dropped. Customer satisfaction went up. The product team finally had space to breathe and build. Everyone won.
Internal experience is your hidden growth lever
You might not think of your internal workflow as part of your Customer Experience (CX) strategy—but it is.
At Valyr, we call this “the experience multiplier”—the idea that when your team has a clear, empowered workflow, your CX naturally improves. It sounds simple, but so many companies get stuck in silos, treating internal teams and external users as two separate worlds. They’re not.
When your employees are stuck wrestling with inefficient systems or tools that weren’t built for the job, it shows. Customers feel the delays. They sense the confusion. And eventually, they take their business elsewhere.
On the flip side, when your team is equipped with clear processes and tools that work with them (not against them), they bring that energy into every customer interaction. That’s where trust builds. That’s where loyalty grows.
Let’s talk tech
This doesn’t mean you need to rip out your entire tech stack tomorrow. Start small. Talk to the people who use your systems every day. Where are they getting stuck? What’s taking longer than it should? What feels like it should be easier by now?
Then ask: if we improved this one experience for our team, how might that ripple out to our customers?
You don’t have to be in tech to lead like this. You just need to care about the people who power your business—and the people you serve.
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