The brilliant - and bad - practices of service employee experience

May 16, 2025

A universal truth, which we all in our hearts know, but sadly not enough organisations fully practice, is this: happy employees are more likely to lead to happy customers.

In fact, many companies that offer exceptional customer service ask their leaders to prioritise employee experience ahead of customer experience. Why? Because they know that employees who love their work will be implicitly motivated to achieve great things for their customers. Turns out this is more effective than just setting quarterly NPS targets.

But whilst a lot of companies say that they want to look after both customers and employees, only a few go the extra mile to put it in practice. Here are three unusually brilliant practices that I think more companies should adopt, as well as three all-too-common bad habits that would be best avoided.

Three unusually brilliant practices

1. Let employees sometimes break out of the standard process (transparently)

Many years ago, I was sat next to a Customer Service Representative (CSR) at a leading bank. I had the privilege of listening to her help a customer who had lost their wallet and desperately needed cash. To resolve the issue, she loaned the customer a small amount of money from her own personal bank account, which she authorised a branch cashier to hand over.

This positively surprised me, because it didn’t sound like a standard process. I asked the CSR about it and she handed me a well-worn card that was on her desk, entitled The YES Check. It’s a set of principles applied to all employees of the bank, to help them make responsible decisions. I love this as an empowerment tool because it allows CSRs to go above and beyond the standard process, but only if they have considered the full set of implications and risks to the bank, its customers, employees, shareholders and society as a whole. It encourages higher-level thinking rather than forcing CSRs into rigid processes.

Importantly, this CSR also told her manager about what she had done. Good empowerment cultures also value transparency. Employees can feel proud of the difference they have made, but also seek feedback from others to check they are consistently making the right decisions.

Card titled "The YES Check" with a set of instructions to empower customer service reps to make good decisions. — The (well-worn) YES Check

2. Prioritise employee UX

I was in a different contact centre, running a focus group with CSRs to find out what process changes could help them better serve customers.

Straight away, someone called out “It’s the bins.” (trash cans, for American readers)

Others in the room nodded vigorously.

I looked at my colleague with confusion and amusement, this was not the sort of feedback that we were looking for.

The team went on to explain that up until recently they had all had individual rubbish bins under their desks. A change had been made which meant everyone needed to use communal waste bins at one end of the office. This was done with good intent, to enable recycling to be sorted, but nobody had considered its impact on CSR workflow.

In many contact centres, CSRs cannot simply get up from their desk at any time, as they may miss a call that is automatically routed to them. So this group of CSRs was unhappy that they had to allow litter and food waste to pile up on their desks whilst they were working. It made their working environment less pleasant. The solution was a compromise: smaller recycling bins provided at the end of every desk.

I use this example a lot, because it reminds me that things which might seem trivial to an outside can feel critically important for the wellbeing of a CSR.

Example of good practice: Octopus Energy’s software engineers regularly spend time in the contact centre, talking to CSRs and observing their work. They continuously release software updates to improve the user experience of the software that the CSRs use throughout the day, making their lives easier.

3. Protect employees from customer abuse

According to research from the Institute of Customer Service, over one in three (36%) service workers have experienced hostility from customers, yet less than half of these (44%) have reported the incidents to their managers.

Many employers, trade unions and politicians have signed up to the Service with Respect campaign, to highlight this issue and ensure Customer Service Representatives get the protections and support they need to offer an excellent service to the majority of customers who are not abusive.

Three disappointingly common bad practices

1. Hold frontline employees to account for customer experience beyond their control

It’s common for CSRs to have a Net Promotor Score (NPS) target, and some may even be remunerated based on NPS performance.

The problem with NPS (even transactional/interaction NPS, which asks customers to score based on their most recent interaction) is that customers will score based on many factors that are out of the CSR’s control: pricing, product quality, past experience etc. Coupled with this, survey response rate is often so low, that one bad review can significantly skew an individual CSR’s score. The score becomes a demotivator, or, worse, CSR’s focus more on how to game the system.

A better, more modern solution, is to use AI sentiment analysis to measure each CSR’s individual contribution to improve customer experience.

2. Set contradictory goals

I once sat in the contact centre of a travel company. Pasted on the wall were brightly coloured posters saying things like “Customers come first!” and “Have you made a customer smile today?”

Meanwhile, on a CSR’s screen, an email popped up, titled, “GOODWILL CREDIT SPEND!!!”

The email read:

Please remember limits on goodwill spend! Any associates offering more than $500 total in goodwill this week will have manager discussions.

The point here is that it is fine to set limits on credit spend, but we need to do that thoughtfully, with clear guidance. We shouldn’t expect frontline employees to have to try and make the trade-off between cost and customer experience themselves, and then penalise them if they make the wrong judgement.

3. Encourage unhealthy competition between employees

The right amount of healthy competition can be a great motivator in customer service teams. But, if employees are fighting over the affections of a customer, then it’s the customer who suffers. This can take a few forms, including:

CSRs blaming other employees or teams for failures in front of customers
CSRs competing to get the credit for fixing a customer's issue
CSRs over-servicing customers, taking up their time, by duplicating activities that are also carried out by their colleagues

The root cause of many of these issues is usually misaligned incentives, but it can also be due to role-modelling leadership behaviours

The takeaway

Creating a truly customer-centric culture requires a focus not just on customers themselves, but on creating the conditions that enable employees to flourish when they do the right thing for customers.

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