Salesforce’s Michael Maoz on Boosting Employee Excellence

by Michael Speranza, CEO, Kantata

How can professional services organizations improve employee satisfaction while continuing to prioritize digital transformation? It’s a dual question that’s top of mind for many business leaders (or should be). Michael Maoz, Senior Vice President of Innovation Strategy at Salesforce, a longtime Kantata partner, joined me on stage during our recent Re-Imagine Tour stop in New York City to explain how to achieve both objectives by empowering human capital, improving the customer experience (CX), and embracing technology. If you missed out on the event and would like to learn more about Michael Maoz’s session, you can watch to the entire presentation below.

Hopefully, attendees remembered what we had to say afterwards, and if they only took away one lesson, it should be this: don’t underestimate how critical the link is between employees who feel engaged and appreciated at work and a company’s ability to improve its CX.

Gallup conducted a 2022 global job satisfaction survey of how much people are actually engaged or not engaged at work. 21% of respondents said they love their jobs, and Gallop found they are 37% more productive than the average employee. The bad news is that Gallup found that 60% of people who work say they’re detached. 19% don’t like what they do for work and they’re just getting a paycheck and going home.

One of the key takeaways from the survey is that employee engagement is the new workplace imperative.

“When employees are engaged and thriving, they experience significantly less stress, anger and health problems,” write the report’s authors. “The relationship between wellbeing and engagement is vital because how people experience work influences their lives outside work, and overall wellbeing influences life at work.”

Why employee autonomy matters

We all like autonomy. Therefore, when thinking about the future of work, it’s important to ask how to give people more autonomy in their jobs. When it comes to people who bill time, there is a confluence of ratings of customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction.

We know that a major factor relating to job satisfaction is the amount of control workers have over their job and own time.

“People who choose their own lifestyle and can work at their own time, they’re wicked, wicked happy, and very few are unhappy,” said Michael during our presentation.

Michael cited a Salesforce study that found a 1.8X revenue growth for companies with high ratings of customer excellence and employee excellence. Looking at profitability alone, companies reported an average of 23% higher profit.

Aligning management and employee perceptions

Further Salesforce research revealed that many businesses’ executives overestimate whether their employees have the technology and the support for growth needed to do their jobs.

• 52% of C-suite members believe their corporate technology is working effectively, compared to just 32% of employees.
• 70% of leaders report their employees have access to what they need to grow in the company. However, just 38% of employees agree with that statement.
• 73% of C-suite leaders say they do not know how to use their company’s employee data to drive change.

Citing Clay Christensen’s book, Competing Against Luck, Michael pointed out that managers should ask themselves, “Do we know the job to be done? Have we lived the life of the employee and have we actually sat with them to see how successful they are at their task?” This should also be done with your customers. Only then can you effectively prioritize what to fix—and you have to care.

“The number one biggest element that makes a person happy or unhappy at work is the boss,” said Michael.

Translation: even if all the technology issues are fixed, you’re not going to fix employee experience if management lacks awareness of what employees and customers find important.

The future of work

A current hot topic that’s critical to employee experience has to do with return-to-work policies. How often are you requiring employees to come into the office? The average company is saying employees should come back into the office two or three days a week.

“But why? If 30% of your employees are in other cities, what’s the point of commuting to the office and then just going on Zoom?,” he asked. “As managers, we have this great opportunity to maybe do some change, but we have to take it on ourselves to move the needle a little bit.”

The most meaningful metrics

To create a great customer experience, you have to consider whether you have the tools to actually do it. Michael said when he was an analyst at Gartner, the KPIs were easy.

“I never had to meet my manager unless I screwed up and I screwed up a lot,” he said. “Instead, we went to the customers and asked, ‘What do you expect from an analyst?’ And they said, “I expect an analyst to be available within 3.5 days on the phone. I want the analyst to be the world’s greatest expert, but to have a little humility. I want the analyst to give me actionable pieces of advice.” So Gartner codified those four metrics as their KPIs.

Companies that get customer experience right have managers who give their employees autonomy, measure them properly, and give them the tools to do it. Salesforce found that employees want flexibility. They want consistency across departments. They want a more digital workflow.

Some of the companies that have the best metrics are online retailers and airlines because they give their employees a lot of flexibility to solve the customer’s problem—even if it means being on the phone for an hour. “That’s your measurement,” said Michael. “The KPI is ‘Make sure the customer is happy.’ It’s easy.”

I want to thank Michael Maoz and the Salesforce team for helping us put on such a successful evening. If you weren’t able to join us in NY, you can watch the entire presentation above.