International CX Day 2020 is Oct 6, 2020 encouraging me to reflect on what has been accomplished this past year, and where we are headed in the future.

Last week I shared details of the Paragon Pillars, and stressed the importance of alignment between company values and promises.

This week I want to share details on how we have enhanced Paragon’s employee experience (EX), which I believe is critically linked to an organization’s ability to develop and deliver great CX.

The security industry in general has high guard turnover. Paragon employees over 2,500 new guards each year. It is absolutely critical they be trained and treated well so that they deliver against the Paragon Pillars. An internal employee experience journey map uncovered that we did this well; but there was room for improvement. We needed better alignment between what we expected the guards to do at the sites and how we treated them during their first few weeks of training and orientation.

A memo or townhall meeting detailing expectations for how we treat guards was not the answer. Given the importance of this issue, we knew we had to engage our training and operational teams in a dialogue on how we can better set our new guards up for success. Roger Pugsley worked with these teams learning the basics of building relationships and developing trust. They also spent time understanding our new guards and the pressures they were under… both within and outside of Paragon.

This led to a newly defined journey, designed by the teams that would implement it. I stress the importance of engaging employees in the CX journey – their involvement in decisions will lead to commitment and dedication to a successful outcome. Feedback has been positive from the teams, the guards, and our customers.

Next week, I will share details of the enhanced customer service training we offer the guards.

In the interim … Will your company be doing something to celebrate CX Day?