Context

Following the transition of DT into AKQA, I worked with the agency to understand how employee and client experiences were connected across the organisation.

The aim was to provide a clearer view of how internal and external experiences influence each other in practice.

The situation

There was limited visibility of how employee experience and client experience interacted across the organisation.

While both were being considered independently, there was no shared understanding of how organisational dynamics, team experience, and client outcomes were connected.

There was an opportunity to take a more holistic view and identify where improvements in one area could positively influence the other.

The work

I conducted a comprehensive analysis of both employee and client experience across the agency.

This included interviews with team members and clients, analysis of anonymised exit interview data, review of external feedback such as Glassdoor, and additional internal surveys.

From this, I developed a set of experience maps that connected employee and client experiences as part of a single service ecosystem.

These maps made visible how organisational factors, team experience, and client interactions influenced each other.

For example, it showed that ineffective onboarding had a significant impact on the entire ecosystem. It meant a team member would not be able to adequately explain the full services on offer to the client, missing valuable opportunities to upsell work. It could also lead to unrealistic expectations about day-to-day work and their career trajectory, leading to dissatisfaction and ultimately impacting retention unnecessarily.

I identified and prioritised all these key intersecting insights and worked with management teams to explore opportunities through a series of workshops.

What changed

The work introduced a new way of understanding the relationship between employee and client experience within the organisation.

It enabled HR and leadership teams to act on key insights, leading to targeted initiatives to improve employee experience.

It also provided client service teams with a clearer foundation for designing better client experiences, grounded in a more holistic understanding of how the organisation operates.

What this demonstrates

The ability to connect employee and customer experience at an ecosystem level, revealing how organisational dynamics influence outcomes for both teams and clients.