Deloitte: Quantifying the human experience

Research has found organisations with close alignment to the values of their customers (CX), workforce (WX) and partners (PX), and that can create human experiences (HX) grow faster and build stronger brand loyalty.

Deloitte Digital has released a whitepaper entitled The Human Experience: Quantifying the Value of Human Values, which takes a deep dive look at how focusing on the HX directly correlates to business growth. It found organisations who rank highest on workforce and customer satisfaction also have aligned values. Even more, these organisations are twice as likely to outperform their peers in revenue growth over a three-year period.

Marketers have recently been talking about how the human experience is the next differentiator to drive growth, moving away from CX, but there has been very little back up this assertion.

According to Deloitte, some existing measures such as brand index, CX or Net Promoter Score (NPS), do not get to what humans value, or demonstrate how organisations can mirror and communicate similar deeply-lived authentic values. So it created a new algorithm, the Human Experience Quotient. It aims to combine the impact of CX, the workforce experience (WX), and the partner experience (PX) and aligns it to human values, measured through the Human Values Compass. 

Deloitte Digital head of customer strategy and applied design, Amelia Dunlop, said: "We know intuitively the human experience matters. Now, we are so excited we can prove it matters to the bottom line of an organisation. This research shows marketers what they have been missing by focusing only on measuring customer experience: human experience fuels growth.

The HX Quotient is an algorithm that indicates where an organisation is along the journey to elevate the HX, which further enables businesses to make smarter decisions on what they can improve to align to the values of their customers, workers and partners.

From there, Deloitte defined four cardinal human values rooted in a sense of personal achievement (Me), belonging (We), curiosity (Unknown), and control (Known), called the Values Compass. The  proprietary tool measures things that motivate feelings and purchasing behaviour in a non-linear world. To do this, i maps cardinal human values – Ambition, Curiosity, Belonging and Certainty – along with corresponding intermediate points to provide a visual reflection of a customer, employee or partner’s values in aggregate.

The Values Compass was then fed from a database of over 200,000 human answers to over 10,000 questions, including things like demographics, attitudinal statements and behavioural data.

The result is five tenets it says can measure human experience:

• Be obsessed by all things human. What will enable a connection with another individual, whether that person is a customer, a member of the workforce, or a partner, in this moment?
• Proactively deliver on human needs. Predictive analytics and AI are allowing brands to use insights to be more human and relevant in moments that matter.
• Execute with humanity. This requires organisations to be fast and agile to meet a person at the point of need, even if the need is to slow down and build connection.
• Be authentic. A human experience can’t be faked.
• Change the world. A human experience can be transformative. 

Deloitte’s research aims to provide a new manner of measuring human values – one that is applicable to marketing and HR leaders alike because it takes into consideration the entire business ecosystem – from customers to workforce to partners. It also provides a guidepost for companies looking to have more human experiences by unearthing five common themes that allow businesses to activate on human values.

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