We sat down with Richard Sharp, Head of Experience at Snicket Labs, to talk about his approach to Customer and Employee Experience, and why the two should never be treated separately.
With more than 25 years spent in customer facing roles, Richard shares how his thinking has evolved, what it means to design experiences around real people, and how Snicket Labs is bringing CX and EX together in a way that delivers better outcomes for both customers and teams.
“Experience is where it all comes together”
I’m Richard Sharp, and I lead our Experience department here at Snicket Labs.
I’ve spent over 25 years working in customer facing roles, starting on the front line and moving through service delivery, leadership and director positions. Across all of those roles, in all of those environments, one thing has stayed with me – the drive to make things better than they were the day before.
I’m a true believer that perfection is always just out of reach but what truly matters is the pursuit of excellence. That means being honest about what works, what doesn’t, and being willing to continuously improve.
Over the years, I’ve learned that most problems aren’t technical, they’re human. When people are supported, empowered and trusted, they do their best work. That belief has shaped how I think about teams, about leadership, and now, about experience at Snicket Labs.
Moving beyond CX and EX
At Snicket Labs, we’ve made a conscious decision to move beyond treating Customer Experience and Employee Experience as separate conversations because in reality, they’re not.
Every product, every service, every interaction, there’s a person behind it, and a person experiencing it. So when we talk about CX or EX, what we’re really talking about is human experience.
The reason being, is that people don’t move through organisations in straight lines. They journey and move through emotions, friction points and moments that matter. If you don’t understand those journeys, you end up designing services that technically work, but don’t feel right. A place where i feel many organisations fall down.
Our approach is different. We start with people. Who they are, what they need, where they’re trying to get to, and how they want to feel along the way.
The Snicket Labs Approach
What drew me to Snicket Labs (and what’s kept me here) is the chance to do this properly.
We don’t split “customer” and “employee” into separate priorities. We look at the whole picture. The reality is, the experience your customers get is shaped directly by the experience your people have while delivering it.
If your team feels supported, clear on what they’re doing, and connected to the outcome, it shows. If they don’t, that shows too.
So our focus is simple. Remove friction. Make things easier to navigate. Give people the context and support they need to do a good job.
That applies to how we design services, and it applies just as much internally. From how people join, to how they grow and work together day to day, the aim is consistency. No disconnect between what we promise externally and what we create internally. When that lines up, things tend to work as they should.
Looking Ahead
As we continue to build on this approach, the focus is simple – keep improving!
Keep listening, keep learning and keep refining the experiences we create.
For me, the future of Experience at Snicket Labs isn’t about big, dramatic changes. It’s about consistently getting better at the fundamentals, understanding people, supporting our teams, and delivering experiences that genuinely make a difference.
At the end of the day, that’s what it comes back to.Who are we serving, and how do we make it better for them tomorrow?
