5 Must-Do's to End the Year Strong

Hey, hey, it is the Experience Action Podcast. I'm Jeannie Walters and usually I'm answering a question for you, but this is a special episode. So stay tuned, I've got something special for you.

Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, Jeannie Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences. Ready, Set, Action. One, two, three, four.

We are so excited to be celebrating our year anniversary of this podcast. Now when I started this a year ago, I wasn't sure what was going to happen when I invited people to leave voicemails with questions about customer experience and all the things that go into that. But you all showed up. You all asked me questions, you challenged me, you encouraged me to really explore topics that I didn't expect, things like how do we overcome imposter syndrome and how do we make sure that we're still delivering in a human way in this world that is more and more being driven by technology and artificial intelligence. So we explore those topics together. Thank you so much, but I want to leave you this year with some ideas of how to wrap up your year in the strongest possible way, because this is the last episode of 2023. We are going to be back in 2024 after a little holiday break, so I hope that all of you get the chance to have some time with your family, have some downtime and really enjoy the holidays. Thank you so much for being here. So here we go. Let's talk about the five must-dos for customer-focused leaders to wrap up this year. Now let's face it, you've probably had enough challenge for this year. You've probably taken enough notes, you've probably taken all the actions that you can, but there are five things I want you to consider as you wrap up this year and look to the next. And the first one it's easy, I promise. Number one. Reflect with a smile. Think about what is the year that happened, look at your year in review and then really ask yourself what made me smile, laugh or just be extraordinarily happy. And then the twist is ask what made our customers smile, laugh and be happy. It's great to do this exercise with your team. You can even do this over a fun meal. Pizza counts. So talk about the highs, the lows and, frankly, sometimes it's fun to just talk about the bizarre customer requests you've had. What you're trying to do is just looking back and understand the journey you've taken. Number two. Think about this as the customer wish list, or you can make this a feedback fiesta. So think about what customers have told you, gather all that feedback that you've received over the year and, even if you don't have the real data in front of you, ask your team to get together and think about what did customers really ask us for, what was on their wish list, what do they want, and start categorizing that feedback into things to improve or things we really were great at. You could even turn this one into a game with your team and come up with who has the most creative complaint that they've heard from a customer. That will lead to innovation. So start really just thinking about what is it that we can do for our customers next year by looking back on that feedback.

Number three. You want to plan. This is part of it. We have to plan because, as that old saying goes, if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. Now, I love planning. I'm not always great at it and, I will be honest, I'm not always great at executing those plans perfectly. Sorry! But you know what, there's something powerful about getting together and thinking about your customer experience road map for the upcoming year. This isn't just thinking about what surveys you're going to send out or what training you're going to bring your contact center. This is bigger.

Think about what you could do for customers next year if you had that magic wand. What if your customer really wanted something that you thought that's impossible? What if you could deliver that? Think big about this and then break it down into "what Do we need to make that possible. Do we need leadership buy-in to get the resources? Do we need more people? Do we need to partner with our product team? Look for ways that you can make a serious impact and really feel good about finishing that journey next year.

Number four. Let's think about training. Now I like to think about things like what would we do if we had a customer experience boot camp at our organization and this is actually something we do with clients, so it's not as scary as it sounds. It's really a fun day where we talk about what is customer experience and how can we really leverage it to move the business forward. If you want to do something fun for the end of the year, you can get your group together, get your team together. Make it a fun day where maybe you role play different customer scenarios or you talk about different things that you want to happen that aren't happening. Add some wild cards. You know, think bigger. Think about what would happen if a customer from 10 years in the future came back as a time traveler and saw what we were doing. What would they think? Exercises like that can really unlock your innovation and your ideation. Get together, make it a boot camp where maybe you talk about what's working, what's not, what can we do differently, and then explore bigger things together as a training exercise. It's a really fun way to prepare your team to think bigger in the new year. Number five. Celebrate that team.

We want the unsung heroes. There are so many people who are in the background making things happen for the customer. Think about all the people in your organization who probably don't get the recognition they deserve. If you could highlight a few of them, turn it into the unsung heroes gala or luncheon or something, or even just a slack shout out, but really recognize the efforts of everyone who's contributed to enhancing the customer experience. Think about the tech whiz who never lets the system crash during the big sales moments, to the intern who was the one who actually remembered customers' birthdays. We want people to have that moment in the spotlight and in that spirit, I'd like to thank the unsung heroes of this podcast. Shout out to my team.

First, I want to start with Kiah of the Experience Investigators team. She does so much for us at Experience Investigators and really helps with this podcast. So thank you, Kiah. We couldn't have gotten here without you and our producer, Aaron, our audio editor. He's the one who puts in all the fun sound effects and everything else, and Aaron has been incredibly flexible and creative with us as well. Thank you, Aaron.

There are so many other people, including Jenny on our team who helps with marketing, and, of course, all of you, the listeners out there. You are in the trenches. You are my customer experience change agents, making real positive change in the world, and I am so proud of you. So next year, let's make even more happen. I would love more questions. Bring it on. Leave me voicemails, not just with questions, but comments or topics you want us to cover. This is why we started this. For you. So thank you for being here for the year and I cannot wait to see what you do next. Thanks, everybody. See you next year. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience, check out free resources at experienceinvestigators. com, where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.