MC: 0:00

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.

Jeannie Walters: 0:31

Let's talk about the wild and wonderful world of customer experience leadership on today's episode of the Experience Action Podcast.

Listener Question: 0:43

Hey, Jeannie. This is Shawn checking in from the mailroom of Experience Investigators. I saw this question come in and thought you could address it on the podcast. I recently stepped into a CX leadership role and, let's just say, not everyone's on board yet. What advice do you have for getting other departments to engage with CX, when they're used to doing things their own way?

Jeannie Walters: 1:02

Well, first of all, congratulations on your new role and stepping into that leadership position. That's really exciting and it can also be a little challenging. You are not alone here. We have worked with literally hundreds of customer experience leaders or people who want to be customer experience leaders, and sometimes it can feel like you're thwarted at every turn. You're dealing with leaders who simply don't understand how their role fits into this greater customer experience strategy. They don't understand why they might have to change behavior or look for different measurements to understand their success. You are fighting a little bit of an uphill battle and I want you to kind of embrace that. So for all the customer experience leaders out there, I want you to realize that you are leading a strategy that is based in change and humans in general we don't love change. We would rather just kind of have a routine, do our own thing day after day. So when somebody comes to us and says I've got a really great change, our brains kind of start pushing back and saying, oh, I don't like the sound of this. So let's walk through a few ways to start building that trust with those leaders that we need to have that cross-functional support, that leadership buy-in, which is absolutely essential for success for your customer experience strategy.

Jeannie Walters: 2:35

Number one start with empathy, and what I mean by this is not just about customers. Here at Experience Investigators, we like to say that empathy isn't just for customers. We want to have empathy for those fellow leaders. You know, when we approach our leader in finance or operations or marketing, their role has been very clearly defined for a long time and if we're asking them to step into something that's a little more unknown, a little more nuanced, that can feel scary, that can feel unnerving to them. So have some empathy for the pressure they are under. They already have key performance indicators to hit. They already have metrics to measure their success in their role. And if we approach them and say, okay, now we want you to think about customer experience, it can feel like we're asking them to do something in addition to their job. Now, you and I both know that customer experience everybody plays a role. But if they don't understand the why and we're just talking about the what, we're missing an opportunity to build that trust that builds relationships.

Jeannie Walters: 3:44

So the first thing is, as you build these bridges, as you communicate to your fellow leaders, the first thing I want you to do is ask them what does success look like to you? By including them in that definition, by asking them to connect and helping them connect how customer experience and the way customers are treated and feel it comes back to their success as well. Finance is usually based on financial results. Well, guess what? We need customers in order to get those financial results. When we're talking to operations, we can talk about efficiency and how important it is to make sure we're not getting all those refund requests, retribution for customers, service calls, how that all plays a role into efficient operations. So we need to really have empathy for them and show up, speaking their language and help them connect those dots. This usually takes longer than people give it credit for, so let's make sure that we are always looking for ways to really build those bridges in both small and big ways. We're building a relationship, not a transaction.

Jeannie Walters: 5:00

Now, the mindset of curiosity and collaboration is so important here, and you've heard me say this before, but we approach customer experience as a mindset, a strategy and a discipline. So the first thing you have to do is help them get to that right mindset. That's where the empathy comes in. That's where collaboration and curiosity comes in. Help them get there. If you're not sure about how to build a great mindset, I highly recommend go to our site, experienceinvestigatorscom and do a search on mindset and mission. Those two things are related. Those are your tools for getting that done. Okay, number two make the invisible visible.

Jeannie Walters: 5:45

Customer experience is often thrown around as a term, and when we do that and we don't really define it, we don't show, we just tell. People might have all sorts of assumptions about what that term means and specifically what it means at our organization. So we want to make the abstract more concrete. This is especially true for leaders who don't necessarily interact with customers every day. So when that happens, when we're talking to somebody who maybe has never really faced a customer, we want to make the customer experience a lot more relevant to them by showing them things like customer journey maps, quotes from customers, customer feedback, videos, if you have them, all sorts of things that are those storytelling pieces that really make the customer experience come alive. We love journey mapping as a verb, not a noun, because when you get people together, when you walk through the customer journey, that's when light bulbs start going off. People start really realizing what that journey is like. If you want more information, we have more information for you there too. We even have a journey mapping starting kit. So check that out at experienceinvestigatorscom.

Jeannie Walters: 7:01

And then we want to make sure that you invite, don't instruct. When we are talking about customer experience, it's really important that it doesn't come across as a compliance program. We want people to get into that mindset where they understand why it's important, what success looks like and what their role is. Then we want to move into that strategy where we are leading through a strategic lens. We are saying this is why we're working on this, this is what it will do for the organization, this is what success looks like. And if you haven't yet defined that, we talk a lot about a customer experience success statement because this is so important.

Jeannie Walters: 7:39

If you just talk in these abstract terms, it's very hard to get that buy-in. People don't really believe in you. If you can show them what success looks like for your organization and the efforts that you're putting in and how you will be measuring that success, then they start seeing you as that leader. But we want to invite them into that process. We want to make sure that we are inviting them early so that they feel like they're building this with you, even if you're stepping into an already established program and you're making some changes as a leader. Invite people into that early. Invite them for their opinions, show them those journey maps you're working on, invite them into those sessions. Share recordings, quotes, those storytelling techniques far and wide. That's how you start getting people to really understand that they're part of this. This isn't something that we're putting on them. Change happens with people, not to them. We like to say this and there are lots of different ways that we want people to feel like change is happening with them, not to them. So lead with that invitation and then finally think of yourself as a bridge, not a bottleneck.

Jeannie Walters: 8:53

Sometimes, when we step into these roles, we look around and we think, oh my gosh, we have to fix everything. This is ridiculous. But when we look at what's actually happening, we realize that there are priorities, that we can connect the dots and we can really make sure that the people who come to us, who actually start getting those light bulb moments and show up and say you know what I think we should do it can be very easy to say no, we can't do that right now, we don't have the bandwidth, it's too much. But instead of that, invite them into the prioritization process and say, you know what, that's a great idea. I think that would actually fit within our strategic priority that is focused on efficiency. Let's talk about how we can get operations to help us deliver on that.

Jeannie Walters: 9:42

Implementation is not 100% of your job and it can't be. There is too much. So when you get those great ideas, when people start seeing that customer experience is connected to everything, suddenly your role can switch and you can become that bottleneck that we don't want. So be aware of that. As you mature, as the leaders around you start really embracing this idea of customer experience as a winning strategy, they're going to have tons of ideas. So we have to put up guardrails. We have to make sure that we can't accept everything, because we can't be responsible for that, but we don't want to discourage those ideas. We don't want to discourage that mindset. So this is where having things like a prioritization matrix that is based on your customer experience success strategy, that will really help you here, because then you can say, oh my gosh, that's a great idea.

Jeannie Walters: 10:38

Unfortunately, right now, if you look at our priorities, I'm not sure where that would fit in. Can you help me? Sometimes they can. Sometimes they'll say you know what, instead of putting this on you, I'm going to take this on my roadmap. That's when the magic happens. That's when you know you are a truly customer-centric organization. So CX is not a department, it's a commitment. It's not a department, it's a commitment, and this takes everybody. So the fact that you are asking this question shows me so much of who you are as a leader.

Jeannie Walters: 11:13

So if you are taking this on, if you are becoming a change agent, if you are stepping into that leadership role, the first thing I want to say is congratulations. The next thing I want to say is keep going. The going is going to get a little tough sometimes, but I know that people who care about customer experience all of you listening and watching this podcast right now that's because your heart is in the right place. So make sure that you back that up with business acumen, with strategy, with great communication. That's how you get that buy-in that you need. Thank you so much for being here. And if you are looking for resources. If you are not sure where to start, check out cxicompasscom.

Jeannie Walters: 11:57

This is where you answer 11 questions for us. We give you some details on where to focus your efforts. If you wanna take that one step further, ask a couple people on your team to take it, and then we can set up a call and go over those results with you. We believe in you, you can do this.

Jeannie Walters: 12:16

And not only that, but all the leaders you work with can do this as well. They just might need a little empathy, a little invitation, a little understanding and collaboration. And hey, we're good at that stuff. Right, we're customer experience people. Of course we are. Thank you so much for this great question. I can't wait to hear your great question next. Don't forget you can leave me a voicemail at askjeannievip and maybe I'll answer your question on the next Experience Action Podcast. Thanks everybody. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience, check out free resources at experienceinvestigatorscom, where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.