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. One, two, three, four.

Jeannie Walters: 0:31

In an ideal world, customer experience would be a universal business strategy, but alas, we aren't quite there yet. What we do have are universal challenges like the one our listener addresses in this question.

Listener Question: 0:49

Hi Jeannie. This is Judy, over in the UK, and my question is I suppose one of my biggest challenges is getting buy-in from all department heads for CX as an essential business strategy and it's for those business heads who don't yet see it as a priority, despite our best efforts to train them, communicate to them, you know, help them understand, et cetera. So, yeah, it's just, it seems to be a continuing challenge. I reckon it takes a couple of years, but it's a small business, it's not a big business, so it shouldn't be that hard in my view. Anyway, that's my question. Thank you, bye.

Jeannie Walters: 1:30

This is a question I hear a lot. How is it still such a struggle? Why aren't they hearing me? What can I do as a leader to get other leaders to actually care about this? We train, we communicate, we talk about the data. We socialize, we do all of those things and yet, time and again, it doesn't resonate. So what's going on here? Why is customer experience, buy-in still a struggle? And to the point of our question asker here, Judy, she mentioned it's a small business. It should not be this hard.

Jeannie Walters: 2:09

So let's try to break this down into what it can be, because it can be very frustrating to be that leader, to not feel heard, to not feel like our message is resonating and not feel like we're getting maybe the respect that we deserve or the resources that we need or simply the seat at the table that we've earned. So you might think we're only a few dozen people. Why is this such a challenge? But here's the thing. None of this is about size. We see the same challenge at large organizations within different industries. It happens in healthcare and education, and nonprofits and corporate America and everything in between, and so what I want you to think about is what's really going on is a shift, a shift in culture, a shift in mindset, a shift in priorities and even breaking down perceived value. So let's say that you've been doing all the right things right. There's been the training and the communication. You've been showing the data and, to the point we've talked about a lot on this podcast, connecting those dots between the data points that you present from the customer experience lens and how that connects to the business outcomes and the goals of your overall organization and leadership. So let's say we're doing all of that and some leaders still are not seeing customer experience as essential. They are seeing it as an extra. This might be what's happening here.

Jeannie Walters: 3:48

One is that a lot of people in business specifically, still equate customer experience as service, not strategy. They think about it as reactive customer support. That's how they've defined it in their head, and so what we have to do is continually share the definition of customer experience as the holistic journey that a customer has and how that creates perceptions about the brand and the value they're receiving as the customer. All of that leads to consequences, either good or bad. Consequences of a great experience. They are going to stay with us. They are going to tell their friends. They will spend more, they will cost less. We will not have as many repairs, refunds, retribution, all of those things. And the negative side of this if we don't deliver a great experience, it's all of those things. Our service costs go up, our retention rates go down, negative word of mouth can take over. Poor user reviews and, guess what, employees don't love working at places where customers are complaining all the time. So we have to remind them that this is about proactive, intentional design of a meaningful customer experience to deliver the business outcomes that we all want. So if they are constantly asking you about just customer service metrics or what's happening in the call center and that's it, then we have to really start educating and re-educating and restating and re-communicating. It takes people a long time to shift a definition and belief like that. Another thing that could be happening with their mindset is that they believe their department simply isn't a part of this. They're behind the scenes, they're not customer facing, so they don't need to really care.

Jeannie Walters: 5:51

This is where we have to continually beat the drum of how every single person in the organization has an impact on the customer experience. Sometimes that means how we treat one another. Sometimes that means how we deliver and serve internal customers. If we are waiting between departments to get information that has an impact on the end customer, if there is a hiccup in a process that actually creates additional time for getting information to a customer, or getting a product to a customer, that has a direct impact on the customer. We have to make sure everybody understands when we talk about customer experience, yes you, engineer, person in procurement, vendor management, supply chain management, janitorial you all are related to the customer experience. You all have a direct impact. This has to be something that we not only talk about but we show. When things go right because of a process that happened in the background or because somebody showed up in a way that helped another team deliver, we have to celebrate that. We have to showcase that so that people are connecting those dots.

Jeannie Walters: 7:08

And then the other thing is they might not be seeing customer experience as tied to their key performance indicators. So if I am in finance and I'm worried about saving expenses and you're talking to me about positive word of mouth, that might not resonate with me. So we have to share with them how, you know what, what this ultimately means is that we're going to reduce expenses by having fewer returns, fewer repairs, all of those things. So we have to connect the dots over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. I know it's frustrating, I know it can feel like you're not being heard, but, trust me, when you connect the dots, when you help people realize that customer experience is a holistic practice and that it is a winning business strategy, not just in general, not just for customers, but for the organization and for the employees that's when you start getting this sense of okay, we can do this because we're working together. It is absolutely critical.

Jeannie Walters: 8:16

So, number one, Judy, I want you to know you are not alone. Everybody feels this way. When you're, especially when you're on the earlier part of your customer experience journey. It can take a long time. It is really about a journey of transformation that you are on. That's why, when we talk about things like maturity models, we're talking about things that take years, not weeks, because we want to have things happen faster than they can. So just remember that this is a cultural change. It can take years. Culture shifts don't happen on a project plan. They don't happen because we are asking them to happen. This is something bigger and something that will take time. It's an evolution, not a revolution. It's never been a light switch moment. This is a journey that you are on and it can be quite a trek, let's be honest.

Jeannie Walters: 9:11

So what I want to leave you with here are ideas about how to keep pushing forward, as that customer experience change agent who wants to see these things happen. How do you push forward without burning out? So here's what I recommend. One. Sometimes, it's helpful to focus on one team, one department or one function at a time. Find your champions. Once you have found a few champions, and if they're already open to this idea, if they have the right humility to hear what you're asking them to do, if you know that they have the heart to really focus on customer experience, make them heroes. Share what they're doing far and wide. Celebrate when they make a small move that makes a big difference for customers or just helps you do your job better. That also helps customers. So make sure that whenever you see one of those small wins with your champions and their teams, you are their biggest cheerleader.

Jeannie Walters: 10:18

Number two. Tie customer experience to their goals. This is exactly what we do when we map out the customer experience success statement and success blueprint. This is all about defining the strategy based on your organizational goals, your leadership goals and the efforts that will impact those things. So we look at our customer experience efforts and we figure out what kind of positive impact will that have on our organizational goals and our leadership goals? So we have to get into the headspace of our leaders a little bit. What does your chief operational officer think about things versus your chief revenue officer? You have to think about what their goals are for both the company and themselves. That's what moves the needle.

Jeannie Walters: 11:08

And then we want to use real stories. Data is important, but data is not what moves people emotionally. Using real stories, bringing the humanity into everything we do, is super important because all those numbers we report on, all those metrics, they are representing people. So we have to bring people back into that conversation to inspire, to motivate, to move people, because otherwise we're basically saying, hey, help us move these numbers, and if it doesn't have the context of real people, then people just won't take the time to really learn about it, to get inspired and to hear the influence that you're trying to help them with. Once you've gotten here, once you're telling those stories maybe you're focusing on one group at a time you are creating those quick wins, and those quick wins are small but visible changes.

Jeannie Walters: 12:07

Sometimes I talk about quick wins and people will come up to me and say, yeah, they didn't get excited that we moved up our net promoter score by 0.1. And I thought that was a great quick win. But that's reporting on metrics. That's not actually a win. What caused that increase? That's what I would ask. Did we change something? Did we improve a small part of the journey? Did we put the effort into the right place to get the return on that investment? That's what we want to talk about when we talk about quick wins. That's what builds momentum, because people can see the change and the progress.

Jeannie Walters: 12:43

And then for you, I want you to celebrate every single step you take, every step forward. Progress is not guaranteed. Progress requires a leader like you, who is focused on the right things, who is doing their best in a world that is not as supportive about this as it should be. So you, every day, I encourage you, write down that one win. At the end of your day, just think about what was one small win we got. Write it down and at the end of the week, see if you can tell anybody about some of those. See if you can talk to your boss or another leader or one of your champions and say, hey, I just wanted to share that we made some great progress this week. Let me share what we did.

Jeannie Walters: 13:33

By getting that celebration and by sharing those celebrations, you are not only showing progress but you're reminding yourself of what you've done. There is always so much to do. At the end of the week it can feel like, oh my gosh, I didn't get to everything I wanted to, we barely got anything done. But when you really take the time to look at what you've accomplished, that's when you start realizing you know what. We've done quite a bit and we're ready. We are ready to go for next week and we are going to make more progress then.

Jeannie Walters: 14:05

It is challenging out there. I totally understand that and I have so much empathy and compassion for customer experience leaders because a lot of times they are put in impossible situations. What I want you to do is recognize all the important, meaningful work you do on a daily basis, even if others can't hear that yet, and the yet is the most important part. Keep following these steps and eventually you'll get more and more people into your customer experience parade. You'll be able to cheer on more people, and they're going to cheer you on right back.

Jeannie Walters: 14:47

So don't give up hope. Keep working at making the changes that you know are most important for your customers. That will lead to that triple win for your organization, your customers and your employees. That's what moves needles and eventually those move mountains. So keep up the great work. Fantastic question, and we are all right there with you, Judy. Well, thank you all for listening, thank you for sending in your fantastic questions and thank you for everything you do. It is important and meaningful work, and I am here to be your cheerleader. So, rah rah you. Thanks for everything. We will see you next time. 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.