We're customer experience people. Of course we want to talk to customers. So why don't our leaders let us? That's one of the questions today on the Experience Action Podcast. Let's get into it.

Hey Jeannie, it's Krystal. I really believe in the power of talking to customers, but how do I bring that up at work? What's the best way to pitch a customer interview initiative to my team or leadership?

What a great question, Crystal. And I love the way you're thinking about this. Because a lot of times we say things like, oh, we should just interview customers. We should just talk to customers. But really, there's a lot more to it than that. And we, as customer experience leaders, often have to make the case for this. So today I want to think about the appropriate way that we can get that buy-in from leaders so that we can set up a regular customer interview program. These programs can provide so much insight. We often don't get that emotional resonance from surveys that we get when we are sitting across from a customer, when we are watching their facial expressions and their body language. So customer interviews absolutely have a place in most programs, but honestly, I don't see it happen enough. So let's talk about why we want to do this. The first thing we want to do is lead with that why. If we are making a case for our leaders, we want to make sure that we are explaining the business impact of this customer interview program and not just treat it as an activity. It's not about the what, it's about the why. So as you are framing this, you want to frame it as a smart business move. You might say things like, you know what, we make a lot of decisions based on assumptions. A few quick customer conversations can really validate our direction and most importantly, help us avoid service issues and wasted effort. Getting in front of some of those issues can actually help reduce cost, reduce resources, all sorts of things, but we have to make that case. We want to tie this to real outcomes like reducing churn, maybe getting higher customer adoption rates, maybe we want to improve loyalty. All of those things can play a part here, but we need to build that case. And the next thing I highly recommend is to start small. Propose a pilot because it's not just about the act of interviewing and gathering those insights. We have to make sure that we have the right process, systems, people, tools in place so that when we get those insights, we can turn those into impact. If we don't have that back-end process figured out and we interview dozens and dozens of customers, all we have are insights that we can't do anything with. We want to show impact. So think about proposing a pilot that has a smaller scope, requires less time, fewer resources, fewer scheduling issues with customers, all of those things. But then do a low-lift version of this. So instead of interviewing 50 customers, maybe you interview five. This is about getting the process right and also showing that even if we interview five customers, we will find insights that matter. And if you find that maybe you didn't, maybe the process isn't set up for this, that is still a learning for you. Then you can start thinking about what do we need to make this work in the future and start putting that into your plans, your budgets, your strategy. It is a win-win. Even if the pilot is technically a fail, all that means is that you learned from it and now you know how to build a proper program. Because the thing about customer interviews that I usually see cause some angst that people are not expecting, scheduling in today's world, it's a bear. It just is. We also have to think about how can we make this valuable to the customer without influencing how they behave and what they share with us. So it really does take some careful consideration and thoughtful planning to get these done right. We also want to think about that back-end situation of what do we do with the insights that we've gained? Who do we share that with? How do we make sure that we're turning those insights into action? Are we summarizing? Are we using AI? All sorts of things to really think through when you are developing your own customer interview process. We also want to speak their language. What I mean by that is we want to talk to our leaders about translating these insights into return on that investment. We want to make sure that we are linking these interviews with measurable goals. We want to interview five customers to learn about specifically how they feel about the onboarding process because we think there are ways to improve onboarding, to reduce the time to usage, and to improve the employee experience and reduce the number of cancellations. We want to get into what are the levers that we're pulling and what will that do for our organization. So we want to fix some friction points. We want because we know that will help us retain more customers. We want to uncover unmet needs because we want to create more revenue streams for our organization. Speak their language. Their language is ROI, return on investment. All right, we also want to connect to what's already happening. This is not necessarily a completely separate program that we're introducing. This is something that is complementary. We want to make sure we are giving context to the surveys that we already have going out. We want to make sure that our NPS program has not just the written verbatim that people share, but those are validated with customer interviews so we can get richer, more qualitative feedback that we can use. We want to make sure that we are gathering these insights while we're developing product plans or marketing plans. We are getting in front of those issues that could happen simply by checking in with customers. And finally, I want to encourage you as CX leaders to be specific. Ask for exactly what you want. Because I work with CX leaders all the time. And one thing I've found about customer experience people, and you know what, I'm guilty of this too. We want everybody to be happy. We want to show empathy, we want to understand, we want to show compassion. And so sometimes what that means is that we're not as direct about what we need as we could be. So ask directly: can I pilot interviewing five customers, 20 minutes? I will handle the scheduling, and then we will summarize what we learned and present it to you to see if there is more here to develop. Be very direct about what you're asking for. And then don't be shy about saying this is what we're learning along the way. Keep your leaders informed. This is something I see again and again. We are asking for things, we run off, we plan, we've got all these things going on. Our leaders have completely forgotten about it, and then we come back and our report might say, we tested this and it didn't work. And they're thinking, well, why did we do that then? We need to keep them informed along the way. Here are the challenges we're running into, here are the opportunities. Everybody is on the same team, but sometimes we get stuck in our own silos. It's super important to keep people not only informed, but engaged with the insights that we are gathering through customer interview programs or anything we're doing as customer experience leaders. So I encourage you to pilot this, figure out if this would work for you, and don't be shy about asking for what you need. I know you've got this. Thanks for joining me, and don't forget you can leave me a voicemail at askjeannie.vip. Thanks everybody. 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.