Listener Question And The Challenge

Jeannie Walters 0:00

Have you read Experience is Everything? I hope so. And thanks to this question, let's talk about what's next.

Listener Question 0:09

Hi Jeannie! I bought the book Experience Is Everything for my team. We are really loving it, but now I'd like to hear from you what the best ways to turn this into actions are. I see the way a CX mission statement can set us up for success, but what else would you recommend? I want my team to lead the way. Thank

Why The Mission Statement Comes First

Listener Question 0:29

you.

Jeannie Walters 0:29

Thank you so much for all the support around this new book, Experience is Everything. I have been overwhelmed by the support and by the feedback and the generosity of all of you. I've heard from readers all over the world. I've heard from some of you who have said that you're still waiting on the book because of international orders taking a little while. I apologize for that, and if I had that magic wand, I would send it to you right away. We've been asked about a couple of things, and I thought we could address that today. Many of you are using this book with your teams, which I absolutely love. I think that's a great way to activate this. And one of the things that was important to me as the author was to provide real tools inside the book so that if you wanted to, you could start from there to really activate the learnings. The book is really based on defining your mindset, making sure you're aligning that mindset throughout your organization, making sure you've defined what success looks like through a customer experience strategy, and then knowing what efforts will make the biggest difference and making sure you're focused there in your daily, weekly, monthly work. So that sounds pretty straightforward, but let's talk about real life. Real life means that you are getting priorities shifted. I know so many organizations right now who are going through some serious leadership changes or organizational structures that are moving and shifting and changing and in some cases compressing. So what that means is that we have to stay nimble and agile while having some structure. So what I encourage you to do is first of all, I love that the person who asked this question mentioned understanding why the CX mission statement would set up for success. I fully believe that. If you do nothing else, write that CX mission statement. But if you can go through and really focus on key areas that will work for your organization, that's how we start operationalizing these customer experience results in our organization. So if I had that magic wand and could tell exactly what was going on in your company or your organization, I would tell you no matter what, start with that mission statement. Because that really does help align a mindset around who you are and what you're doing. That helps you break out of just being number narrators where you're talking about feedback metrics. It helps you show up to leaders differently. It helps you actually lead. So start

Build A Proactive CX Strategy

Jeannie Walters 3:21

there. Then I would move into defining the strategy. Make sure that your strategy is not reactive. I see this all the time in my coaching and advising work. I ask to look at a customer experience strategy, and guess what? It doesn't really exist. In fact, a reader told me that she's read so many customer experience books, and experiences everything was the first one that mentioned strategy. I think that's very, very telling. So if you do nothing else, start with that customer experience success blueprint. The difference that I think this brings is that we're starting with the organizational goals. We're thinking differently. We're thinking about how we can drive success for our organizational goals instead of saying, here are some feedback numbers, here are some insights, we need to react to them. It's a very different approach, but if you show up like that, you are showing up like a business leader first.

Culture Discipline And The Four Cs

Jeannie Walters 4:28

Then I want you to think about your culture and how you are getting things done. That's really the discipline part of this. Now, culture, that's a hard thing to change. We have a scorecard in the book about the four C's of a customer-centric culture. I would encourage you to just try that. Just score where you are today. Look for the area that maybe you could have an impact on. What could you change? And then make sure that you are retaking that scorecard. Finally, we have something called a CX

The CX Charter That Drives Execution

Jeannie Walters 5:01

charter. That's when you're deciding, okay, what are the efforts that we have to do? Who do we need involved? How often do we need to communicate about this? What are the ways that we're measuring success? So you're taking the foundation and you're turning it into real efforts. Listen, I know it's kind of hard out there right now. I know that a lot of you are facing some pretty big limitations right now. Without some form of structure, it's very easy for customer experience leaders to be seen as reactionary, to be seen as something that, you know what, they take care of those problems, but sometimes we we have bigger fish to fry. You want to be the person bringing in the big fish. And so what that means is you need structure, you need discipline. That will actually lead you to freedom. So as you're thinking about ways to activate the learnings from the book, I really encourage you to think about what would this feel like in a year if I could say we had incredible

Show Up As A Business Leader

Jeannie Walters 6:10

results. What would those results be? If you can focus on that, you can start working backwards and showing up again as a business leader first so that they understand you are doing this on behalf of the organization. Operationalizing customer experience is not something that will happen by snapping your fingers. But if you start showing up with these incredibly strong foundational documents, if you start showing up saying, I know exactly what to do because I know what success looks like and how we're getting there, I know how we're measuring progress. I know how we're inviting other people to collaborate, I know how we're showing up for other leaders so that they know it's a win for them. That's what I want you to do. So I know that many of you are using this with your teams, like I talked about. That is fantastic. That is another way that you can start activating this. If every single member of your team understands the CX mission to the point where they can start evangelizing that, bringing that out, if they understand the CX success blueprint so that they can say to another leader, here's what's in it for us, if we do this well, that will help tremendously. And if you can get your team all on board about speaking in the right way around customer experience, not about just feedback metrics, not about dashboards, not about just reacting, but actually having clear, proactive, intentional goals, you will start being seen differently, not only as a team and a leader, even around the discipline of customer experience. This is a really exciting time. I am really excited to see what the book is doing for

Get Your Team Speaking CX

Jeannie Walters 8:12

you. And we have some special ways that we're working with clients around the book. Of course, the first one is you can always join CXI Membership. That is where we have one-on-one coaching, we have lots of on-demand curriculum, and we do new events just for our members. Definitely check that out at cximembership.com. And then I love working with teams just like you. So talk to us about maybe a kickoff keynote for your organization or a special executive briefing session or working with your team. We have lots of options at experienceinvestigators.com . I know that some of you are teams of one or small teams. The book plus CXI membership is built for you. So please check that out because we want to support you. We want

Ways To Work Together And Next Steps

Jeannie Walters 9:07

you to show up as that business leader first so that you can get exactly what you need and deserve as a CX leader, so that you can get the resources that you need to get the results that everybody's looking for, so that you can deliver for the customers that you serve. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for all you do. And don't forget, we love hearing from you. You can always ask me a question at askjeannie.vip. You can also leave some feedback, ratings, reviews wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want to check those resources out, go ahead and explore experienceinvestigators.com . Thank you so much, and I can't wait to see you next time. If you're ready to turn insights into action, join CXI Membership, our community for customer experience investigators just like you. Get the tools, support, and inspiration to move from ideas to true impact. And don't miss my book, Experience is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations. Available wherever you order books. Until next time, keep asking questions, keep improving, and keep leading with experience.