Customer experience leaders are moving into top roles inside their organizations, with many gaining direct access to the CEO. This creates an opportunity to redefine CX’s role in the C-suite through the right combination of strategy and storytelling.
However, business stakeholders often fail to fully understand the role great experiences play.
CX can seem ephemeral, more art than science, and it’s up to chief customer officers and chief experience officers to fix misconceptions, according to Steven Bailey, commercial excellence leader at EY Americas.
“If you cannot articulate that science, in addition to the art that sits on top of it, then it's hard to get people to really appreciate what it is you're trying to accomplish,” Bailey told CX Dive.
Learning the language of the C-suite
CX leaders tend to talk in customer experience-focused language and metrics, rather than speaking the language of the C-suite, according to Judy Weader, principal analyst at Forrester. They need to meet other executives on their own terms by tying measurements like NPS and customer satisfaction to broader business outcomes.
Weader provided the example of first call resolution rates, a measure of how many customer inquiries are resolved on a customer’s first call to an organization. Increasing this rate is great for the customer experience, and it leads to fewer repeat callers.
More first call resolutions also reduce total call volume, which saves money, thus freeing up more funding to be invested in technology, training or other enhancements to customer service operations.
That’s the type of argument CX leaders need to make, Weader said. Executives could tie call center upgrades back to bottom line improvements in the same way a CMO would garner support for a new marketing platform by explaining how it could lead to higher sales.
“You have to be able to create a reasonable justification,” Weader told CX Dive.
Other good measurements to discuss with business leadership include churn rate, customer lifetime value and customer acquisition costs, according to Bailey. These can prove the need for customer experience improvements even when they are trending downward.
“Those should be additional proxies that leaders can use to say, ‘If we're seeing improvement, at least part of that has to be due to a positive customer experience,’” Bailey said. “If the trend is negative, you should also be looking at the experience for places to improve.”
Tracking customer touch points and business goals
Leaders need to track the full customer journey if they want to improve associated metrics. That may sound obvious, but many CX leaders only understand how people interact with certain channels, and some have little understanding at all, according to Bailey.
“Everybody nods their head, but so few places that I've been to actually have real, relevant, useful and recent personas for ideal customers and for non-customers,” he said.
Personas — models representing the needs, expectations and other attributes of important customer demographics — help create an accurate map of the customer journey. Leaders can use them to develop an understanding of how customers interact with their brand, including potential pain points, Bailey said.
CX leaders also need to study the overall brand vision and incorporate it into their goals, Weader said. They can highlight the most important objectives for their brand’s future success, then work backwards to connect these high-level goals to the customer experience.
This strategy requires a clear vision and target, according to Weader. Simply tracking net promoter score growth, for example, isn’t helpful if the improvements aren’t tied to established business outcomes.
“People love talking about great, but what does great really look like?” she said. It’s up to customer experience leaders to define this.
Making friends across the C-suite
Delivering great customer experience is a “team sport,” Weader said. Leaders who have learned to speak with their fellow executives and nailed down their objectives still need to ensure the whole team is on board.
“You have to work with people around the organization,” Weader said. “I often encourage CX leaders to get up out of their cubicle, whether it's virtual or otherwise, and go and talk with other people.”
One approach is for leaders to share their success stories across the C-suite, according to Bailey and Weader.
These can range from presentations on initiatives that saved millions of dollars to individual stories about “micro moments of joy,” Weader said. Recognizing fellow leaders who were essential to CX successes can bring them on board with future plans as well.
CX can also act as a conduit between the business and technology sides of an organization, according to Bailey. CX leaders have access to data-driven feedback that connects how investments in technology are leading to improvements in service and the overall experience as well as a measurable return on investment.
“You've got to create that full circle of engagement in order to drive cooperation,” he said.
