Leading Your CX Transformation
When you become aware of the customer experience delivery gap, you would think inspiring customer experience transformation leadership would be a no-brainer, right?
Unfortunately, it is far too easy for leaders in many organizations to fall into the trap of “the way we have always done things here.”
Let’s take a look at five key elements that will get your leadership team leaning in on your customer experience transformation:
- Show Them the Money
- Shift to Servant Leadership
- Rethink Your Values, Vision & Mission
- Inspect What You Expect of CX
- Link CX Results to Compensation
Let’s take a deeper look.
Show Them the Money
No, you are not bribing your leadership team to transform your customer experience. (but we’ll talk about that more in a moment!)
You simply cannot expect to transform your customer experience for free. Get ready to invest in the customer experience initiatives that are going to truly transform your customer’s experiences with your business.
Sit down with your Chief Financial Officer and change how projects are funded and why.
If there isn’t a customer experience element to the project, you should reject the project. Prioritize and fund the projects that have the greatest impact on closing your CX delivery gap.
Yes, show your leadership team the money based on the customer experience impact of your key initiatives. They will quickly get the message that your focus on customer experience has intensified.
Shift to Servant Leadership
Command and control, functional silo leadership simply has no place in any business looking to transform their customer experience.
Servant leaders are committed to the growth of others. Being a servant leader means valuing the power of teamwork as a necessary part of strengthening an organization’s growth and success.
Reaching for the third ring of customer experience demands you empower your team members to go beyond their job knowledge, skills and abilities.
No ‘command and control’ leader is going to inspire team members to use their intelligence and reasoning (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ) in creating a phenomenal customer experience.
Rethink Values, Vision & Mission
You have most likely invested a great deal of time and emotional energy in creating your values, vision and mission.
Now step back from your executive chair and ask yourself if those same values, vision and mission will enable you to create the customer experience-driven organization you need to become in the future.
If the answer is yes, congratulations! Just double-down on communicating and walking the talk of your values, vision and mission to your team and other stakeholders.
But if your honest, objective assessment of your values, vision and mission fail to convey the organization you need to become, don’t settle for the status quo.
Find the time and renewed emotional energy to recreate your values, vision and mission for the customer experience business you need to be.
Inspect What You Expect from CX
What is your business measuring today? Are the critical qualitative and quantitative measures that drive customer experience on your radar every day, week, month, quarter, year?
If not, it’s time to call your executive team together and start measuring what matters to drive your customer experience transformation.
The path to customer experience performance comes from measuring what matters and taking action on your data-driven insights to transform your customer experience and organizational performance.
The potential outcomes of inspecting what you expect by closing your customer experience delivery gaps are extraordinary.
Link CX Results to Compensation
How will you get your leaders and everyone in your organization to lean into your customer experience? In other words, what must you do to change behavior across the organization, starting with your leadership team?
Typically, business leaders will go to the tried and true motivational talk to change behavior. When that fails to get the results they desire, they will bring in training to get the results they desire. When that doesn’t work, they reach deeper into their toolkit for their trusted carrots and sticks that have always worked for them to change behavior.
Sadly, those methods have a 20% impact on changing behavior. Making matters worse, those methods typically don’t stick. You’ll get a little bump for a brief time, then people quickly regress to their old behaviors.
No, the way to change behavior is focusing on consequences, which have an 80% impact on changing behavior. Now don’t jump on consequences as always being negative. They can be, but that is not where you should focus.
Instead, link executive compensation to customer experience results. That not only changes behavior immediately, but sustains the behavior change as well. It’s the key to inspiring your executive team to lead your customer experience transformation.
Customer Experience Transformation
Aurelius Transformation, LLC
Phoenix, Arizona | Vancouver, Washington