Customer Experience is Actually Everyone’s Job, Not Just the CX Team’s

Deciding who’s responsible for customer experience may seem obvious, but in reality it’s not only on the CX team to help deliver a connected experience as an organization.

Is customer experience (CX) one team’s job, or is it everyone’s job? This binary question is asked by companies of all sizes across industries, but the answer can sometimes be frustrating — because the answer is yes.

Yes, customer experience should be led by a team of experts trained in journey mapping, voice of the customer, satisfaction metrics, and experience design. And yes, customer experience is everyone’s job.

Come possono coesistere queste risposte apparentemente contraddittorie? Perché le aziende leader fanno entrambe le cose.

In From Customer Experience to Connected Experience: The Executive’s Guide to Breaking Silos & Delivering Business Results, it’s noted that CEOs care about three things:

1. Ricavi
2. Costi Costi
3. Cultura Cultura

Fortunately, customer experience — and its sibling, employee experience (EX) — addresses and impacts all three areas.

Companies regarded as customer experience leaders bring in more revenue than those regarded as customer experience laggards, in the form of more customers who spend more, stay longer, and refer others. These companies also reduce costs through operational efficiency and decreased customer service inquiries. After all, there’s virtually no need for customer service if the customer experience is perfect!

And it’s no surprise that customer experience leaders are also often ranked among the best places to work, since employees are the ones responsible for delivering remarkable experiences.

The Customer Experience Team

A centralized customer experience team, usually led by a chief experience officer (CXO), is critical because someone has to be able to view and understand the customer journey in its entirety. “Rarely is there a single person or team taking responsibility for connecting experiences so that the customer has a better experience across the brand,” notes Medallia in its guide.

Dato che molte organizzazioni sono isolate, è difficile, se non impossibile, per i leader di un'area avere una comprensione completa di ciò che fanno le altre aree. Sono troppo impegnati a lavorare sulla propria parte di esperienza per preoccuparsi troppo delle altre.

Ma un team CX ha il lusso di non essere impantanato nel lavoro quotidiano richiesto per mantenere le operazioni di un contact center, di un sito web o di una sede in un edificio. Possono invece concentrarsi sul quadro generale, compresi i punti di passaggio strategici tra aree siloed che spesso sono la fonte di esperienze negative.

Il ruolo di questo team richiede spesso un certo tipo di finezza: "influenza senza autorità", si potrebbe dire.

“When looking to advance customer experience principles across the contact center, digital, or employee experience, you can’t go to those individual leaders and start from the perspective, ‘I’m here to help you improve the customer experience,’” the guide notes. “That may be your ultimate goal, but it’s not theirs. You have to understand those individual leaders’ goals and objectives.”

The chief marketing officer (CMO), chief operating officer (COO), and chief financial officer (CFO) may have distinct goals, but the good news is that the customer experience team can help all of them.

The customer experience team should be experts in the voice of the customer — what customers are saying about the experience in service interactions and structured feedback — and the actions of the customer — what customers are actually doing throughout the journey, such as website behavior. All of these insights must be shared with the individual teams that can most affect change in the experience.

Customer Experience Is Everyone’s Job

Regardless of title or department, virtually every employee has at least some impact on the customer experience. It’s easy to see how customer-facing roles — such as a salesperson or a customer service agent — have an outsized impact, but roles in finance, legal, marketing, operations, human resources, and even the custodial staff take actions and make decisions every day that ultimately affect the end customer.

Ad esempio, la decisione di accettare solo determinate forme di pagamento, o di richiedere un certo linguaggio contrattuale, o di fare promesse al marchio che il resto dell'azienda deve mantenere, hanno tutte serie conseguenze per il cliente.

La chiave, quindi, è dare a ogni singolo dipendente la possibilità di prendere decisioni aziendali attraverso la lente dell'impatto sul cliente. Se è un bene per il cliente, è probabile che lo sia anche per l'azienda.

Empowered employees feel better about their jobs. They like coming to work, they feel that their work is important, and they feel like part of a bigger team. Employee experience and customer experience work hand-in-hand; as one improves, so does the other.

And the truth is, employees in siloed departments often have the most expertise to design the optimal experience for their particular portion of the customer journey. This is why empowering all employees to be customer-centric makes for a better overall customer experience.

It also helps the centralized customer experience team be more effective because they don’t have to do everything themselves. Instead, they can focus on transitions and handoffs, customer pain points, and connecting the dots between departments.

In too many companies, when someone sees a customer experience team member walking toward them, it feels like they’re getting a visit from an auditor. This adversarial relationship, in which one team gets to tell another what they’re doing wrong and how to do their jobs right, is unlikely to result in transformational change. But empowering every team member to be customer-centric, with the guidance and support of a centralized leadership team, is what creates the cultural shift required for a truly connected experience.