Customer Experience: in-house teams must lead by example

The first rule of Customer Experience?  Understand what it’s really like to be a customer. Really understand.

Not just “What is your score for customer satisfaction?” but more along the lines of “How did what we do make you feel and how will that affect what you do next time?” or “What will you say about your experience over dinner tonight?”.  All good – and the right – insight to create better results for everyone concerned.

But when was the last time the in-house Customer Experience team, or those who are taking CE under their wing, were mapping a journey of what it’s like to be one of their own, internal stakeholders?  After all, even with all the most perceptive insight in the world, if it’s going to be used to change things, it will take willing co-operation from all corners of the organisation.  And how well do those in the team keep up with latest trends, best practice and benchmarking of their own competencies?

The understandable day-to-day focus is on what’s happening out there on the front-line.  However, for in-house Customer Experience teams and customer “champions”, they need the confidence and leadership to follow their own advice – hold up that mirror and find out what it’s really like to work with them within the organisation;  how do they make stakeholders feel and therefore behave.  What’s their internal ‘brand’ reputation?  Are they credible in their own right or able to call the shots just because the CEO is on-side?  Can they prove the economic benefits or are they seen as a fluffy side of Marketing?

Charged with leading the agenda of what is a relatively new discipline they need the rest of the organisation to “get it”, to be enthused and motivated to change things that may not be in their own personal scorecard.

Internal stakeholders and suppliers are to the in-house team what customers are to the business.  One won’t work without the other.  Customers don’t want you to turn up late because you’d stopped on the way to pick up a coffee, nor do your internal customers.

Against a backdrop of a commercial world that is still largely governed by short-term sales targets, margin protection and cost reduction, the in-house teams need to have the right leadership skills to bring cross-functional teams – previously worlds apart – together.  They need to be able to navigate the politics of crashing other agendas, influencing investment decisions and resource allocation.  They need to dispel the myths around Customer Experience.  They need to get metric-driven organisations to start thinking about customer emotions; easier said than done for sure, but it can be done.

Most importantly, they need everyone on board.  Not just the Product, Marketing, Operational and Sales teams but Finance, IT and HR too.

As Albert Schweitzer once said: “Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing”.

Of all the ‘customer’ journeys to manage this is both one of the most important and, happily, one over which they have most design control.  Know how to lead by example and turn stakeholders into real advocates for Customer Experience.