Steps Toward Securing Customer Experience Program Support

Many companies have some type of customer experience (CX) insights program in place.  You may already be conducting an annual survey or tracking customer behavioral data and feedback. However, in order to make the most of your CX insights program, you may find that additional resources are needed.

In a previous blog, we discussed the importance of identifying key CX opportunities and then sharing that knowledge broadly in order to maximize the value of your CX insights. In this post, we share some ways to secure senior management buy-in, whether you’re starting to formalize a CX program, or are looking to gain continued support to maintain and enhance your current one.

If you’re at the early stage of instituting a customer experience insights plan, consider conducting a pilot study targeting a specific customer segment. This way, you can demonstrate the benefits of a CX insights program, while minimizing the overall cost. Often, pilot programs are used as a case study and help gain senior management support before rolling out a more comprehensive program encompassing your complete target audience.

The reality is that maintaining a robust CX program can require a significant investment of both time and money into CX insights.  To control costs, you may want to focus first on the interactions that are most important to customers. Are there any areas where you are seeing lower satisfaction scores? These may be the areas on which to focus your initial improvement efforts.

You’ll also want to consider what barriers, if any, may prevent you and your teams from acting on findings quickly and effectively. Look for areas with the greatest potential to make an impact on customer satisfaction, loyalty, or likelihood to recommend your brand. Doing so will help you demonstrate the value of your customer experience program and garner continued support.

Find a way to demonstrate the link between actionable customer experience insights and your company’s bottom line. How is investing in customer experience insights going to result in business growth and improve overall financial performance? Share specific examples that help you show the connection between improvements in customer experience and key metrics like sales growth or increased market share.

The best way to secure and maintain support for any CX-related insights initiative is to demonstrate how intelligence from your CX program leads to improved business performance.  Whenever possible, showcase the connections between improvement opportunities uncovered in your CX program, actions taken by internal stakeholders, and subsequent gains in performance indicators like customer loyalty and employee engagement. You may need to start small.  Then, based on early successes, it should become easier to get approval to expand your customer experience program, as needed. We’d love to hear your feedback on ways your organization maximizes the value of your customer experience program.