Are you having problems with getting your top management to prioritise Customer Experience (CX)?
One of the most important factors to succeed with customer-centricity is to have management onboard. If they aren’t, you’ll soon struggle to implement the changes you want to see.
As consumers are being bombarded with messages, the ones that will succeed to get customers’ attention will be the ones that invest in creating truly relevant customer interactions throughout the customer lifecycle. Many CX leaders already recognise this as the most important competitive advantage. However, a survey made by Forrester shows that key challenges for CX leaders stem from lack of executive commitment. In contrast, McKinsey states that many CX transformations stall because leaders can’t show how these create value. Less than half of the CX leaders seem to know their companies’ net promoter score value.
True customer centricity cannot be achieved by one department. To get the resources you need to succeed you have to get top management onboard. To do that, you need to make sure you speak the same language as the executives. Carefully evaluate how much your audience knows about the subject prior to pitching your ideas. Before you present your arguments and evidence, consider describing the urgency of the CX-transformation. Continue by showing an aggregated view of ‘what you want to do’ (strategy), follow up with the ‘How you’re going to implement it’ (business case), and finally, show ‘how you will measure performance and progress’ (with KPIs). Make sure you build your business case on figures related to revenue and how you are supporting and contributing to your organisation’s business model and goals. Findings from Wiraya’s CRM Barometer Report 2018 show that those who present and make decisions based on data are more likely to get full support from management and approval of the investments needed.
To get your management’s attention you need to show:
- 1. Urgency – why?
- 2. Strategy – what?
- 3. Business case – how?
- 4. KPIs – effectiveness.
Bonus tip! If you still have a struggle to convince your top management about the urgency, you might want to consider getting practical. A way of engaging top management (or other stakeholders within your organisation) is to let them become a customer. Let your executives sign-up for your service and go through the whole customer journey, step by step. This will not only make them understand your customers better, but it will also give them first-hand experience what poor vs good CX looks and feel like. After all, remember 84% of consumers say that bad customer experience will make them leave a brand.
