What are the most effective ways to build a CX team?

Always remember that Customer Experience is progressive. Its the loudest form of marketing since it is a reflection of culture and operations that you can easily see and feel. Customer Experience can be considered as a branding. So if you have a bad CX whether physically or virtually, it is a bad branding already.

Be your customers trusted advisor. An educator on what works best for them. A trusted advisor should be: • Charismatic • Outgoing • Knowledgeable • Empathetic & Sympathetic Overall the customers’ “go to” person, displaying positive emotion and strong intelligence to assist the client with a personal experience tailored just for them.

To build an effective CX team, it important to define roles clearly, hire individuals with customer-centric qualities, provide continuous training, encourage cross-functional collaboration, use metrics and feedback, equip the team with necessary tools, promote diversity, secure leadership support, offer recognition and rewards, and foster a culture of continuous improvement.

The field of CX is continuously evolving, so it's important to stay updated with the latest trends and practices. Here's a basic outline: Understand Your Customers: Start by gaining a deep understanding of your target audience. Conduct customer research, and surveys, and gather feedback to identify their needs, preferences, pain points, and expectations. Create a Customer-Centric Vision: Develop a clear and compelling CX vision statement that reflects your commitment to delivering exceptional experiences. Ensure it aligns with your company's mission and values. Define Customer Personas: Segment your customer base into distinct personas based on demographics, behaviors, and needs. This helps in tailoring experiences.

CX strategy should not be considered a transactional process. You can't set it and forget it. You need to be dynamic, changing as things change.

I tend to hire for personality & cultural fit. CX team members need to be excellent networkers, empathetic listeners and able to work with a "can-do" solution-oriented attitude. I also believe it is critical to ensure your team members are diverse in strengths & interests.

It is absolutely critical to hire for skill fit on the technical front. That said, do not gloss over soft skills and customer communication skills. I would consider hiring a 100% culture fit who has some room to grow and learn technically almost all of the time, because those soft skills and behavioral traits are harder to coach.

Assemble a tiger team of both internal and external teams to co-create. Internal teams should consist of x-functional team members across levels from product, CS, marketing, sales, finance, etc. External teams should consist of your customers who are early adopters, and have been loyal fans for a long time. Co-creating with diverse tiger team like this will ensure that not only that your teams are aligned and are bought-in, but also inspires trust and further loyalty to your best customers.

Your CX vision and strategy should be a reflection of the brand's identity and values. It should convey how you want customers to perceive your company, whether it's as a reliable partner, an innovator, or a source of inspiration. The consistency across all touchpoints reinforces this identity and builds trust.

Embrace your limits as a leader and hire people that are knowledgeable or passionate about areas that you are not. Also, look for people that have a natural tone similar to what you're looking for when a team member is talking to a customer. I like to administer simple scenarios and include situations with a disgruntled customer, very confused customer, neutral customer and over the moon customer to see how they organically go about their replies. Product knowledge can be learned, but passion and natural ability cannot. Hiring someone that loves what they do and are good at it will be far more valuable than someone that's worked in a similar industry.

Provide training to ensure everyone follows the same principles and speaks the same language. There should be flexibility in the training plan for CX team members to explore personal interests and develop a specialty within the team.

I find it extremely helpful to have someone dedicated to your team's enablement/education needs - that can focus on putting together solid learning plans that align with your career progression model and help your team to succeed. Additionally, I have found that utilizing team members to facilitate classes that align with their existing skills is a fantastic way to empower the team and drive a sense of ownership with the individuals teaching those classes.

The tools that are needed to build great CX has to be taught - journey mapping, stakeholders mapping, scenario planning ,etc. But what's equally important here is to learn-and-build concurrently when executing the project.

I begin my onboarding by laying the foundation for a team built on trust and transparency. I remind them why I hired them and that I want to hear what they have to say. They will spend time in documentation to better understand the product, but also as a chance for a new pair of eyes to point out areas of improvement. Finally, we start looking into scenarios. I explain that I'm very critical of the structure, tone and content, but do so to keep the consistency and ensure they are confident when they're independent. Training never stops and we have monthly QA reviews to look at wins and areas of improvement. My door is always open and want them to continue to grow in their role.

Before you assemble your team, you got to make sure that each team member has something in it for them so that they are intrinsically motivated to start and complete the work. During the work execution, make sure you celebrate small wins after achieving milestones. After the project has completed, let's make sure to celebrate towards the end to build a sense of accomplishment, camraderie and strengthen CX culture.

Celebrate your successes! Set clear goals and objectives for your team, and track your progress regularly. Then, share your successes with your team and other stakeholders, and recognize the hard work and dedication that goes into creating an amazing customer experience.

Financial incentives are great and should definitely not be overlooked. Sometimes though, there is massive benefit to holding team events that build camaraderie and a sense of belonging, which can be a massively powerful thing for some people. One example would be holding a 'hackathon' where teams present their projects to a company wide audience so that they are amply recognized at all levels of the company.

I believe that when you feel something, you say it. No one should be on a team doubting their value because their leader isn't communicating with them. Keep conversations flowing and support them on their career journey.

If you have hired well, it means that you are likely surrounded by people who are much smarter than you are. That combined with the fact that your CX team is on the front lines and sees the issues that really impact your business. It is unwise to ignore this. Hold regular feedback sessions where the input is regularly distributed out to the right people that need to hear it. In doing so, you are establishing your CX teams as an invaluable resource for feedback within the company, which is irreplaceable.

You must show your value to your team at all times. Have you created a safe space for them to ask questions? Or for them to own a mistake? Have you created a space where they know they can come to you with an idea? Or an issue they're seeing over and over again with the customers? Or when they're feeling overwhelmed? It is your job to provide a space for your team to do their best work, and if you're not listening, they can't share those needs with you.

By actively engaging with your CX team can gain invaluable insights into customer pain points, preferences, and emerging trends. For instance, consider a scenario where an e-commerce company heeds the feedback of its CX team, which highlights customer frustration with a convoluted checkout process. By making streamlined improvements based on this feedback, the company not only reduces cart abandonment rates but also cultivates a more loyal customer base, exemplifying the power of collaboration between IT and CX to deliver exceptional experiences.

If you involve front-liners and back-enders in your CX improvement process, be sure they are aware of what's going on everything in front and at the back so that you can listen to them with confidence and align front-end innovation with back-end operations.

Recognizing and rewarding your CX team is essential to maintain motivation and reinforce a customer-centric culture. Start by implementing performance-based incentives, such as bonuses and promotions, to acknowledge outstanding contributions and encourage ongoing excellence. Celebrate achievements, milestones, and valuable feedback regularly to create a positive and appreciative work environment.

Data and Technology: Provide your team with the tools to collect, analyse, and act on customer data effectively. A robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and analytics tools are essential. Customer-Centric Mindset: Instill a customer-centric mindset within your team. Ensure they understand the importance of customer satisfaction and how their roles contribute to it. Feedback Loop: Create a feedback loop with other departments so your team can communicate customer insights and pain points to product development and other relevant teams. Iterate and Adapt: Continuously assess the effectiveness of your CX team and adapt to changing customer needs and market conditions.

Here are various dimensions that can be considered to improve your CX team: - People: Get a diversity of talents with complementary skills to be involved in CX. The more interdisciplinary, the better. - Tools: Better tools to capture data, analyze into insights and automate work so that your CX team can get the job done better, faster and cheaper. - Policies: Iterate the policies from cybersecurity, product usage, pricing, etc across the journey.

We also have to consider is that CX is a shared responsibility, not limited to the CX team. Back in one of my previous roles, I used to run a 4-hour customer experience workshop, and it was part of the onboarding for all new hires, whether they were in sales, development, accounting, project management, customer support, or any other role – whether customer-facing or not. The goal was to ensure that everyone in the organization had a solid grasp of CX. This wasn't just about ticking a box; it was about building a shared commitment to delivering exceptional customer experiences. It made sure that when we kicked off CX initiatives, we had everyone on board – they understood the plan, supported it, and were excited to get involved.

One of the fundamental steps in building a robust CX team lies in understanding and implementing the core pillars of CX. Firstly, customer-centricity should be the focal point of the team, ensuring that every decision and action taken is with the customer in mind. This means deeply understanding customer needs and using this insight to inform strategy. Secondly, empathy must be instilled in each team member, allowing them to genuinely connect with customers and understand their feelings and perspectives. Lastly, fostering collaboration ensures that every department works seamlessly together to deliver a consistent experience across all touchpoints. Doing this paves the way for genuine connections with your customers and long-term success.

Don't forget to have fun! Organize team-building activities to help your team bond, learn, and celebrate their successes. After all, creating a great customer experience should be a fun and rewarding experience for everyone involved!