Communicating CX: 12 Tips for Talking About Customer Experience

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Customer experience is not a fad or a trend or a buzzy phrase. And yet, organizations often treat it like it is.

• They hang a banner, then ignore it.
• They announce it as an annual theme, then forget it by February.
• Or they simply talk about it without actually putting any rigor or discipline or even real goals to it.

That’s why the foundational work of defining CX at your organization, through a CX Mission Statement and CX Success Statement, is so critically important to accomplishing real change and delivering on real outcomes through customer experience.

But if employees, partners, and others only hear about customer experience as a one-time or even once-per-year thing, how are they supposed to really understand and see its possibilities?

Organizations that focus on customer experience as part of who they are don’t stop communicating about it. It’s part of their internal communications and employee engagement rhythm.

This means communicating often and earnestly. Your employees need to hear about what customer experience means to your organization, your customers, and to your employees!

Of course, each business is different, but consider a customer experience content calendar as a way to keep your employees focused on the why, the how, and the “what do I do about it?” of Customer Experience. Here are twelve ideas to get you started. Combine this with a customer experience champion program within your organization and watch culture really shift.

12 Tips to Help You Communicate About Customer Experience

1. Start with the why

Has your organization defined what customer experience means to you? Have you created a CX Mission Statement? When was the last time you shared this with your employees?

• Ask your CEO to share why CX is important to them.
• Interview customers about how your organization has lived up to the mission.
• Show how your customers benefit from the promise of your brand, and how that shows up in their journey.

2. Explain success

What does it mean for your organization to succeed at customer experience? It’s not enough to say “deliver great experiences.” Share how customer experience drives results, and how your entire organization will benefit from investing in customer experience.

• If you have a CX Success Statement, it’s a great time to share that!
• Show employees how everyone benefits from achieving these results.
• If overall revenue goals are tied to bonuses, stress how customer experience provides positive revenue outcomes.

3. Connect the employee experience to the customer experience in big ways.

If you aspire for an effortless customer experience, should your employee experience also reflect that value? Absolutely. What are the ways you can showcase how the employee experience is reflective (OR not) of your aspirational customer experience? Ask your employees for examples.

Then be honest and authentic about sharing where this might need attention. Employees know when their processes are burdensome or require too much effort. Sugarcoating their reality won’t build trust. Paint a picture of the future if you are indeed looking at ways to improve these points.

4. Share customer journey maps and insights.

Don’t limit key insights and journey maps to just certain leaders or teams.

• As you are building customer journey maps, share what you find.
• Explain how to review the map and what might be most interesting or surprising for employees to learn.
• Share what is next as you improve the journey!

5. Dive into dashboard details.

Customer experience dashboards are often shared far and wide, but with little context or explanation. “NPS should be going up” doesn’t mean much. But explaining how you measure Net Promoter Score (NPS) and how that can help predict how happy and loyal customers will be is helpful.

Continue reading the full article here.