CX Transformation Needs Employee Activation

Countless customer experience transformations have been killed by ambiguity. That's because if you don't know what to do, you can't act. Ambiguity is the enemy of action.

CX teams must devote time and attention to galvanizing all employees to contribute to the CX Transformation.

But how do you do that? Activation

That’s the term my guest in this week’s Edition of the CX Patterns Podcast & Newsletter Megan Burns, gives to the process of clarifying, specifying, and motivating that must happen for all employees to get on board with a CX transformation.

Why Do CX Transformations Need Employee Activation?

I'll come back to the process of activation encapsulated by clarifying, specifying and motivating in just a minute, but first I want to explain why activation is necessary at all.

Megan gave a fantastic explanation in the podcast, and referenced what is, for my money, one of the greatest business books in history to make her point. That book, Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip And Dan Heath, diagrams a process for change that really works.

Megan builds on their change process foundation by reminding us that most of your colleagues aren't failing to be customer-centric because they don't want to be, they're not on board because they don't know what to do. It's your job to make the changes required clear, specific, and exciting for everyone in the organization.

This is often a challenge for CX teams because we are guilty of being so passionate and in the weeds when it comes to customer experience - something often referred to as The Curse of Knowledge - that we forget that customer experience is a new concept for many of our colleagues. They're not anti-CX, they're just not thinking about CX, certainly not to the degree that we are.

Clarifying, Specifying, Motivating

And so, given that reality, CX teams must devote time and attention to activation, with three key components to make it work.

Clarifying – How do our customers want to feel as a result of their experiences with us? How do we deliver an experience to them that makes them feel that way? How does everyone in our company contribute to that?

Megan shares the example of Delta Airlines, and it’s maniacal focus on reducing cancelled flights.

Why?

Because the airline noticed that customers were much more likely to stop flying with them after a cancelled flight.

Why?

Because cancelling a flight is the ultimate betrayal of the core promise from an airline – to get you safely to your destination. So Delta set the goal of having the fewest cancelled flights – which it achieved, and has consistently ranked near the top of the airline customer experience rankings ever since.

So what is your galvanizing, specific answer to Why transforming your experience will make a difference to your customers? If you can’t answer that, you know where to start.

Specifying – I bet I’ve said this phrase more than anyone else in history, and here I go again: For your CX transformation to be successful, you need to create role-specific, customer-centric behaviors for all employees in the company.

Easy to say (especially for me), hard to do. And what does specifying customer-centric behaviors for all roles actually look like in the doing? Well the good news is that it almost never requires you and your CX team to figure it out.

Why?

Two reasons.

First, because most activities, behaviors, processes that exist in the organization today are fit for purpose in a more customer-centric future. Usually, you are looking at small tweaks, not wholesale changes. Subtleties in other words.

This also helps with the case for change, as you get to tell a story, a true story by the way, that most of what the employees do today is working, and they just need to adopt, drop or adjust a small subset of their total activities. That’s a very palatable change program.

Second, It’s easier for the rest of your organization to figure out what customer-centric versions of their jobs look like, than it is for the CX team to figure out everyone else’s jobs AND then figure out what a customer-centric version of those jobs look like.

Now, will they need some help or guidance from you and the CX team to settle on the right sets of customer-centric behaviors? Sure. But it still leaves most of the role-changing work with the experts – the folks already performing those jobs.

And that’s where it belongs. They’ll be more invested in the new behaviors, and more empowered by the process of identifying them. That’s a good outcome.

Motivating – The other element to shifting the culture is motivation. The best emphasis here is on recognizing employees who are acting in customer-centric ways, essentially celebrating every good behavior or interaction.

In the early days, you can be all carrot, no stick. Celebrate, recognize, model what you want to see, and give that time to soak in for other employees. As they see more and more evidence that what your company is now celebrating is customer-centricity, they’ll adapt too. And they’ll have a role-specific model, an exemplary colleague from their department or team, to learn from.

Recognition for customer-centricity should be broad-based, ideally telling lots of stories, and including as many employees as possible. Sure, you can have annual awards or other big celebrations, but those should be the top of a recognition pyramid with a very broad base.

Ideally, as well, peers will recognize peers, managers will recognize team members, and you will start to build a culture of recognition that extends well beyond the customer experience team. The more you can involve others in recognition, the more it is seen as culturally aligned with the organization, as opposed to a CX-team initiative.

Activation Is Critical

So for a CX transformation to work, you must:

1. Create a plan to activate all employees in the organization, a plan that galvanizes them to contribute to the transformation effort.
2. Clarify exactly what your company wants to deliver to its customers, and how all employees contribute to creating that intended experience.
3. Develop both a high-level CX vision, and role-specific behaviors and activities for all employees to feel like they can contribute to CX in a way that is appropriate to their daily work.
4. Refocus the culture of the organization on noticing and celebrating customer experience success with a concerted, broad-based recognition program.

This is essential. Companies with the best customer experiences have all activated their employees. Great CX is not possible without it. 

Resources

The Project Pyramid - Megan references this during the podcast, and it's a great resource for clarifying the scope of a project

Megan Burns on LinkedIn

Megan Burns The Company

Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard