The critical success factors of the CX role | Quadient

Transforming an organization’s approach to doing business to a customer-centric one is a huge undertaking. Experienced customer experience executives all agree, success can only be achieved if critical success factors are met.

In this article we review what some of those critical success factors are and why they can have such an impact on the success or failure of a customer experience executive’s efforts.

C-suite commitment

In order for a customer centric transformation to begin and truly take hold the CEO must be 100% committed to the work that lies ahead.

“Securing CEO support and ensuring he/she is visibly engaged is critical,” says Isabelle Conner, CCO & CMO at General Insurance.

Most CCOs, including Nick Frunzi, CCO at Esri, also agree that all executives need to be on board to transform a company’s culture. “You must get mindshare with your fellow executives so that when you want to move work forward you will have the support and resources you need to make change happen.”

Employee buy-in

While having the C-suite onboard will reinforce the company’s level of commitment to customer-centric transformation, it’s the buy-in of your employees that will make the “customer experience” come to life for your customers.

“I’ve found that employee buy-in takes me farther than executive buy-in (as long as I have the CEO),” explains Ingrid Lindberg, an experienced CX executive who has steered four organizations through customer centric transformations.  “Yes, a big part of the CCO’s job is to clearly and repeatedly articulate the future and the path to get there, but frankly, if you are going to change the company, you have to ask your employees to help and empower them to do so.”

Create something employees can believe in

Your employees are the ones interacting the most with your customers which means they are the primary flag bearers of your company’s customer-first approach. The key to ensuring they do this effectively and consistently is to base the changes you’re trying to make on something they can believe in.

“We need to ensure that we are creating the experiences that both our customers and our people love,” says Christine Corbett, CCO at Australia Post. “If there is a pain point for our customers, it’s generally also a pain point for our people; so if we can ensure alignment and engagement, we can then make sure that our people continue to delight our customers.”

Be able to prove the value

One of the most powerful and convincing ways to illustrate the validity of shifting to a customer-centric philosophy is to show the linkage between customer experience improvement initiatives and financial results.

“Linking customer experience with financials to show the economic value of work is one of my top three critical success factors,” says Isabelle Conner. She cites on example in particular. “November 2016, Investor Day in London, I showed that working hard on CX had made a significant impact on the bottom line. Spain was one of our first NPS countries, and we were able to show that in just 18 months, they grew their existing client base by 7% and their premiums by €36.5 million.”