The Language of Customer Experience

Jeannie Walters 0:00

How do you talk about your role? When people meet you at a dinner party, how do you introduce yourself? Let's reframe some of that today. So many amazing customer experience leaders, just like you, they can talk and talk and talk about journey maps and sentiment analysis and net promoter score and reporting on dashboards. That is the language of customer experience. What I want to do is challenge you to walk into the room, whatever room it is, as a business leader first.

Lead As A Business Leader First

Jeannie Walters 0:45

And I'm going to offer three ways I think you can do that. First of all, let me just level set. This episode is not about whether or not you're good at leading customer experience. I'm assuming that you are one of the leaders out there excelling at customer experience management. You are intentional. You are doing your very best with all of the things being thrown at you. We're starting there. You are a good leader. You are good at the management part of customer experience. You're respected. You're listened to. What I want is to make sure that you're not listened to only when you ask to be listened to. People are seeking your advice. People are looking for your recommendations because you are a business leader that they respect. The name of this podcast is Experience is Everything because it really is about leadership. It's about leading the employees. It's about leading different teams. It's about leading the customer experience. But all of that has to lead to actual business outcomes. So one of the things that I want to challenge you to do is to start speaking the language of leadership, making sure that you're not just throwing out terms like NPS or uh journey mapping or talking about sentiment analysis, as if that's the end. That is part of a longer sentence. That is part of a longer approach. But I would argue it's the second part.

Translate Metrics Into Executive Outcomes

Jeannie Walters 2:26

The first part of the sentence has to be about the outcomes that your leaders care about. So when you're thinking about how to present this information, flip the sentence from our NPS is doing XYZ, and so that will lead to this. And think about what will that lead to. Instead of talking about customer churn, talk about risk of renewal, risk of retention. Leaders are constantly weighing what we can do to make things better for our organization, and how can we manage risk? So if we're talking about terms that don't really mean anything to them, if we're discussing things like, and I just had this happen in a meeting, well, we really need our call centers to understand empathy better. And that was the full sentence. What does that mean to me as the chief financial officer or the chief revenue officer? What I hear is does that mean that we're having a lot of problems? Does that mean that we're going to have longer times on the calls and have a higher cost to serve? Is this just becoming a cost center? Instead, we want to have a strategy around why it's important and what it will lead to, good or bad. So if we've found that, you know what, a lack of empathy in the way that we've trained our people, in the way that we're coaching our people, in the way that we're measuring success is actually leading to repeated service calls, to refunds, to negative word of mouth. Then we can start talking about the risk of not investing in a plan around developing and growing empathy. It's a very different discussion. Executives have reported that while customer experience is a quote unquote top priority, it is often overshadowed. It is overshadowed by operational efficiency, growth, cost optimization, and digital acceleration, just to name a few. In today's marketplace, I would argue that it's overshadowed by AI engagement and figuring out how we can make sure that we are transforming through AI. Well, if that's what your leaders are looking at and caring about, then guess what? That's what you should be talking about. So while we talk about things like customer churn and possibly complaints or cost to serve, we need to take that one step further and talk about how there is a risk to our growth, that our operational efficiency is not where it should be because of customer experience issues. So everything you do, we want to translate that into what executives are telling us they care about the most. Those financial markers that mean so much about measuring the success of any organization, that's where we need to live. Now, on this podcast a few episodes ago, I talked about building an entire strategic case for ROI, for return on investment, starting with organizational goals instead of CX tactics. So that's where you start. But then I don't want you to stop there. So instead of saying things like our customer satisfaction rate is going down, we want to flip that and talk about, you know what, we're seeing something that looks like a risk to our renewal rates. It looks like a risk to our growth strategy. That will get your leaders to sit up and pay attention. All right, before your next leadership meeting, I'm going to challenge you. Think about translating one of those typical customer experience metrics you report on. How can you translate that to the language of your leaders?

Prove CX Value With Dollars

Jeannie Walters 6:34

All right, number two, know the value that customer experience brings to the organization. If everyone else in that room believes that, you know what, this is a cost center. This is just about customer service. This is something that we have to do. I want you to show up so convinced and convincing that they have no choice but to believe in the power of what this can do. We all know, and there is data point after data point about this, that if we do this the right way, if we invest in customer experience efforts, just like we do any other part of the business, everybody wins. It makes better experiences for customers that lead to better business results, that make a better employee experience, make it easier to hire people, to get more customers, to reduce the cost of service. It is a win-win-win-win-win. But we have to show up knowing that value every time. That means that when we get asked to do certain things, which I know because I'm seeing this in the work we do with our clients, when our executives say to us, we really need a journey map. I want you to say, help me understand what is the value that we're aiming for? What is the output that you want from this journey map? Because the journey map is the how, but we want to talk about the why and the outcome. That's the language that I'm talking about. But in order to do that, you have to know exactly the value that customer experience brings to your organization. So if you don't know certain things, like, you know what, how much is a customer worth? How much does it cost this organization when we lose a customer? What happens if our renewal rate drops? If you don't know the answers to those questions, now would be a great time to learn them. Sometimes it's a little obtuse and hard to figure out. I recommend meeting with your finance team or at least, at least looking at the macro data that's out there in your industry and making some assumptions. If we could grow our retention rate 1%, that could mean $100,000 in revenue. When you talk like that with real numbers and cents and understanding that value, then you have very different discussions with leaders and you show up differently. And then finally,

Own Your Worth As A CX Leader

Jeannie Walters 9:03

the last thing I'm going to ask you to do is to know and understand your worth. You as a leader. Yes, I know CX leaders get kind of punched around, right? They are asked to do the impossible. They are asked to report on numbers and very little else, and asked to be that famous number narrator I talk about. And what I want you to do is understand that you, as a CX leader, you are bringing a unique set of skills, as Liam Neeson might say. You are bringing both empathy and compassion and understanding for your customers and the business acumen to actually drive the growth and the cost optimization and the operational efficiencies and the revenue and all the things that your organization wants. You are never going to lose the heart of understanding what you're doing for your customers. And that's going to make you powerful because you will see things before the numbers tell you. You will understand where sometimes there's a problem that it's just worth to solve because it's the right thing to do. You will bring the perspective of customers to people in the C-suite who maybe have never actually spoken to a customer themselves. You have a unique set of skills. You have compassion and empathy and understanding and the heart of a lion around your organization as well. You want to do what's right for everyone. And in my opinion, there is nothing stopping you. So go out there. Be the leader I know you can be. Be a business leader first. So whatever room you show up in, I want people to lean in and listen a little harder. And you know what? They will. They will because you have the perspective that they're craving, you have the recommendations that make the most sense, and you're speaking the language of leadership. You have a lot to offer. And when you walk in those rooms, I want you to remember that first.

Pep Talk Before The Next Meeting

Jeannie Walters 11:20

So until we meet again, look at your metrics and think about what are the actual business outcomes you can translate that into. What is the language of your leadership? Can you translate that? Can you show up speaking of that first? And finally, give yourself a pep talk. Look yourself in the mirror, write yourself a note. Remind yourself that you have so much to offer that, darn it, if they aren't lucky when you walk in the room. I know you can do this, and I can't wait to hear about it. Don't forget, you can always leave me a question or a comment at askjeannie.vip. Until next time, I hope you'll leave a rating or review for this podcast and share it with someone who you think needs to hear it. Thanks so much for being here and thanks for everything you do. I can't wait to keep cheering you on. See you next week.

Join The Community And Subscribe

Jeannie Walters 12:16

If you're ready to turn insights into action, join CXI Membership, our community for customer experience investigators just like you. Get the tools, support, and inspiration to move from ideas to true impact. And don't miss my book, Experience is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations, a USA Today bestseller. And if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Until next time, keep asking questions, keep improving, and keep leading with experience.