Cross-functional leadership is a key factor in leading any customer experience program. This often means creating a team of leaders who regularly meet to discuss priorities, resources and accountabilities that drive CX forward.
These teams are sometimes called a CX Strategic Council, a CX Team, or something similar. But whatever you call yourselves, running effective meetings that keep the team engaged, excited, and working together is key to your success.
Great CX meetings start with a solid foundation in the form of a CX Charter — a simple document that answers these six questions:
Want to build your CX Charter? Check out these resources:
Part of developing a CX Charter is identifying the right people to attend and engage at meetings. That means creating a CX Strategic Council with leaders who are essential to recognizing, identifying, and improving the right moments along the customer journey.
This might include collaboration with:
Invite the teams and leaders you need based on your overall CX goals. Some involvement can be temporary, too, so look for ways to invite the necessary leaders as you address specific issues and improvements.
I like to create a standard agenda, then customize for every meeting. These meetings are typically held on a regular basis, usually monthly.
A typical agenda will include:
Keep your Customer Experience Mission Statement top-of-mind by including this statement as part of the template for the meeting agenda.
If you don’t have a set Customer Experience Mission, don’t worry! We’ve got lots of resources for you:
Depending on the dynamic of your organization and team, you might include introductions, ice breakers, or other team-building activities upfront.
It’s very easy to have meetings like these descend into number narrations. What metric went up? What went down? And they quickly lose the humanity necessary to really stay focused on what it means to be customer-centric.
That’s why I like to ask one team member to start with a customer story. Ask them to share either a great one or a not-so-great one with lessons. The important questions to answer are these:
I like to pass around the role of Storyteller to different team members each time. That means the team will hear different perspectives, different aspects of the customer journey, and learn and celebrate with leaders they might not work with ordinarily.
More quick tips to help add storytelling to your meetings:
A story brought to a meeting might sound like this:
“I want to tell you about how we didn’t live up to our CX mission of “the right product at the right time with the right attitude.”
“Our supplier missed a shipment date and we knew we wouldn’t be on time for Customer X. But we didn’t reach out to them proactively, so they had to hunt down the information from us after they didn’t receive the product on the day we promised. They’re a long-time customer and were really understanding, but according to our own processes, we definitely should have communicated proactively.
“Our team talked about it, and realized that a simple reminder for each customer’s delivery date one day in advance would help our team do that more consistently. We added the reminder into the CRM, and I also asked our team members to recommit to proactively alerting customers to any potential issues.
“And I sent Customer X a set of branded golf balls with a handwritten note, just to say thanks for your patience.”
The best part with stories is other leaders might hear things that could also apply to their teams. It’s a great opportunity to discuss what needs to happen, what didn’t happen, or what’s already happened to address issues.
These team meetings are also great to focus on overall strategy and goals. Review the CX Success Statement and any team-focused goals derived from that.
The meeting leader might review the organizational CX Success Statement, then invite one or two other leaders to contribute what they’re doing for their team.
For example, part of the overall success statement is focused on “improving our brand reputation, leading to more customer referrals.” The Customer Success leader probably has a goal to track referrals and overall customer sentiment.
Explore how that is going, discuss potential challenges, and discuss how the team goal drives the right efforts for the overall goals.
Focusing on one or two teams and sharing this way helps other leaders learn and focus on what they can do, too. It’s also a simple way to celebrate progress. After all, the overall success of the organizational goals is a lagging result. All the effort at the team level is what leads to the overall success of the organization. Celebrate the progress along the way to keep building momentum.
CX meetings require thinking about the past, present, and future of the customer experience program.
Let’s walk through each step.
Most councils have a list of priorities around the customer journey, including what actions are required, who is responsible, and what the desired outcome is.
Run through that list with the council, discussing any roadblocks, questions or concerns to getting things done.
This is where having a top-notch project manager as part of the team can really help! Priorities must be centered on the CX Mission and highest organizational priorities. A project manager can help facilitate the back-and-forth of priorities changing and dependent efforts.
Review customer feedback and discuss any key customer experience metrics.
This is a good time to address processes around customer feedback, too.
For example, if Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a leading indicator for customer retention rates, following a process to address customer feedback from the passive or detractor segments should be a priority. If that process is not documented, creating a specific process around it should be a top priority.
Set “alerts” for those minor changes in metrics to watch in future sessions.
If customer satisfaction rate goes up or down slightly one month, it might not be meaningful. But if it continues to creep forward or backward, it could be something to analyze and look into root cause analysis.
Sometimes the team can be lulled into thinking those tiny shifts don’t add up to much. That might be true if it’s one month, but how do you know if you’re not paying attention?
Speaking of root cause analysis, these meetings are a good place to launch those evaluations and report back on results. The leaders in the room might not be the ones to conduct the root cause analysis, but it’s important to know who is accountable for the results to report back to the team.
Time to look ahead.
A good way to keep everyone engaged here is to ask a different person on the team to lead this part of the discussion each time.
Ask your teammates to focus on a single question, like “what are we hearing from customers about future concerns” or “what CX innovations have you seen as a customer” or even “how can we create an ideal customer journey for our customers in the next year or 5 years?”
When ideas surface that are exciting to most of the leaders in the group, they are worth exploring as part of your priorities.
At the end of the meeting, take these steps to wrap up:
A team of dedicated leaders helping one another create a better experience for customers does a lot of good, and not just for customers.
It’s an opportunity for leaders from various parts of the organization to get to know each other and collaborate.
It’s also a way to create that consistent cadence of action and communication that leads to getting things done in the right ways.
Meetings are an investment of time and energy, and when they’re not meaningful and productive, it’s easy for teams to stop taking them seriously.
With that in mind, I’ll leave you with a reminder: These meetings are about more than just about meeting. They’re about action. Make your CX meetings worthwhile by taking the actions that drive CX forward because that’s what will result in better business outcomes.
That’s well worth the investment.
Jeannie is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker, and sought-after business coach who is trailblazing the movement from “Reactive Customer Service” to “Proactive Customer and Employee Experience.” More than 500,000 people have learned from her CX courses on LinkedIn Learning, and her insights have been featured in Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and NPR.
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