How can you gain stakeholder buy-in for customer experience initiatives?

My 2 cents are to align with Business Goals: Clearly articulate how customer experience initiatives align with the overall business objectives. Demonstrate how improving customer experience directly contributes to the organization's success, growth, and profitability. Provide tangible data and metrics to showcase the potential benefits of the customer experience initiatives. This could include improved customer satisfaction scores, increased customer loyalty, higher customer lifetime value, and positive impacts on revenue. Develop a clear and compelling return on investment (ROI) case. Show how the investment in customer experience initiatives will lead to cost savings, increased revenue, and enhanced brand reputation.

Create a stakeholder map to identify your stakeholders. Identify the key stakeholders and any gaps that need to be filled by its stakeholders, not yet at the table. Also, assess the strength of each relationship. Connect with strong relationships to enlist as supporters. Strengthen weaker relationships.

Identifying stakeholders in Customer Experience (CX) deals is crucial for understanding the various individuals and groups that can influence or be affected by the implementation of CX solutions. Here are some stakeholders. Decision Maker Business Users IT Department Executives, LOB`s Finance Department Operations Team Legal Department Customer Service Representatives Marketing Team End Users Procurement Team Project Managers

Identifying stakeholders is an important first step using some form of stakeholder management framework. Remember that internal and external stakeholders should be considered. It may be that delivering an initiative involves third parties and an essential stakeholder to include is your customers. Understanding the motivations of all stakeholders and how they connected to the overall business goals as well as to each other (any dependencies) is recommended. In the past I have found identifying 'influencers' across the stakeholder groups is very helpful. Having an 'influencer' supportive of the CX initiative and passionate about the customer will help you to influence across the business/cross functional teams, garnering support.

Understand Stakeholder Needs: Identify key stakeholders and understand their perspectives, goals, and concerns regarding CX initiatives. Tailor your approach to address their specific interests and objectives. Highlight Business Impact: Clearly articulate how improved CX can positively impact the business. This could include increased customer retention, higher customer lifetime value, improved brand loyalty, and ultimately, increased revenue and profitability. Data-Driven Approach: Utilize data and analytics to support your case. Present key metrics, such as customer satisfaction scores, Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer retention rates, and any relevant financial impact measurements.

Translating the value proposition into a stakeholder's language of merit will profoundly impact their buy-in. Avoid framing a value proposition in terms you, the CX person, value. For example - The CFO might want to understand the revenue, cost to serve or gross margin. CX metrics are likely their secondary interest, as they are proxies for the $ and can vary wildly by value proposition. - Product leaders might be looking at market fit, tech investment and tech debt. An example is framing the opportunity and how it avoids tech debt rather than retention if this is an area of concern. To do this, you first need to understand what metrics they are held accountable for - and what problems keep them up at night.

Like for CX, you will need to put yourself in your audience's shoes and think like them: what's in it for me? If you want to convince people, you will have to identify and communicate the benefit they will get from embracing your CX strategy.

Here are the pointer to be covered during SaaS CX Efficiency and Time Savings Cost-Effective Scalability Access Anytime, Anywhere Continuous Updates and Improvements Data Security and Compliance Seamless Onboarding and Training Enhanced Customer Support Focus on Core Business Functions Flexibility and Customization Real-time Analytics and Insights Enhance Customer Satisfaction Improve Customer Engagement Streamline Customer Support Personalize Customer Experiences Increase Customer Loyalty Boost Net Promoter Score (NPS) Drive Customer Retention Gain Actionable Customer Insights Enhance Brand Reputation Deliver Seamless Multichannel Experiences Increase Operational Efficiency Empower Customer Success Teams Customer Lifetime Value

Critical to any CX initiative is demonstrating the overall positive impact your project will deliver for the business. However, in my experience, before this you need to really demonstrate to stakeholders that there is a problem that requires solving. Understanding the cost of not deploying the CX initiative as well as the benefit in terms of cost savings/revenue will engage senior stakeholders and budget holders. Sometimes this can be challenging as the data you share to demonstrate the problem may go against stakeholders beliefs. Therefore, using real life testimonials from customers, ideally in audio or video, will enhance the credibility and urgency to progress with the CX initiative and get more support from stakeholders.

Gaining buy-in from customer-facing employees for CX initiatives is crucial as they're key stakeholders. Their primary desires are to simplify their jobs, gain recognition, and delight customers. To engage them: Ease of Access to Information: Ensure they have easy access to necessary information. This avoids time wasted in searching and allows them to focus on customer interactions. Feedback Mechanism: Implement a structured method for their feedback to be heard and acted upon, making them feel valued and listened to. Visible Impact: Provide a clear, tangible way for them to see how their efforts positively affect their customers' experiences.

To Involve and engage your stakeholders Conduct Stakeholder Interviews (discovery calls) Customize Presentations for Each Stakeholder Provide Hands-On Demos Address Individual Concerns Encourage Q&A Sessions Share Success Stories Relevant to Each Stakeholder Solicit Feedback Throughout the Pitch Collaborate on Customization Options Establish a Communication Plan Emphasize User-Friendly Features Highlight Financial Benefits for Decision Makers Involve IT in Security Discussions

Having a clear engagement plan alongside the roadmap with agreed milestones that all stakeholders are aligned to is essential to manage communication, simply. The Stakeholder map will have helped you to identify the level of communication each group requires. However, communication shouldn't be one way (i.e., push). It's important that your stakeholders are able to feed into the project and be involved in decisions. MVPs should be included to test and learn from, which will also provide more confidence in your CX initiative. It also gives you the opportunity to make changes to the roadmap and iterate. In CX your customers are one of your most important stakeholders so seeking feedback and building this into your plan is key.

Cross-functional collaboration is critical to the success of CX initiatives. If the functional teams who will be involved have bought in at the beginning to the future state / outcomes you are trying to drive then this will be more successful.

Here are simple tips to Align and Collaborate with stakeholders. Align with Business Goals Understand User Needs Involve IT for Integration Address Security Concerns Align with Marketing Strategies Collaborate with Customer Service Involve Operations for Implementation Engage Executives for Support Coordinate with Finance for Budgeting Collaborate with Legal for Compliance Gather Input from End Users Collaborate with Procurement for Contracts

Consider if and when your CX ambitions can be achieved by supporting other initiatives. In the discovery and stakeholder engagement stages, it's likely you will uncover work going on within the organisation, which, if adjusted slightly, could have powerful CX impacts. By supporting others' work and lending our CX experience and knowledge, we can collaborate towards powerful outcomes for two or more teams. As an example, when security or privacy requirements change, the CX of the login process may also change. By working alongside these programs, there is an opportunity to improve (or not make worse) the login process. Including teams like accessibility can also ensure the login process is easy to use and secure for the broadest audience.

Very important to recognise and appreciate even small initiatives to start with. May even be something simple like a phone call or a thank you in the meeting . This keeps the motivation going in the team and slowly benchmarks are set and then the level increases steadily.

Here are a few methods Recognition in Company/ PR Communications. Awards and Certificates. Personalized Thank You Notes. Featured Spotlight in Newsletters. Professional Development Opportunities for the Tech team to enhance their skills on the product.

Most important is to start, after a time. Review your targets and adjust them according to the need. When you have implemented your CX, it is important to continuously improve the process. Discuss with your stakeholders what is the focus area. When you discuss the outcome. A good way is to visualize your data so that it meets your stakeholder's needs. You should focus on who is the audience. You can also have a workshop with your team. To find gaps and ways to get better.

- Identify the customer problems you are solving - Set the short term and long term KPIs - Track every aspect of the customer journey in your initiative - Enable data access to all the stakeholders & empower them to give feedback - Regularly showcase the improvements with regular insights (qualitative and quantitative) - Customer NPS surveys every quarter can be one key determinant in establishing the initial results - Focus group studies can help understand overall impact In every CX initiative, there are qualitative and quantitative measurables. Regular discussions around the same will enable a cultural mindshift towards CX across all touchpoints. It requires digital transformation & change management at the org. Level

Very important to walk the path with your stake holders wherever possible. Benefits: - your team will be motivated when you are with them on the job - you will be able to directly access the execution - you will get to directly interact with customers and get first hand experience to see the effectiveness of the strategy adopted to improve CX

CX strategies must use a change management approach to succeed, especially when the culture in place isn't customer centric. As such, not only you should identify your stakeholders, but within these groups, you must identify your ambassadors, your fans, those who truly believe in what you preach. These people must be part of your strategy as they will influence others to jump on the ship. Identify them, educate them and take them with you on your journey.

Successful CXers know that they need to talk the language of business, not just the language of customer. Being able to identify stakeholders and what's important to them; their objectives, agenda and personal preferences, is a key skill in being able to deliver sustainable improvements.

Journey Mapping with internal stakeholders One of the most practical ways to gain internal buy-in is to create a customer journey map and involve stakeholders from various cross-functional teams and intentionally drive the conversation on how each team maybe playing a role in a specific part of customer journey from packaging to service to product offering to a good website design to billing policies and so much more. Helping them walk through the customer’s shoes often becomes an eye opening experience and helps gain buy-in. Create actionable items from these sessions and tie it to the business revenue!

3 Practical ways to obtain buy in; What are the short term financial wins/ losses? What is the competition doing? Focus on the link between CX and EX

One additional aspect to consider is the importance of demonstrating empathy and understanding towards stakeholders' concerns and perspectives. Addressing their pain points and showing how the CX initiatives address these concerns can significantly enhance their buy-in and support.