The CX Soft Power Playbook – 5 Levers For Influencing Customer Experience Improvements Inside Of Any Organization

In this edition of the #CX Patterns Podcast and newsletter, I talk with Nicole Ornelas , a talented and thoughtful customer experience practitioner about how she has made progress improving the customer experience, even when she lacked direct authority to make changes.

Guess what?

That’s the reality the vast majority of customer experience teams face – that they don’t have direct authority to improve the customer experience.

5 essential levers that Nicole shares with us

1) Building Strong relationships

You’ve probably heard this before, and certainly, I would imagine you’re trying to practice it. But Nicole mentions a subtlety that I think is so valuable: Leveraging the relationships, the rapport you build up to address concerns before they become roadblocks. This is such an important of having these collaborative relationships in place, they allow you to quickly work out issues before those issues become problems.

Nicole highlighted several ways she builds these relationships – backing people up in meetings, sharing her knowledge, and being there for them.

2) Fostering a unified approach – The Power of We

I like to think of this as letting the customer unite you with your colleagues across your organizational silos, and in spite of your differences. We’re all here in service of the customer – let that be a uniting force.

Nicole shares a wonderful example of when she wanted to start a customer community, but needed buy-in from legal, compliance, privacy and risk, among others. She met with them before they’d even started the project, shared the vision, and got their feedback about any concerns. Not only did they partner with her, and help her get the community off the ground, but they told her afterward that it was the first time someone had partnered with them like that, before the process had kicked-off. That’s the power of the unified approach in action.

3) Using Storytelling Best Practices To Communicate About the experience

The understanding of storytelling best practices is something humanity has been in possession of for 10’s of thousands of years. We know what makes a great story. We are surrounded by examples of great storytelling. The reality is that Customer Experience is sometimes too pure, too data-driven in its thinking to fully embrace the storytelling techniques. That’s a mistake.

4) Empowering Ownership

Making sure that folks feel heard and included, making sure that employees feel empowered and that the have permission to deliver the intended experience. Great customer experiences rely on human-to-human interactions to be truly memorable. That’s where empowering employees comes in and is so important. To do that at scale, you need all employees believing that they’re empowered. That feeling of empowerment is also a great employee experience enabler, and so it means those employees are more likely to stay, and to make strong contributions in their roles. Win Win.

5) Continuous feedback and celebrate success

The power of recognition, what has gone right, and make sure that everyone notices and appreciates. Make sure that everyone feels like they’ve been noticed or appreciated for their contributions to great customer experience. One of the secrets of culture change at organizations, really of behavior change in any setting is that the vast majority of people feel like they’re doing a good job, or at least that they’re trying to. I actually this is a good thing about humanity – even if many of us aren’t as effective as we think, it’s better for the world that most folks genuinely are trying to be helpful, to make an impact. So recognize them whenever you can, because it aligns with their self perception.

These levers helped Nicole succeed inside of large organizations and in heavily-regulated industries.

And they have worked for me as well. My team and I spend a considerable amount of our time each week building and cultivating relationships. We know how reliant we are on other parts of LinkedIn, and work to create that feeling of We in service of our members and customers.

I am a huge believer in the power of a great story, and of the value of mastering the craft of writing and telling great stories.

LinkedIn prioritizes empowerment and recognition, which makes 4 and 5 a bit more straightforward.

That's the Soft Power playbook from Nicole Ornelas . Use it only for better customer experiences.