Experience Matters (Edition 25): The One Question Every CEO Needs To Answer About Customer Experience

If you could ask a CEO just one question about customer experience (CX), what would it be? The answer to that could be a litmus test for a company's future. For me, that question would be: How are you ensuring that the human experience lies at the center of your organizational strategy? Here’s why this is the critical question and how it links to various facets of your organization.

Organizational Structure

First, let's address how an organization should be best organized around a truly end-to-end customer experience. My mantra here is, "Know Me, Surprise Me, and Make It Easy For Me." This can only happen when everyone, from the CEO to frontline employees, understands that their role is to serve the customer. Don't silo the customer experience team; integrate its functions across the organization, most important, this should report to the CEO!

Strategies and Investments

Investing in CX isn't a one-time venture; it’s an evolving landscape that requires strategic foresight. As a former Chief Innovation Officer and a current CX influencer, I firmly believe that innovation should be directed toward enhancing the human experience. Technologies like AI and IoT are powerful, but they are only valuable if they serve to enrich the human interaction at every touchpoint.

Staying Connected

Understanding the changing needs and expectations of your customers isn’t just a quarterly exercise—it’s a daily discipline. This is where transparency shines as a value; be open about what you're learning and how you're evolving. But most importantly, practice deep listening. Maintain feedback loops that are immediate and authentic, just like real human conversations.

Involvement of C-Suite

The CEO and the whole C-Suite should not just be involved; they should be the stewards of experience. Authentic, heart-centered leadership is what's needed here. You have to love your customers, truly love them, to serve them best. Their happiness should feel personal because, let's face it, it is.

Keeping the Focus

To ensure CX doesn't become a 'flavor of the month', it has to be more than just a line item on an agenda; it has to be part of the corporate DNA. CEOs need to be the champions who bring it up at every meeting, in every report, and in every interaction.

Personal Stakes

To me, customer experience is a reflection of how well we understand and empathize with our fellow humans. What I value the most about CX is its ability to forge radical relationships, not just transactions. When you get the human experience right, the numbers will follow.

As someone who has led various organizations, I can affirm that if you want to succeed in business today, you must ask the right questions about customer experience. Start with the human experience, and all else will follow.

Remember, experience is a STRATEGY. And at the heart of it, it’s all about love, empathy, and truly understanding the people you serve.

Let's keep impacting the world to show more love, empathy, and forgiveness.

Shawn, signing off!

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Michael David Chapman took the bold step of restructuring his career, life, and goals around values and faith. After recognizing his path was leading him away from God and hia highest potential, he knew he had to make a change or risk losing a full life lived.

In August of 2017, on the heels of a painful second divorce, loss of a child, and multiple job losses, he decided to walk away from a toxic work environment and 26 years of working for others across multiple industries. As a father of 4, he walked away with NO job in hand. He answered a call to take His hand, get out of the boat, walk on water, and help others achieve their own breakthrough. The day he walked away back in 2017, he began looking for a new opportunity on LinkedIn.

He had written more than 2000+ journals about my life, losses he had endured, and subsequent learnings in tandem. As a result, he began to share those with the LinkedIn community. The rest is history!