From Silos to Swim Lanes: A Customer-Centric Transformation

Steve Jobs famously said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it.” From working with over 100 companies, I’ve learned the same principle applies to internal teams. You can’t work backwards from siloed teams to improve the customer experience. Instead, you must start with the customer experience and then figure out how your teams can collaborate to support it.

In a business-to-business (B2B) context, this means that customer success is everyone’s responsibility—not just the job of one person or team. It requires transforming silos into?swim lanes, focusing on what makes a measurable difference for customers rather than internal projects and isolated metrics.

The problem with silos

A?silo?is a team or organization that operates with little interaction or alignment with others. This disconnect can severely limit a company’s ability to perform at its highest potential. In contrast,?swim lanes?define clear roles and responsibilities within a coordinated group effort. They promote clarity, alignment, and accountability, all while keeping the customer’s experience at the center of every action.

Fostering a maniacal focus on your customers

Regardless of company size, I’m constantly amazed at how siloed teams tend to be. When I work with high-growth companies, we create a Core Team, comprising of stakeholders from across the organization—Marketing, Customer Success, Onboarding, Product, and Education. Having the right people talking and working together is invaluable. During strategic workshops, I often hear comments like:

• “I’ve learned so much about each other’s worlds and what other teams are working on.”
• “It’s really important we know the priorities and challenges across the business.”
• “It’s great to come together to solve problems and see the connectivity between our roles.”

These insights highlight a crucial point: customer experience isn’t just the responsibility of one team, like Onboarding or Customer Success. It’s about ensuring every team is aligned with a singular focus on customer outcomes, across the?Customer Success Bowtie, see the image below. This idea of a relentless customer focus comes from Keith Cunningham’s?The Road Less Stupid, where he explains that the genius of a great business lies in its maniacal focus on the customer’s outcomes, frustrations, and success.

Breaking down silos: Start internally

To tackle internal silos, start by learning from your colleagues. Initiate conversations to understand their challenges and priorities—you may be surprised by how much duplication or misalignment exists. For example, in one company I worked with, siloed teams had different perspectives on the same problem. Once they communicated and aligned, they were able to create a solution far greater than the sum of its parts.

Ways to bridge the gaps include:

• Casual conversations (coffee chats, lunch meetings—virtual or in-person)
• Formal approaches, such as “customer experience councils”
• Strategic workshops with external experts, like the ones I deliver

Staying curious and open during these important conversations, they are the key to building partnerships across the organization.

Listening to your customers: The critical step

Dissolving silos will only be effective if you truly understand your customers. Too often, companies assume they know what their customers want. Instead, make time to?ask?them. Directly engage with not only your buyers but also the users of your product. In my experience, for example, I learned that accountants and data scientists had very different needs for onboarding and enablement. Don’t assume—ask.

Creating swim lanes: A framework for the success of customers

Once you have a clear understanding of your customers' needs, it’s time to create an optimized customer journey. This should deliver meaningful value at every stage of the process. From there, define the?swim lanes?that ensure every team knows their roles in delivering that experience.

When I work with companies, I use my?Orchestrated Onboarding? framework to design tailored, customer-centric journeys. We go beyond product implementation, focusing on relationship-building and value delivery. For each stage of the journey, we define:

• Purpose
• Triggers
• Roles and responsibilities
• Timelines
• Activities
• Systems
• Assets and collateral
• Outcomes and metrics

Everyone knows their part, ensuring a seamless, coordinated effort—much like a symphony where each musician plays in harmony with the others.

From swim lanes to success: Rolling out the plan

Creating a customer-centric journey is one thing; rolling it out is another. Before launching the new approach to customers, take time to?enable?your customer-facing teams (Sales, Customer Success, Onboarding, Education, etc.).

Instead of launching everything at once, consider starting with a?pilot. This could focus on one specific stage or a small segment of customers. Measure the impact, capture key metrics, and build momentum. Once you have a successful pilot, scaling becomes much easier.

Winning hearts and minds: Change management

Transitioning from silos to swim lanes requires more than new processes—it involves change management. To succeed, you need to win the hearts and minds of your teams across the?Customer Success Bowtie. This includes addressing:

• Changes to processes, roles, and expectations
• Playbooks for the new processes
• Organizational structure shifts
• Incentives to drive behavior change and encourage collaboration

By focusing on the customer and promoting team collaboration, you can drive significant value for your business. Swim lanes not only improve customer satisfaction but also enhance internal morale and reduce the costs of duplicated efforts.

Focus on collaboration to drive the success of customers

Transforming silos into swim lanes isn’t just about restructuring teams—it’s about shifting the entire company’s focus to the customer. When you enable cross-functional collaboration and create clarity in roles, you set your company up for long-term success by delivering a seamless, unified customer experience.