How to manage your customer experience stakeholders

CX stakeholders typically divide up into two groups:

• Directly involved – these are the people who influence and shape CX program decisions. They include some C-suite members, program managers, CX ‘champions’ and the frontline employees who ultimately deliver the experience to your customers.
• Indirectly involved – these are those who aren’t involved in implementing the program but may still be affected by it like those accountable for finance and people parts of the business as well as shareholders, business partners, suppliers and distributors

Managing employees

Employees are the face of your customer experience, even if they’re not in roles with face to face contact with customers. Take a retail business for example – the staff on the shop floor are obviously key, but behind the scenes there will be plenty of others who shape the experience from staff in the distribution centre, agents in the customer contact centre, the web team and many more. In fact, it’s harder to find staff who don’t directly impact the customer experience!

The key to getting them on board is to be transparent, so from the outset make clear what the aims are and how the program will benefit the business. And once you’re up and running, share your CX results frequently so they know how it’s performing.

For some staff, role-based dashboards are a great way to show real-time CX metrics – this approach means they only see the metrics relevant to their role, so it focuses them on how they can impact the customer experience and gives them more ownership. It’s no use for example showing the digital team how your call centre agents are doing and vice versa.

Managing executives

You will probably need to get high-level sign-off for your CX program from someone in the C-suite not only to fund it but to get the rest of the organisation behind it.

It’s key to build relationships here – at the design phase make sure you meet with them regularly and involve them early. Spell out a very clear goal and strategy for your program and be very clear what their support looks like, whether it’s financial or in affecting change in the organisation.

And once you’re up and running, report back regularly and try to tie your CX initiatives to ROI – the more you can show that the program is affecting the metrics they care about most (sales, leads, revenue, average spend per customer etc.), the more they’ll get behind it.

Managing shareholders

Shareholders own the business, and will want to see the business performing well so they can see a return on their investment – but they don’t need to know the detail of your CX program. Provided a CX program delivers in terms of revenues and profits, shareholders are generally satisfied and leave you to get on with it.