What if the terms “customer experience” and “experience” were suddenly verboten – i.e., banned – from your vocabulary? How would you describe what you and your team do?
It’s a question worth asking, given the economic climate we’re in.
Several people have told me lately they feel like “CX” isn’t top of mind for C-Suites in 2024. Macro trends like AI and climate change have drawn their attention away from core customers needs.
Whether true or not, it doesn’t make CX work less important. It just means we have to change how we talk about it.
Truth be told, we need to do that anyway.
One reason it’s been hard to sell CX into the C-Suite is we suffer from our own version of inside-out thinking. Instead of asking, “How do we prove CX is valuable?” we should be asking, “What is valuable, and how can we use CX as a tool to create more of it?”
Here are a few ideas for flipping the script when you talk about what you and your #CX peers are looking to do:
- Improve operating margin/profitability and reduce service costs by searching for potential problems and mitigating them before they happen.
- Reduce risk in our project portfolio by focusing on things customers have explicitly told us they want and need.
- Earn a price premium by delivering functional and psychological value that competitors can’t – or choose not to – provide.
- Accelerate time to value by making it easy for customers to learn how to accomplish their goals using our products/services. (a.k.a. onboarding)
- Increase customer loyalty by doing things that make stakeholders see us as a trustworthy partner, not just a transactional vendor.
This isn’t a complete list, but it should help you adjust your talk track to match whatever frame of reference your leaders are currently in.
