Many eXperience professionals – CX, UX, EX, et al. – agree that getting leadership support for their initiatives is the hardest part of their jobs. There are many reasons why, ranging from willing-but-cash-strapped organizations to executives that simply don’t see the need to change what appears to be working.
And yet, according to stats compiled by CMSWire:
- 77% of brands believe CX is a key competitive differentiator.
- 83% of executives feel unimproved CX presents them with considerable revenue and market share risks.
- 85% of brands believe they offer personalized customer experiences, but only 60% of consumers agree.
As people who are passionate about Customer Experience, what can we do to get leadership to give CX a chance?
3 Tips for Getting CX Buy-In
In preparing this article, we consulted our own experience – and did a lot of research. And the following three pieces of advice tend to be fairly widespread:
- Tie CX to financial and business goals. If you want your C-suite to get onboard with CX, show them the money. It can be cost savings, increased revenue, or greater efficiency. Often, a good CX program will have all three. As the people who have their finger on the financial pulse of the company, leaders will want to know the bottom line. And back up the financial info with facts on how CX can tie into or support other initiatives the company may be considering. This can boost the sense of urgency related to CX.
- Have stats. There’s a business adage that says leadership loves numbers. Focus the broad outcomes mentioned above with carefully researched and verified statistics. Without quantitative data, any initiative can be a hard sell. But when you can assign real values to the outcome, expense, and timeline, you’re moving from an idea to a feasible plan.
- Take execs on the customer journey. Decision-makers are usually experts in their domain. As such, it can be hard for them to understand what customers – especially new customers – might experience. Plus, the customer journey may have changed since these experts served on the front lines. Getting them to walk through the customer journey and understand the friction points can be revelatory.
Our Top Tip: Stay Human-Centered
We agree with all of these tips. But we’d add one more: research your decision-makers like you would your customers. Our Byte-Size CX exercise below will get into more detail, but remember: execs are people too. Numbers and logic are important, but so is their experience and their background. In CX and in business, a truly logical decision works with emotion. It understands the human experience and its impact and includes it as a factor in the decision.
So, never overlook the human element in pitching CX. Bring your emotional intelligence and your empathy for your leadership, and use these to craft how you present the facts and figures of your CX plans.
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