In many organizations, there’s a prevailing (if unspoken) belief that the customer experience is best left to the customer-facing departments: sales, marketing, customer service, and their ilk. After all, why bother teams whose work is mostly internal with the idea of customer experience? They don’t even interact with customers!

Who are the customers?

There are several problems with this mindset. One of them is that it relies on a very narrow definition of a customer. In this worldview, customers are external. They are the buyers and consumers of your product/service.

In reality, customers can be internal as well as external. For example, the sales department can be a customer of the data analytics team that supplies their reports. The data analytics team is a customer of the IT department, which supplies the tools the analysts need to do their jobs.

Another issue with this view is that it leads to all kinds of problems and slowdowns. Unless we accept that all teams and departments are actually (directly or indirectly) in service of customers, we won’t have a shared language – never mind any shared goals. Data and information becomes the property of individual teams, which leads to incomplete pictures and inaccurate assumptions. If left unchecked, this can lead to slowdowns, inefficient processes, communication breakdowns, and eventually to problems with employee effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

CX works for everyone

So, in our definition, everyone in the company is involved in the customer experience – and everyone is a customer. As such, CX as a business area becomes more than just something to improve the consumer’s journey. It becomes central to the wellness of the business as a whole.

As someone who understands the value of CX, this isn’t news to you. But how can you get others to appreciate your perspective? And how can you start leading the adoption of CX principles beyond the CX or CS teams?

Those are the questions we answer in our newest whitepaper, Establishing CX throughout the organization. You can download a copy for free here. We've packed this whitepaper with actionable steps that will guide your company towards CX maturity. It even helps you determine what CX maturity realistically looks like for your organization. 

Next month, we’ll take a detailed look at another recurring CX issue. See you then!