CXPA's Guide to Developing a CX Strategy

It can be overwhelming to find relevant, unbiased CX resources to help move your work forward.

CXPA is here to help.

Our Topic Guides--CXPA members who are Certified Customer Experience Professionals--have curated our most relevant, popular articles, whitepapers, and webinars to bring you the very best information on topics that are critical to your success.

Note that some resources in the links below may be content only available to CXPA members. 

CXPA's Guide to Developing a CX Strategy

The CX strategy discipline provides the game plan for all the other disciplines. Explicitly linked to the overall company strategy, the CX strategy enables the company to consistently deliver high quality, on-brand experiences. 

Throughout the resources below, the CX experts repeatedly call out the critical importance of clear internal communication on what exactly, the customer experience the company is trying to deliver, looks like. Whether it’s called a customer experience vision, customer experience intent statement, or simply a customer experience statement, the goal is the same - to ensure that every member of the organization can clearly articulate the intended customer experience and their role in achieving it.

Thinking of the CX strategy as the company’s North Star is helpful in building the tactical roadmap to leverage customer experience as a key competitive differentiator.

Below you'll find:

  • How to align the CX strategy to the overall company strategy.
  • Practical advice on communicating the CX strategy throughout the organization.
  • How to launch a CX strategy through a series of small steps, iterating and building on successes, to drive improvement and adoption.
  • CX strategy canvasses, templates, and charters to guide the work.

 

Your Topic Guide

Tracy Kuchar, CCXP
Tracy Kuchar, CCXP, is a “best of both worlds” CX professional with deep expertise across sales and and marketing, and an ability to devise and execute integrated campaigns that engage customers and deliver strong ROI. With extensive experience working within retail operations, Tracy excels in rallying customer-obsessed teams throughout the organization around common goals to build authentic experiences, deliver exceptional service, and better connect customers with the brand vision.

Tracy Kuchar, CCXP, CXPA Member

Watch

  • Webinar Design a Winning CX Playbook, InMoment. This webinar discusses how best-in-class companies move beyond operational elements such as surveys and reporting, to develop a CX strategy as a true business practice within their organization At the 7.18 mark, the importance of starting “surgically” is stressed. We’re advised to begin with no more than 3 key areas that will be most impactful to the business.  

  • Webinar Shaping Your CX Program to Success, Confirmit. Selective Insurance shares the tactical roadmap and evolution of the CX journey they began in 2011. At the 6:58 mark Confirmit’s framework for the evolution of successful CX programs is presented.

Read

  • Blog 8 Questions to Assess CX Governance , Aimee Lucas, CCXP- This blog cites effective governance as a powerful tool to catalyze CX change across the organization, shares questions to consider when evaluating the company’s governance structure and offers tips on how to optimize it. Areas to evaluate include talent, alignment of the cross-functional core team, level of influence of the CX leader, alignment of CX strategy with corporate strategy, executive support, and employee engagement.

 

  • Blog Harness the Power of Data with CX Governance - 6 Tactical To-Dos, Stephanie Thum, CCXP. This blog reviews the importance of incorporating quantitative performance standards, data that indicates how the company performed to those standards and methods for reviewing performance, into governance. It also includes tactics for organizing a CX Committee, agreeing on the data to be monitored, establishing review mechanisms, and how to sell governance.

 

  • E-Book Customer Centric Recipe Cards, Jeanne Bliss, CCXP –  One of the key CX competencies included in this E-Book is “One-Company Leadership, Accountability, Culture”. This competency includes several governance-related suggestions including building a customer room to demonstrate CX principles and actions, sharing the CX vision with existing employees as part of the onboarding process, and the importance of reviewing CX initiatives on a regular basis to ensure consistency in approach and priority setting.

 

  • White Paper How to Plot a Sustainable Path to Customer Centricity , InMoment -  This white paper makes the point that an effective CX strategy should bring all of its components, including governance, together under a unified purpose that can be used to inform company decisions and actions. It also discusses the importance of using governance as a lever to unify a CX program, eliminate silos, and add consistency to voice of customer collection and CX action planning. Selecting the right CX champions is also stressed, as they are able to understand both the CX vision and the company’s operational landscape, and keep them in sync.

  • Blog We Hold These Truths – Implementing CX Governance, Darin Byrne, CCXP – This blog focuses on the importance of establishing governance in the early stages of a CX transformation so that the structure for implementing and affecting change is in place. Guiding principles, an overriding plan and people are called out as key elements of governance.

Listen

  • Podcast--The Journey to CX Maturity This panel discussion with CX thought leaders includes a discussion of why it is important to understand your company's CX maturity position, who should be involved in the assessment process, and how leaders will know progress is being made.

Templates

  • Template Customer Experience Charter, Diane Magers, CCXP. Any CX department or group should create a charter so that they are clear about their role in contributing to the company’s goals. Use the charter to define the KPIs and benefits to the organization, ensure consistent messaging and intent, and to facilitate cross-functional collaboration.  Read related CX Takeaway, “Your CX Strategy, Defining a Deliberate Path to Purpose”, for guidance on usage.

Have a topic to suggest for a future guide? Drop a note to Gabe Smith, CCXP.