Human psychology is exactly what it is, human. The cocktail of hormones and emotions has been brewing since the dawn of evolution. The basic ingredients – the need to feel valued, accepted and appreciated for what we intrinsically are, has not changed. On one end we have some who wants to serve to be able to meet this need, while at the other end, we have some who wants to be served. Both these are powerful instincts that drive behaviours in a variety of settings. More so, if there is a hierarchy involved, like in organizations. As we go higher up the corporate ladder, we become associated with power. Whether we like to capitalize on it or not, is a whole different argument.
As a growing CX leader in your organization, how can you build power to LEAD the various change initiatives (mostly) than you envision? How can you get buy-in from the senior executives? How do you handle a peer who tries to sabotage your initiatives? How do you deal with a direct report who doesn’t care about your vision? These are real questions that need practical answers. For a change, I will not talk about customer-centricity in this article. I will talk about you 😊
Here are three important points you might wants to consider.
What are you trying to change?
- You want to establish yourself as a thought leader in driving customer experience.
- You want to change your management from being metric driven to being customer driven.
- You want to change employee behavior from re-actively solving customer issues to proactively preventing them in the first place.
- You want to change your perception from being a disciplined, process oriented, reliable individual to an innovator and a challenger.
What are you trying to accomplish?
- Getting your department involved in product/design related decisions
- Establishing your department as a customer think-tank for the entire company
- Getting promoted to the next level
How might you know if you have successfully achieved your objective
- If you successfully complete an internal customer improvement project and get buy-in of global stakeholders to repeat the same in their geos.
- If you successfully challenge assumptions with data and move forward with your agenda in conflict situations.
- If you successfully build relationships with at least three senior executives outside of your department
Now that you are clear with your objective and what you need to do to achieve it, here are four steps you may want to consider.
Get noticed internally first
It is important to get noticed. For the right things. For the right reasons. As a customer experience professional, your job would entail a good amount of work in breaking departmental silos be it customer support, sales, marketing, product or engineering teams. Before you start off customer-centric-missile-launches on your unsuspecting peers, think about it.
These are same people whose support you need to build and execute your CX programs, that will eventually deliver value to your customer and organization, thus justifying your department and position! This is a self-fulfilling prophecy in CX. As much pumped up you might be, refrain from running right through your audiences just because you now officially represent “the customer” and they have to listen to you.
It is great to listen to customers, but it is even more imperative to listen to your peer departments first! This seems like a no-brainer, but it is isn’t. It is so easy to get caught up being a pulpit-preacher as much as it is difficult to be a pew-listener. Set up meetings with your peer departments. Seek to understand before you can be understood. The fact that you are trying to understand someone else’s pain is a great way to get noticed – for your empathy.
That is the same quality you advocate to your team and customers anyways – what else is a better place to begin charity, if not at your own home? Get noticed as someone who listens without judging, without doling out quick fixes. Gain a deep understanding of their understanding of your customers and their perceptions of your customers. As a well-deserved bonus, you also get to uncover several layers of understanding, thought processes and agendas.
This in-depth understanding is an insurance policy that can be used on a rainy-day to protect your most valuable asset, yourself, and then your customers. Now that you have listened, you have earned the right to suggest, respond and provide possible solutions.
Define the criteria by which you are assessed and evaluated
This seems counter-intuitive at first. But it is not. I’ll explain why. In the previous step you were armed not only with data but TONS of sentiment from peer departments and peer leaders. Information is power. You know both their pain-points and their win-points. You also know your company’s mission and strategy. Use this information to define the strategy for the CX department. Create a story line on how it fits into the larger company strategy.
Once you reach this level, you are in possession of rocket fuel. Go back to the drawing board and define the success criteria in ways that would cause you to appear to be more competent and successful. You are simply framing the success criteria in a way that makes your peer departments more successful. You already built empathy as the foundation and success criteria sits on top of that. Getting buy-in is now a cakewalk and you are not a rocket scientist. In fact, you don’t need to be one.
What did we do here? We uncovered the layers of understanding gathered in the previous step. We baked in measures that elevate the level of understanding for each of your peer departments in their own ways.
You now have a eager group of volunteers partnering in your goal to make them more successful and make you appear more successful. You got to define the rules of the game by which you are now going to measured. History has shown that people who define the rules of the game have a better chance at controlling the game and not the other way around.
Be more helpful and useful to peer departments
Now that you have the success criteria defined, don’t go full steam into implementation. This is called the buy-in trap. It is defined as “I got buy-in so I’m the boss now”. Buy-in just means that everyone is on-board, which is indeed a great step forward. Your CX initiatives are top priority for your department. It does not mean they are top of the list for everyone – their list, not yours.
Now is the time to take stock of everyone’s priorities and understand where your projects lie. Instead of waiting for your turn to being executing, check-in if specific items on your project list already map to things other departments are working on. Be seen as helpful and useful. It is easier to bake in your CX items into their on-going projects as the defined measurements are now shared, designed to make both of you successful.
When projects have overlapping items, automatically peers become stakeholders. They want to win, and they want you to win. While these project items are been taken care of, your CX projects have suddenly moved up the priority list for everyone! You didn’t ask for it. How did this happen? Well, by the principle of social reciprocity. When you made your peers appear successful, they are compelled to return the favour.
In a short time, your projects are being discussed in everyone’s departmental meetings as opposed to you calling everyone else for an All Hands Discussion on CX initiatives. Of course, you would do this nonetheless, but it would be a breeze is isn’t it?
Boost others’ self-esteem so that they feel better about working with you.
Now is the time for a booster-jet. Remember the rocket fuel in the second step? That needs a booster. Here it is. Be seen as fair, agree with opponents sometimes. Be courteous and polite. Strive to build cohesion through information sharing between departments and shared experiences of working on initiatives. Come up with rituals that build common bonds of trust. Consciously choose to warn your peers of potential pitfalls. This bolsters trust. You will be seen as a trustworthy individual. People like to talk about themselves - give them an opportunity to do so. Out of sight means out of mind. Keep showing up.
Consciously create opportunities for you to be seen as the cohesive glue between departments. Work very hard to find out information of interest to senior management and keep feeding them with it.
Surprise! We haven’t talked about customers yet. Once you are through from steps one to four, you are officially the CX boss trusted and empowered by your peer departments to talk to your customers and to your senior leaders. In the words of American actor, Harold Ramis: “Nothing reinforces a professional relationship more than enjoying success with someone”.