CXPA's Guide to Understanding the C-Suite's Perspective on Business Goals

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 Understanding the C-suite's Perspective on Business Goals

We’ve all been there - in a situation where leadership, particularly those in the C-Suite, want to understand how the Customer Experience work we are performing contributes to meeting their business goals. And rightly so! We all want our work to make a difference, be it making improvements to customer experience, increasing the bottom line, or streamlining processes. The C-Suite is no different - they want to ensure their teams contribute so the company performs to its highest potential. 

Each individual that makes up the C-Suite looks at their business through a different lens. This team helps the CEO and business operate from a holistic viewpoint as each member of the C-Suite brings their own expertise into play. While they each have their own perspective, what they do have in common is they all want to measure how their teams contribute to goals that ensure strong business performance. 

A Chief Customer Officer will be interested in customer satisfaction, customer retention, support call times, first time fixes, and the like. The CFO will be interested in, well, pretty much how everything is contributing to the bottom line. The COO will want to understand a holistic view of how well the company is operating - and will keep a close eye on measurements regarding supply chain, sales, and product development.

Part of our job as Customer Experience (CX) experts is to think from the perspective of each member of the C-Suite. How can we support them in meeting their goals? It may not be immediately obvious that we can have an impact in some areas of the business, but when we dive down into the perspective of each member of the C-Suite, we realize just how important our CX work is to the entire company. 

Your Topic Guide

Jenn Stephens, CCXP

Jenn started her career in software usability which is when she immediately became interested in customer experience - and that mindset has continued throughout her career. She has worked in several industries including technology, finance, industrial automation and shipping logistics. She has expertise working with the C-Suite, change management, survey design and development, data analytics, driving customer experience actions across multiple functions, and internal and external partnerships.

Jenn Stephens, CCXP, CXPA Member

Watch

Webinar Where Do We Go From Here – Taking Your CX Program Forward, During this CXPA LinkedIn live event, CXPA's Content Manager & Associate Director, Gabe Smith, CCXP is joined by guest co-host Nick Glimsdahl, Host of the Press 1 for Nick podcast and Director of Contact Center Solutions at VDS. Nick moderated the following panel of experts: Ian Golding, CCXP: CEO and Founder of Customer Experience Consultancy Ltd; Lewis Taylor: VP, Head of Global CX & Austin Site Lead @Dropbox; Anton de Wet: Chief Client Officer Nedbank RBB; Jeb Dasteel: Owner at Dasteel Consulting



Webinar Building a CX Business Case to Your CFO Across all businesses, the entire C-Suite leadership team is looking to validate programs by asking one question: what is the financial impact of my CX investment?

Join Stacy Bolger, VP of Global Employee Experience, at InMoment as she answers that question, and learn more about:

  • Why it’s so important to understand your CFO’s mindset

  • How to prove that customer experience is business critical and not just “nice to have”

  • Why ROI is the only conversation that really matters to financial leaders

  • What strategies you can put in place to realize the full potential of your program

Video/Workshop: CXPA Member Workshop: How To Guide Your CEO to Set Intentional CX as Your North Star 

The success of your Head of CX and your CX strategy is empowered or endangered to the extent that intentional CX is your firm’s North Star. This interactive CXPA mini-workshop walked participants through how to shift their leaders’ decision-making habits to put the horse (customers) before the cart (investors) in turbulent times and in good times. 

Video: CXPA Roundtable Conversation: Organizational Adoption with Jeanne Bliss This roundtable conversation call featured special guest CX Thought Leader and CXPA Co-Founder Jeanne Bliss. During the call we discussed uniting the C-Suite around CX Strategy. Jeanne led the discussion describing successful techniques for helping executives make the connection between customer desires and needs with their drivers.

 

WebinarThe Top 5 Problems CX Leaders Face – and How to Solve Them CX leaders are under pressure to find solutions to issues that have plagued them for years. Too many obstacles – from VOC teams with insufficient skill sets, to disengaged C-suites, to uninspired strategies – continue to hinder forward progress. Listen to this webinar to find out where CX leaders should focus, and what they can do to overcome the most persistent problems so they can deliver the results the business expects.

Read

    Article: Why Hubspot promoted its chief customer officer to CEO

    This is an excellent article on why Hubspot promoted Yamini Rangan who served as Chief Customer Officer to CEO.  

     

    Book: CXPA has published “Effective Collaboration Between CX and the C-Suite”, which was written by an international team of CXPA members. CXPA Members can read online for free via this link (login required) or you can purchase the book via digital download or print shipment

    Find more resources at the CX Bookstore!  https://www.cxpa.org/grow-your-knowledge/bookstore

    Template

    Template Customer Experience Readiness Assessment, Peter Haid  It’s always a great idea to start initial CX discussions with the C-Suite by interacting with them and filling out a CX readiness assessment for the business. It helps executives understand areas of CX competency, and where the company’s strengths and opportunities lie.

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