Are You Excited About CX Day?

Are you excited about CX Day? The first Tuesday in October is a highlight of the year, celebrating customers, CX professionals, and CX outcomes.

This year's theme is:

Why This Theme?

• To explore and highlight credible proof of business impact.
• Real-world return on investment: profit.
• Stakeholder value, employee engagement, customer growth.
• Senior leaders' adoption of customer experience as a business strategy.

Along with CX Day fun, this is a serious theme, and a huge opportunity for pivots. Let's explore this theme.

Outcomes are the "why" behind everything. The advice "Always start with why" is key to understanding anything and doing anything.

Q: Why Does Customer Experience Management Exist?

Whose mindsets? Any work role, managerial level, and partners.

"Out-of-sync"? Gaps between what customers expect vs. what they get.

Any difference for employee experience? Nope. Same basic challenge.

Q: Why Does Out-of-Sync Matter?

• Gaps in products, services, policies, processes, attitudes.
• Doubts and churn raise hurdles for marketing and sales.
• Lawsuits are more likely without remedies.
• More tech and staff to fix all this: perpetuates costs.

Q: Why Are People Out-of-Sync?

• Business-as-usual and inside-out thinking prevail.
• Customer insights aren't provided for most decisions.
• Insights aren't collected or tailored for most roles.
• CXM's North Star is typically NOT customer experience as a business strategy.

Q: Why Is the CXM North Star Different To-Date?

• Marketing, Sales, and Support roles focus outside the company.
• All other roles focus inside the company, primarily.
• How does this sync with why CXM exists?
• All roles, managerial levels, and partners need to prevent gaps.
• Nobody is directing this, unless it's the core CXM team.
• Use customer insights to close the gaps!
• Gaps will perpetuate unless we close THIS gap.
• New tech and spiraling gaps derail CXM from doing this.
• Prevailing assumptions about CXM are the roadblock.

Q: What's Required for Customer Experience as a Business Strategy?

• It's already a fact of life, like gravity.
• There's no difference between these outcomes.
• All short-changes to customers become short-changes to investors and employees.
• Customers' prosperity feeds your business prosperity.
• All corporate pillars are already intertwined with customer outcomes.
• To win customer preference via your capabilities, costs, stability, etc.
• All non-customer-facing (NCF) roles are interdependent on customer outcomes.
• NCFs create value for customers or those who serve them.
• Customers fund salaries, budgets, and profit-sharing.
• Tailor customer insights to every role and managerial level.
• Make it easy for them to see how to be in-sync with customer needs.
• Track savings from fewer issues thrown over the fence to touchpoints.
• Highlight customers' benefits in before-and-after in-sync progress.
• Focus more on Expectations VoC and Outer-Loop.
• Teach simplified human-centered-design to every role.
• Make customers the North Star for all they do.
• Hold them accountable for gaps caused.
• Celebrate gaps prevented.

• Partner with Marketing, Sales, and Support.
• They're responsible for Customer Engagement Strategy.
• They need and want alignment!
• Partner with every non-customer-facing role.
• Make them stars for efficiency and effectiveness, as seen from customers' viewpoints.
• Right the first time boosts Customer Engagement Strategy.
• No need for gap-filling, to focus on value growth.

Q: What Real-World ROI Is Achievable?

See this case study: How to Quantify CX ROI.

• 24 top-line and bottom-line metrics.
• 22 calculations for customer value and company value.
• Chief Customer Officers Can Stop Shrinkflation and Skimpflation
• How to Motivate Executive Buy-in for CX, EX, and PX

• Let's benefit the entire company, not just the touchpoint roles.
• Let's celebrate anyone outside of CXM roles who is closing gaps — and especially those who are preventing gaps.
• Let's end faulty assumptions about why CXM exists.
• Let's re-position core CXM as Customer Alignment allies for customer needs as everyone's North Star.
• Let's skill-up core CXM professionals to achieve this.
• Let's spotlight CXM professionals who are closing and preventing gaps — especially those engaging others to do so.
• Let's pivot to higher transparency, trust, relationship strength, and organic growth: when customers have no gaps, they stick with you as the path of least resistance, and without inhibition.

Q: Why?

• End the spiral of rising costs and quiet quitting.
• Enjoy enthusiasm of all roles companywide engaging in gap prevention.
• Wow your investors with margin expansion and earnings per share.
• Thrill your customers with seamless journeys IRL (in real life).
• Triple your fun on CX Days in the future!

I always welcome your comments, questions, and stories!

--Lynn Hunsaker

Here's my true story for all of the above: