How can you avoid common customer experience leadership mistakes?

Vision-Less Ventures: A Misadventure Being an agent of disruption means refusing to keep the blinders on. It's about adopting the visionary leadership that MOFI reveres. Without a clear vision, your organization will resemble a ship lost at sea, vulnerable to every changing tide and tempest. A CX leader's role is to not only define this vision but to help every team member visualize it, to live and breathe it, turning it into a north star for your organization's journey. Remember, as we say at MOFI, your vision is the glue that bonds your team together on the mission to disrupt.

As a leader, understand that people-centric management breeds service excellence. As we continue to build purpose-driven leadership within the organisation to motivate our employees, transferring this sense of purpose to employees no doubt puts communication as one of the core skills that must be honed by leaders of the future. Once a company has a clear vision of its purpose, it can go on to develop the purpose-driven individuals that will undoubtably have to implement this new approach.

In my experience, common mistakes are missreading /do not understanding custoemrs' real needs, and over valuing our services or failing to communicate them.

CX Maturity is essential to understand that can help in crafting the CX vision. Discuss and agree on the to-be state and Build a CX Roadmap to reach it. A quick sketch of how you can assess the maturity of your team or org 1. Start evaluating disjointed efforts. Is there stakeholder sponsorship to start addressing the gap? 2. How is customer feedback documented or shared with different teams like Business, Product Designers, Developers, or Stakeholders? 3. List CX KPIs that can impact the business's bottom line. 4. Different teams, for example, from pre-sales, onboarding teams, support teams while the user is using the product, post-adoption teams, and repeat business teams, can partner on a common goal and work towards it.

Leadership mistakes can greatly impact the customer experience and overall success of a business. Here are some high-level details about leadership mistakes and how to avoid common bad customer experiences: Lack of Clear Vision: Without a clear and compelling vision, leaders may struggle to align their teams and make strategic decisions that benefit the customer. Poor Communication: Inadequate communication between leaders and teams can lead to confusion, missed opportunities, and inconsistent customer interactions. Micromanagement: Overbearing leaders can stifle creativity and hinder employee empowerment, resulting in rigid customer interactions and slower problem-solving.

Collaboration Conundrum: The Silo Showdown Are you encouraging a culture of innovation or have you unwittingly created impenetrable silos? CX is a team sport, folks. It requires a band of mavericks working in unison, breaking down barriers, and embracing the disruption ethos wholeheartedly. Encourage cross-functional collaboration. Rally your teams around a shared vision and goals, which we lovingly term the “grand disruption narrative.”

Start by doing your homework. Research the silos and cultural practices that are currently inhibiting organic bottom up collaboration and improvement. An edict is not going to be met positively nor be effective... because you have to collaborate to collaborate!

Co-creation should be at the very heart of CX. It's as much about cross-hierarchy collaboration as it is about cross-functional areas. All tiers of an organisation need to be involved from the get-go. As soon as someone feels it is being done 'to them' you've lost them, their colleagues and soon, a whole swathe of your organisation. We must remember that it is often those in roles in lower tiers of the business hierarchy that spend the most time closest to customers. Respect their insight and they will repay you by revealing the customer moments of truth and the answers to your CX challenges.

Governance: Well-established cross-company governance helps break down the silos. Imagine mapping multiple departments, including marketing, R&D, sales, and support, on a CX Roadmap (Metaphor: the infinity symbol). Without a unified governance system, each department would operate independently, possibly leading to mixed messages to the customers, partners, or resellers and even conflicting goals. By establishing cross-company governance group, and a CX Roadmap as a visual metaphor - streamline communication, - ensure all initiatives align with the company's mission, and - optimize resource allocation. Over time, this structure support a holistic approach to customer-centricity.

The key to customer satisfaction is providing exceptional customer service and that often begins with teamwork. In a customer experience journey, not only one team member does the job - many team members come together to engage the customer in various touchpoints, all towards the same goal. Employees need to be team players and show exemplary teamwork in resolving customer queries/grievances. When customers receive efficient support from customer service department, they are more likely to buy again because of their positive experiences. A great team will always be aligned to the company’s goals and will prioritize the goals over personal agendas. With mutual trust and strong communication, they are more likely to focus on customer service.

Don't ignore your internal customers. Start with your employees and you will find they can identify most of the things external customers need. Start by meeting employee needs.

Feedback Fiasco: The Ignorance Ignition Ignoring feedback is a disaster waiting to detonate. It's akin to placing your hands over your ears and singing "la la la" as your customers plead for changes. The key is to listen, and listen well, my fellow disruptors. Adopt a robust feedback mechanism, welcome criticism, and use it as the fuel for your organization's rocket to the moon. Feedback is not an adversary; it's your loyal ally in the quest for perpetual evolution.

Actively listening to your customers, partners, resellers, and employees is essential to building customer-centricity. Tools help collect feedback through surveys, share product feedback, and even engage directly with partners, end customers, and employees on a single platform.

Culture Crisis: The Neglect Nemesis Leadership isn't just about guiding your ship; it's about understanding the sea you're sailing in. Your organization's culture is this sea. It influences every decision, action, and ultimately, your customer's experience. As a leader, your task is to foster a culture that breathes disruption. A culture that motivates your employees to take risks, challenge norms, and be the change they wish to see. When your organization's culture aligns with your CX goals, you're on the disruption express, baby!

One of the most influential thinkers on management theory once said "Culture eats strategy for breakfast" - Peter Drucker Culture is an organization's living, breathing ethos—day-to-day decisions, interactions, and, eventually, the customer experience shaped based on these practices. One of our recent conversations with Sr exec from Google in an AI/ML event - emphasized the importance of hiring people with a "Growth Mindset." This perspective resonated as we shared Growth Mindset videos and literature in 1:1 with our teams. Discuss and build learning paths to retrain some team members for new tools and capabilities. This routine has helped propagate the idea of continuous learning and building champions in the team.

Culture is the buzzword of the decade, right? Culture means something different to everyone, the same core values worded the exact same will mean something slightly different to each individual. I say individual because everyone needs to be able to be themselves and stand out in their own way. There needs to be a proper and healthy amount of resistance and conflict as long as the individuals are mature enough to work together to resolve any issues. The whole "culture means that everyone gets along" is a quick way for a company to lose innovative employees and the top contributors will very quickly let themselves be dragged down to those without vision, which can be a deadly blow to many companies.

Innovation Illness: The Stagnation Syndrome True innovation is about refusing to rest on our laurels. It's about continually challenging ourselves, embracing the unknown, and relentlessly pursuing the next big idea. As a leader, if you're not fostering innovation, you're fueling stagnation. Create an environment where ideas are free to flow, and every voice is valued. Be a disruption champion, championing the never-ending cycle of invention, refinement, and implementation.

Innovation means nothing to many employees without proper recognition and compensation. When did managers stop rewarding employees for bringing more to the table? "quiet quitting" is not the cause of issues, it is a result of years of neglect from middle management. Those who use the excuse of "that's the way its always been done" and have no intention of changing are the ones who need to be recognized as poison to innovation and removed or create toxicity wherever they go

These initiatives are instrumental in shaping my perspective on innovation in customer experience. 1. Improve the CX team's capabilities with new tools and courses—even community participation to learn from other case studies. 2. Add Customer Journey Management and Rapid prototyping skills to the CX group 3. Running Bi-Model sprints - Innovation sprint (with a minor team) - Run the business sprint (with the regular-size team) Test innovations - see what sticks with users - and share with run the business team to integrate into the product for a wider audience. 4. Access to quantitative and qualitative data from Survey design, customer feedback on products and services, direct interactions with customers

Basics Blunder: The Fundamental Flub Amid the noise and hustle, it's easy to lose sight of the basics. Your business may be a technicolor tapestry of innovation and disruption, but it's woven on the loom of basics. Think about it. Without top-notch customer service, a keen understanding of your customers' needs, and the drive to exceed their expectations, your ship is likely to sink. Never let the pursuit of the revolutionary make you forget the essential rudiments that form your foundation.

Amidst of all that we are busy with, many of us not only forget the basics, but sometimes do not have the time or capacity to perform the basics. What we thought were basics such as quality, reliability, empathy and personalisation are in fact so so important in all customer experience journeys. I strongly believe that people centric management breeds service excellence - therefore, leaders should always thrive on opportunities to mentor colleagues and direct reports with untapped potential through coaching and remind them of the power and magic the basics can bring about for themselves, their surrounding colleagues and for their customers!

Customer experience is not one thing. It is an outcome of everything that the organization does, which ends up being EXPERIENCED either directly or indirectly by the customer. Because it as an output it is important that we consider how the inputs above impact the customer experience and focus on improving the quality of those inputs that will move the needle the most.

Communication is the central pillar of the customer experience. Vision and culture are necessary for the CX team, but how those concepts are communicated becomes vital as the team works outside of their silos. Open-door communication creates a valuable feedback loop where everyone has a voice in improving the customer experience, especially the customer.

Revisit your customer needs & wants via Mass Market Researches either or Focus Group Interview on both existing customers and potential Leads. World keep changing day by day and customers also reflect thoses change in their life instantly, from commodity to high-end and/or tailored products & services. Very careful to use singular point of data, “best practices” nor “Mom knows best” for mass market with many sub-segments & its VALS.

Businesses should prioritize customer demands and feedback while investing in employee empowerment and training to avoid common CX leadership oversights. Both building a healthy workplace climate for employees and maintaining consistency across all customer interaction channels are essential. It's crucial to use technology appropriately and adjust to shifting client expectations. Important techniques include having a strong crisis management plan, promoting staff input, and developing emotional ties with customers. The technique is completed by streamlining procedures and assessing customer satisfaction using key performance indicators (KPIs), resulting in a comprehensive and successful customer experience plan.