CX & Customer Success resources

Building Bridges Is More Important Than Ever!

CS must be about building coalitions – with customers AND internally – to drive the right outcomes and experiences. Internal coalitions are more important than ever, as a full 54% of  CS professionals report being remote full-time.

You NEED Product, Services, Support, Sales, Marketing etc. to drive the right initiatives that drive the right improvements for customers. But you may find they aren’t listening to you. Why?

Each department sees the world through their lens. Try telling someone what to do and they’ll push back. But when a critical mass of cross-functional personnel brings a well-designed solution to a vexing business problem, it’s tough to ignore, especially when backed by TRUSTED members of their own team.

Everyone has ideas about improving customer experience/outcomes, but often only CS has the facts. I’ve already spoken about ARTful data. The next step is to build bridges into the right organization to align around those facts. Organizations tend to operate in silos. Coalitions are cross-functional and break down traditional barriers by leveraging TRUSTED RELATIONSHIPS built upon ARTful data.

“Bridges” are about capturing hearts and minds (data/logic AND emotions) to ensure everyone is aiming for the same target and rowing in the same direction. A section of the bridge shown collapsed during the ’89 earthquake and needed to be rebuilt… poor maintenance processes in construction met with turbulent times, so remember that bridges take work to build and maintain, but they pay off!”

Build bridges with organizational partners by:

• Holding virtual coffees
• Scheduling occasional visits to your office (s), even if you are fully remote
• Suggesting that you travel together to meet clients in person

Get to know your colleagues. Discuss issues you are jointly facing. See if they want to help you build toward solving that problem.

Then once you have the bridges and the compelling value proposition, you can work out how you can JOINTLY approach the CEO with the right ARTful insights and a strong coalition.

Work together to build the problem statement with the data-based framework that you will use to frame the solution. Things that could catch the CEO’s attention:
– an early warning system to predict churn for large clients
– a Joint Success Plan aka mutually agreed upon path embedded in the process for key clients AND key internal partners.