NETWORK

7 Key Steps for Customer

Experience Leaders to Gain
Senior Management Buy-In

buy-in

SEPTEMBER 2016
MARKET REPORT

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7 Key Steps for Customer Experience

Leaders to Gain Senior Management Buy-In
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About the Author

I ngrid Lindberg is the Founder and CXO of Chief Customer and
former Chief Customer Experience Officer for Cigna & Prime
Therapeutics.
Ingrid is a serial Customer Experience Officer (CXO). As one of
the first CXOs, she has been on the leading edge of customer
experience for over 20 years. She has worked with numerous Fortune
500 companies across Financial Services, Healthcare, Packaged
Goods and Retail, helping them to create differentiating customer
experience strategies and cultures.
After years of doing the job, Ingrid founded Chief Customer and now spends her time helping
companies turn Customer Experience theory into practice making their customer experience
strategies real, from CSRs to the C-Suite. Lindberg was the Chief Experience Officer at Cigna and
at Prime Therapeutics and has held roles with American Express, Ceridian, State Street, First Data,
Pillsbury and Pier One, always working to enhance experiences for employees and customers.
Ingrid is a widely recognized international public speaker and is heavily quoted by top publications
including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Atlanta Constitution Journal and Kiplingers.

Contents
Introduction

Page 3

Customer Experience Funding Patterns

Page 3

7 Tips to Help You Be More Successful in Your Customer

Experience Funding Requests

Page 5

Challenges at Different Stages of the Customer Experience

Journey

Page 8

Conclusion

Page 9

About CX Network

Page 10

2016 Market Report Calendar

Page 10

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7 Key Steps for Customer Experience

Leaders to Gain Senior Management Buy-In
1

Introduction
It seems so simple. There is a huge customer need
and you have a solution. Getting money to fix it
should be easy, right? Unfortunately, that fairy tale
world isnt the one that most customer experience
practitioners live in. Most of us are fighting for
dollars against everything, from data security
needs to foundational operational requirements
to whatever product is being deemed as new,
innovative and a must to fund.
I keep hearing the statement that customer
experience is the new battleground! or that
CEOs believe that customer experience is their
only differentiator!, yet I also continue to hear
customer experience practitioners struggle to find
funding. The challenges appear pretty daunting.
When we analyse the global spend patterns, we
learn that 92 per cent of practitioners spend less
than 1m USD a year on customer experience
solutions1. Considering the fact that the vast
majority of customer experience practitioners still
sit within a function in the organisation, instead
of as a stand-alone entity, those dollars seem to
be even scarcer. For instance, the same research
sees 22 per cent of CX professionals sitting within
marketing.
When you look at the average marketing spend,
according to CMO Survey2, most firms have a
marketing budget of between 7-9 per cent of
their revenue. When asked to break that down
into where that spend is going, the functions
listed are primarily digital and more traditional

marketing. Customer experience isnt even listed.

If not reporting into marketing, many customer
experience professionals are reporting into
customer service, operations, IT and even into
digital marketing.
Of the 20 per cent of practitioners who say that
they report into a named customer experience
function, only 5 per cent of are sitting at the
executive table. Without that seat on the executive
team, the other 95 per cent of practitioners are
beholden to a game of telephone up the chain in
order to actually make the prioritisation table and
receive funding. No wonder we hear from so many
people that they have challenges getting money.

Customer Experience
Funding Patterns
I define customer experience as the sum of all
interactions a person has with your company
throughout their life. The customer experience is
so much more than digital, marketing or service.
It is every single moment a person has with
your company. Every time they hear about your
brand theyre having a customer experience.
The placement of customer experience in these
organisations is indicative that most companies
dont understand the impact customer experience
can have if done right.
If we back up a bit and look at the funding
requests were seeing, the majority of them are
really foundational.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE INVESTMENT PRIORITIES:

65.0%

No Budget

45.5%

Up to
100k

26.0%

Up to
500k

6.5%
CUSTOMER
JOURNEY
MAPPING

1
2

CUSTOMER
CUSTOMER
MULTILOYALTY AND SATISFACTION
CHANNEL
RETENTION MEASUREMENT INTEGRATION

ONLINE
CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE

TRAINING
AND EMPLOYEE
ENGAGEMENT

VOICE
OF THE
CUSTOMER

500k+

http://www.cxnetwork.com/cx-experience/white-papers/the-global-state-of-customer-experience-2016
https://cmosurvey.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2016/02/The_CMO_Survey-Highlights_and_Insights-Feb-2016.pdf

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7 Key Steps for Customer Experience

Leaders to Gain Senior Management Buy-In
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but they so often do not rise to the top of funding

prioritisation activities.

I define customer experience as the sum

of all interactions a person has with your
company throughout their life.

Most of the work that people are still trying to

get funding for is geared towards laying the
groundwork for larger scale initiatives in the future.
The challenge with groundwork is that it isnt
always as sexy, or as understandable as some of
the competing priorities. When a CEO is thinking
that customer experience is the only thing that
will differentiate them, asking for journey mapping
money often doesnt illicit a favourable funding
response. Learning how to listen and learning
how to measure are both incredibly important,

I advise teams to find larger, more impactful

projects that can rise to the top of the funding
requests and then use existing divisional funding to
do more of the baseline work like journey mapping.
As your customer experience programme gets
more mature and builds credibility, you can
always revisit some of the more baseline funding
needs. For example, every Voice of Customer
(VOC) programme Ive ever built has started with
manually imputing data into excel spreadsheets.
Once we were gaining traction and credibility in
the organisation (and people were begging our
VOC team for more data), that was the moment
I started asking for funding in order to automate
our VOC programme using technology.
After 20+ years of being in organisations asking
for money to do customer experience project
work, I have seven tips Id like to share that have
proven to be very successful for me.

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7 Key Steps for Customer Experience

Leaders to Gain Senior Management Buy-In
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7 Tips to Help You Be More

Successful in Your Customer
Experience Funding
Requests

buy-in

 tart With Understanding Where the

S
Company Needs to Go

Define a Future State Architecture Map. The Future

State Architecture Map is a tool Ive been using
for well over 20 years. It clearly lays out a path to
what youre trying to achieve as a company. The
entire map is based on meeting customer needs,
and if done well, it takes an enormous amount of
the argument out of funding requests. If you take
the time to articulate what the company needs to
deliver, in order to meet both stated and unstated
customer needs, it becomes the roadmap for the
entire enterprise.
When companies use this tool successfully, they
base all their funding decisions on the map only
building things that their customers are asking for,
or things that will solve a customer need. This tool
helps to stop pet projects, arguments about what
one leader vs another thinks is the right customer
investment. It gives an organisation grounding on
where to start and what to do first, second and
third.

When you can correlate the projects

you are trying to fund to the profit of a
company, using math, not passion,
people listen.

One of my favourite examples of this is a company

I was working with that was about to spend an
enormous amount of money on a digital redesign.
When we did the work to complete the map, and
then prioritised it based on impact to long term
loyalty (which was this companys goal), we clearly

saw that the digital investment wasnt what was

going to move the needle on that measurement.
We were able to show the executive team what
was important to their customers and redirected
the funding to that project.

 nderstand the Lifetime Value of Your

U
Customers

This is one of the most baseline (and oftentimes

overlooked) steps that a customer experience
team can take. So many requests for funding are
based on a bit of data and a whole lot of heart.
Ive heard We so clearly know that this is the
right thing to do! or Our customers hate that
we do this thing to them!, yet time after time, the
solutions are underfunded or unfunded.

If you take the time to articulate what the

company needs to deliver, in order to
meet both stated and unstated customer
needs, it becomes the roadmap for the
entire enterprise.

The trick Ive learned to overcome this is to build

a Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) model. The CLV
is a tool that allows you to understand exactly
how and when a customer becomes profitable.
Every company cares about profit. When you can
correlate the projects you are trying to fund to
the profit of a company, using math, not passion,
people listen.
I was doing work with a firm that had a very
specific occurrence that caused people to leave
them. This was a business to consumer firm,
and the company, although claiming to be very
focused on retention, had missed the fact that
one decision they were making was costing them
millions. They had the belief that as long as they
were receiving their monthly payments from
their customers that they were making money.
They didnt care as much when people left them,
because many came back.

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7 Key Steps for Customer Experience

Leaders to Gain Senior Management Buy-In
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Tell your epic story again and again. Youll

create a storm that more often than not
can lead to successful funding decisions.

When we built the lifetime value model, we were

able to prove that a customer didnt become
profitable until 30 uninterrupted months into
the relationship. What that meant was that every
single time there was a service disruption and that
customer left (even if they returned a few weeks
later), the clock restarted. It wasnt enough to
get them back because it was costing so much
money to get them re-set up. The key was to keep
them continuously. That information took the
opinion out of the decision and made it very easy
for the company to invest in fixing the issue.

buy-in

 ustomer Experience Leaders Dont

C
Need to Drive the Actual Projects

So many times Ill meet customer experience

leaders who are trying to do everything. They
have digital projects and product projects and
marketing projects and service projects. And
theyre struggling to keep them all afloat and
funded. A great customer experience leader is
influencing others to pick up the work they should
be accountable for based on the future state map.
When this happens, the accountability for funding
is spread out more, making success more likely.
Ive never met a CEO who wants to give all of
the project money to one person. It creates
disruption in leadership teams. Besides, customer
experience is about what everyone is delivering,
not just the customer experience team. When
you find people within an organisation who are
as passionate about delivering a better customer
experience as you are, get them on board the
funding request train asap! The more, the merrier,
right? There is a twofold win in this approach: 1)
Youll be helping your peers look good for the
boss, and 2) Youre showing that you are able to
influence without authority. Win/ win.

I f You Arent at the Table, Find

Sponsors

One of the best tips I give to practitioners who

dont have a seat at the table is to find a sponsor.
Oftentimes, there are executive leaders who know
they have a huge customer problem but may not
have the data or manpower to make the business
case. In those instances, a customer experience
practitioner can be a powerful ally.
If you can identify the leader who has the largest
gaping hole (something that is really harming your
customer experience), offer to be arms and legs
to build the business case and apply all of your
Voice of Customer knowledge to the work.
Youll end up with an executive sponsor who is
going to be looking to you for ideas in the future
and youll be solving something massive for your
customers. Another win/ win.

Ive found that

showing a CEO what your #1 and #2
competitors are doing and how your
project will vault you ahead of them, is
one of the best approaches to getting
funding fast.

 ind Ways to Tie the Customer

F
Experience Work Into Existing
Projects

At any organisation, there are always hundreds

of projects in queue. Some are a part of larger
portfolios, dependent on quarterly or annual
planning cycles. Others are the things that just
get done throughout the organisation every
day. Both of these represent opportunities for
customer experience to influence and get their
foot in the door.
Even small amounts of funding can have really big
impacts. For example, if your company is going
through a large scale data security project, work
with the team to ensure that youre adding in the
customer experience requirements and that the

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7 Key Steps for Customer Experience

Leaders to Gain Senior Management Buy-In
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work is being designed in such a way that it is easy

for the customer to understand whats happening
and what they need to do.

Customer experience is about what

everyone is delivering, not just the
customer experience team.

Another way to ensure that youre impacting

things in flight is to put together a set of guiding
principles for the organisation. The rules of
how your company should interact with your
customers. These can be as far stretching as well
never charge an overdraft fee to well never ask a
customer to take more than three steps.
Whatever they are, insert those into the portfolio
and product processes. Even if your master project
didnt get funded, youll help to ensure what was
funded and being built is actually helping your
customers!

buy-in

Whatever channel or story you choose to use,

make sure you get to everyone on the executive
committee. Tell your epic story again and again.
Youll create a storm that more often than not can
lead to successful funding decisions.

Help the CEO Understand the Impact

One of the best tips I can share with you after

having had Customer Experience Officer (CXO)
jobs at many companies in many industries, is that
CEOs are a really impatient sort. When you can,
help your CEO understand how long it will take
after something is built or deployed to impact
your customer experience scores, it can help to
create more of a sense of urgency to start now.
Many projects take years to complete, and then
based on how many times in a year you actually
interact with your customers, you can calculate
how long it will be before you see positive impact.
When you can clearly set expectations, it will only
help you to get money sooner, and it may even
help to give you a little more leeway on the when
will we see results??? question that youre sure to
get.

Tell an Epic Story

Storytelling is one of the best ways to capture

someones attention, and to garner support. One
of the things Ive learned is that sometimes, the
best business case with the best set of numbers
may not get you across the finish line. Sometimes,
you need a really epic story.
There are tons of ways that you can bring an
epic story to life. You can do customer on the
street chats, where you capture live video of your
customers talking to your executives about why
they need this thing youre trying to get funded.
You can pull on heartstrings and share stories of
where youve failed a customer as a company
because you havent built this thing yet.

Another way to ensure that youre

impacting things in flight is to put
together a set of guiding principles for the
organisation.

The other common trait that CEOs share is that

they are all pretty competitive. Ive found that
showing a CEO what your #1 and #2 competitors
are doing and how your project will vault you
ahead of them, is one of the best approaches to
getting funding fast.

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7 Key Steps for Customer Experience

Leaders to Gain Senior Management Buy-In
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The Challenges at Different Stages of the Customer

Experience Journey
In all of my years of being a CXO, there are five steps that each transformation follows:

The Prove phase

The Evangelise phase

Where youre proving to the

organisation that investing in
customer experience is important.

Where youre out asking the entire

organisation to help you make a
change.
The Pressure phase
This is the one where the organisation
is looking to you for your big impacts
even if you havent received big
funding.

Shape Strategy

Fully Integrate

This is when you have really shown

that customer experience can have
impact and is an important part of
what the company is doing.

This is the stage where, if youve set

the stages of the transformation
up well, you almost arent needed
anymore. This is where everyone
in the company is looking out for
the customers best interest and
is working together to fulfil unmet
customer needs.

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7 Key Steps for Customer Experience

Leaders to Gain Senior Management Buy-In
1

F U L LY I N T E G R AT E
S T R AT E G
SHAPE
Y
PRESSURE
A N G E LI S E
EV
PROVE

(C) Chief Customer, LLC

What Ive learned is that the two stages in a

customer experience journey where it is hardest
to get funding are the first, Prove and the third,
Pressure.
In Prove, youre new and the function is
new. Everyone is looking to you to solve the
companys customer experience problems, but
there are already a thousand projects in play. You
have to figure out ways to get your work into the
queue.
In this stage tips 1, 2 and 3 are very helpful. You
need to take the time to plan and make sure
youre asking for money for the right things. Dont
rush into trying to start work without having your
Future State Architecture Map defined. You have
to take the time to do the work to understand
the lifetime value of your customers so that
your business cases are sound. Lastly, you dont
have to take everything on yourself. Find other
partners and executives who can champion the
work for you.

When you hit the Pressure stage, your success is

almost 100 per cent dependent on the decisions
you made in the beginning. The organisation isnt
sure that they should give customer experience
projects more money. Theyre waiting for all the
work you started with your first projects to wrap
up and to start having impacts.
The best lesson Ive learned from having gone
through this stage time and time again is that
this is when your friends are really going to come
in handy. Youve created all sorts of executive
sponsors who are helping to champion this
work (tips 3 and 4) let them help ensure that
customer experience work is being funded. Even
if it is just pieces of their projects, it can help to
drive change.
In this stage, you can also continue to really drive
work using tips 5 and 6. You should have work
embedded all over the place at that point in the
journey.

Conclusion
If you set up your programme on a solid foundation of customer needs and data and if you used
the math of customer lifetime value to build your business cases, youll sail through the Prove
stage. It may be a little bumpy at times, but youll get through it.
And I promise, once youre through that and youve proven that the bets the company makes on
customer experience have outstanding results; the funding challenges almost entirely disappear.

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About CX Network
CX Network is an online resource for customer
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content such as industry reports, customer trends,
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By joining our network you will receive expert
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Network ensures you keep your finger on the
pulse by delivering practical and strategic advice
to help you achieve your business goals.

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2016 Market
Report Calendar

Click on the
bolded titles
to view these
reports

January
Telecoms Focus: How to Reduce Churn and Increase
Customer Retention
February
Optimising Customer Complaints
Management in Financial Services

SPONSORED BY:

March
The Changing Face of Customer Loyalty in Retail
April
How to Tackle the CX Industrys Biggest Challenges
May
Digital Marketing Trends

IN ASSOCIATION WITH:

June
The Ultimate Guide to Contact Centre
Outsourcing: Current Trends and Future Outlook
July
How to Capitalise on the Digital
Disruption Impacting CX
August
What is the Role of the Chief Digital
Office in a Saturated C-Suite?

SPONSORED BY:

SPONSORED BY:

September
7 Key Steps for Customer Experience Leaders to Gain
Senior Management Buy-In
October
Secrets to Delivering a Differentiating CX
November
Learn From the Winning Strategies of CX Leaders
December
Customer Experience Predictions for 2017

For more information about these reports

email: CXSponsorship@iqpc.com

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