In the world of websites, apps, and software, “customer experience” extends far beyond support personnel and external-facing roles. With so many customer interactions now taking place online, nearly every employee contributes to the customer experience in some way—even if they never interact with a customer one-on-one.
But often, especially at large organizations, it doesn’t feel that way day-to-day. It’s easy to forget that the customer experience extends far beyond employees with “customer” or “success” in their title.
To provide a delightful customer experience from the first touchpoint to the last, two key things need to happen:
Employees access the customer data they need to validate ideas, guide their decisions, and foster collaboration
Everyone understands they have a responsibility to use that data to enhance the customer experience
Rich digital experience data is the connective tissue among cross-functional teams working toward the common goal of offering a best-in-class customer experience. It’s up to an organization’s leaders not only to ensure democratized access to this type of data, but also to promote an organizational culture where everyone believes good CX is a company-wide effort. Here are four tips for how to foster that type of environment.
1. Define expectations
First and foremost, make sure your teams know what’s expected of them. As you move through day-to-day processes, point out areas where data should be in play. For example, if a team member is recommending a new feature, they should know that they’re expected to have data on-hand to back up their recommendation. When a bug is escalated to the dev team, an affected session should be linked to the ticket when it arrives in the queue. Instilling these expectations into daily workflows and processes will, over time, lead to a culture where data is a fundamental part of every project and action.
2. Share the business impact
According to a 2023 report by Inspirus, “When employees feel their work is meaningful, they tend to be more engaged and more satisfied. Because employees’ expectations have changed (particularly over the last few years), employers need to adapt by providing more tools and opportunities that foster employee connection and contribute to a shared sense of purpose.”
In addition to ensuring your teams know what is expected of them in terms of using digital experience data, make sure they understand why. Providing an exceptional digital customer experience directly impacts revenue, customer satisfaction, user retention, and much more. Help teams understand how using data to guide their day-to-day decisions directly ties back to all team’s successes and ultimately the overall business goals.
3. Elevate what “good” looks like
Positive reinforcement is a proven way to affect change. If you’re a leader who’s promoting data-sharing and cross-functional collaboration, make sure to point out examples of teams or projects where you see it done well. Highlighting instances of excellent alignment, teamwork, and data-driven decision-making can encourage a flywheel of positive behavior.
For example, at FullStory there’s a tradition of presenting demos during our weekly all-hands meeting. Any FullStorian who’s been working on a new feature or major project they’re proud of can present it to the company in a short demo. They’re encouraged to share the data and context that influenced the decision to create whatever they’re demoing—often a session or trend uncovered in FullStory itself. Through these demos, the entire company gets to see what other teams are working on and see data-driven decision-making in action.
4. Leverage thoughtful change management tactics
If data-driven decisions and cross-functional collaboration are relatively new concepts for your organization (or if teams have struggled to adopt these habits), a solid change management strategy could be helpful. Harvard Business Review outlines three key questions that people typically want answered when faced with impending change:
What does it mean for me?
Why is it happening?
What will the future look like once the change has happened?
For leaders who want to enforce that every digital experience decision should be grounded in trusted data, thinking through the answers to these questions is a useful place to start.
To learn more about how democratized data contributes to the customer experience, download the complete guide.
