Here’s a great idea I heard from some top notch CX (Customer Experience) professionals while at the inaugural CXPA (Customer Experience Professional Association). Read on below and steal this idea for your company!
Create an ambassador program. One way to find these ambassadors is to have employees nominate peers to be an ambassador – of what? YOUR customers!
Here are some general elements of one customer ambassador program I learned about:
- Front line (customer facing/interacting) employees can be nominated by their peers.
- As front line employees, they hear customer ideas, needs and suggestions all the time. This is a program for that information to be shared. (Have you ever met a front line staffer who didn’t have great ideas to share? I’ve found they always are full of ideas and never seem to have an outlet for them.)
- Those selected to be ambassadors contribute 2 hours per week for the program.
- Create a forum for the ambassadors to share the ideas they hear with those who can make a difference (this may be product managers or whoever shapes your products/services). One option is to create an internal web forum for sharing ideas. The ambassadors post ideas and questions and the product managers respond.
- Then host meetings twice a month (or more) to discuss the ideas and work through the definition and of them and any possible next steps.
To get started you need the “call” to get ambassadors nominations or applications and a mechanism for them to share ideas efficiently. You want to select staff (as ambassadors) that love to spread the word and help out customers (so they’ll keep sharing ideas in the online forum). A kick-off meeting for the ambassadors (with key execs echoing the importance of this work) is a great note to begin on.
The ambassadors are often advocates who spread the word of the program to their peers and others – and you’ll want to publicize the ideas generated from the program and the results to the larger employee base over time.
What you get is a great conversation between those who listen to customers daily and those who shape the evolution of products and services you offer. What an ideal team!
