Recently, I attended a conference hosted by a local church where a variety of steps are taken to examine and assess the overall organization to identify areas for improvement and celebrate successes. Many of the questions raised in this process are also great questions for examining and improving Customer Experience organizations. According to McKinsey, “Companies that focus on their people and organizational health also reap dividends in culture, collaboration, and innovation—as well as sustained competitive performance.
1. What notable organizational and process changes were added to your organization?
A comprehensive annual review of organizational and operational changes is essential for effective future planning and strategic decision-making, particularly concerning customer experience and physical infrastructure.
Understanding the changes to your team or organization over the past year can be critical in charting the right course of action for the future. As you reflect, consider what additions occurred in your organization. What new processes, software, solutions, services, or partnerships were added? Was there a company merger or acquisition, a change of vendors or tool providers, a new tier of operation, or a new set of services and products? In your customer experience journey, did you add service offerings, or provide a new experience for your customers? Did your organization expand physical infrastructures, open new offices buildings or rental spaces? Did you change remote work policies, require new spaces to house former remote employees?
As VP of Customer Experience at SIOS I have seen the impact that organizational changes can have on the customer experience. Many of these changes may not be obvious. For example, when remote workers are brought back to working in-house, they experience an adjustment period for working with new sounds, different interruptions, schedules and management expectations.
Action Step: Create a detailed checklist, ensuring it includes dedicated sections to catalogue and evaluate all additions across the following categories:
- technology/software,
- services/products,
- partnerships/vendors,
- organizational structure (mergers/acquisitions), and
- physical/remote work infrastructure.
Analyze the additions made to your organization for their impact on your customer experience. Check net new hires, vendor lists, software adoption rates, and new partnership relationships, and connect the dots to Customer Satisfaction or Net Promoter Scores. Remember, additions to the organization do not automatically equate to improved customer experience.
2. What were the notable reductions made to the organization?
Analyze where you made reductions to resources. Each year, due to economics or politics, there will be changes. Note where you lost momentum, discontinued a product or service, eliminated waste, or decided that a particular process or tool was no longer providing sufficient value. Who left the organization and how were their responsibilities handled afterward? What physical infrastructure did you eliminate? Did close office space or the change remote work policies?
For example, several years ago, when our teams switched tracking tools, the impact wasn’t felt immediately. The transition period allowing an overlap between tracking tools was uneventful. However, once the team was fully transitioned, delays, service gaps, and working issues began to appear. Focused attention and extra work were required to prevent these issues from negatively affecting customer service.
Action Step: Identify the most notable subtractions in the organization – even those that were made many months ago – and determine whether they will lead to an erosion of gains and experiences. Create a plan for losses that create misalignment with CX goals. Evaluate organizational workload and responsibilities made because an employee left the organization to ensure a smooth transition of key customer initiatives and avoid allowing items to fall through the cracks.
3. What Growth Occurred in Personnel or Customer-Facing Roles?
Identifying the number of people who joined your organization or joined a customer-facing role is also important. Did your organization add people last year? Why? New growth and opportunities? Backfilling open positions?
According to Gallup, Employees who feel engagement, and that the organization is aligned with them on purpose, performance and professional strengths, experience 78% less absenteeism and 14% higher productivity (based on evaluations and production records) and 21% less turnover.
This step can be a great way to assess overall organization health and help you quickly identify customer-facing concerns. For example, if your customer base doubled, but the number of Account Managers, Customer Experience professionals, and related personnel has not, it can point to potential dangers or upcoming shortfalls. Be sure to consider whether the additions have had the desired positive impact on the customer experience.
Action Step: Analyze personnel changes over the past year, specifically focusing on customer-facing roles. Compare the rate of customer growth to the increase in customer-facing staff. If a significant gap exists, immediately develop a hiring plan to address the shortfall and maintain a positive customer experience.
4. What people have stayed in the organization?
As an organization grows and matures, people will either grow with it or go on without it. It is critical to evaluate who left the organization and the circumstances of their departure. Were they asked to leave? Did they leave for professional growth? Salary? Quality of life? Who stayed and why? Pay close attention to what role they served in and what capacities. Evaluate your succession planning. Use annual reviews, exit interviews, compensation evaluations, and manager feedback to understand the bigger picture surrounding every departure. In addition to evaluating who left and why, don’t forget to make time to understand the full impact that those leaving felt in the organization.
Action Step: Meet with your managers, directors, and HR teams to evaluate trends and concerns gleaned from exit interviews and recent departures. Take time to evaluate whether there are larger cultural or systemic issues that need to be addressed for the good of the customer. If a pattern emerges or a clear concern arises, be sure to implement plans to address these.
5. What celebration-worthy items did you accomplish this year?
Your organization may have made great progress last year, but did you take time to reflect on the key wins and accomplishments? In the fast pace of cases, escalations, and customer/organizational needs, we miss celebrating wins together. Take time to look for celebration-worthy items that have occurred within the past year at organizational, team, and individual levels, such as: awards, acknowledgements, key milestones, and goals reached, and other worthy items.
Action Step: Stop and celebrate! Put together big wins and milestones, as well as small accomplishments, and celebrate them.
6. Where did you strategically plant seeds for future improvement?
As an organization and team, you make investments in people, products, services, and tools each year. These investments are like sowing seeds you hope to harvest months later (short term) or years later (long term). Many teams invest in several areas, to advance their vision and mission. Some teams, however, do not strategically or intentionally invest at all, leaving their future to be carried by the winds of change and the whims of the latest big deal or current event. As you review the year, consider where you invested the most time, money, marketing, infrastructure, and technology to promote your growth strategies, team, and organizational mission, vision, and customer experience.
Action Step: Evaluate and document investments made this year (time, money, marketing, infrastructure, technology) and set specific expected outcomes for each. Assess how each investment aligns with and promotes the organization’s growth strategies, team goals, mission, vision, and desired customer experience.
7. Where are you reaping the benefit of previous investment (harvesting seeds sown in the past?
If your team planned wisely, and invested well, the harvest from those actions and activities should begin to appear. Where are you beginning to see the expected outcomes? Did you invest in growing your customer base, improving your use of existing tools, advancing the use of AI, or reducing customer friction? Consider how your investments took shape and assess their impact and value. Not all investments are equal, so be sure to evaluate them carefully. Some seeds, corn, for example, may have a much higher yield than others, though both seeds are effective. Carefully review the type, quantity, and quality of the return on your investment. Be sure to consider whether this coming harvest is something that your team can take advantage of long-term via additional investments, or if it will be gone soon.
Action Step: Conduct a strategic assessment to identify which investments (e.g., customer base growth, AI adoption, friction reduction) are beginning to show returns. Be sure to quantify the impact of each investment in terms of customer retention, customer growth, and long-term profitability. In addition, document the expected yield ratios and the key performance indicators that will let your teams know when initiatives are working and when they need to be tweaked or abandoned.
8. Did your organization take any big risks this year?
Did your organization take any moonshots? Swing for the fences? Implement any wild ideas? Every team and organization should have an outrageous, audacious goal for the year. What was yours? What big risks did you take towards growing the team, customer base, and organization? What big idea did you work towards, or implement that was risky? Look at what risks your organization took and explore how that risk worked to or against your ultimate goals. Also, evaluate what big risks your team wants to take in the coming year. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained!”
9. What do you need to let go of next year?
Lastly, review and think about what is needed to be successful overall. Resist the temptation to start with narrow challenges – James in the mailroom’s chronic tardiness or Steve, who microwaves fish every Thursday. Instead, focus on adding what you need to reach your goals next year and eliminating the structures, processes, products, habits, and teams holding you back. Critically evaluate your systems and look for opportunities to let go. If the five products with minimal value differentiation are creating confusion to the customer, then consider consolidation. Don’t focus on individuals, but on key disengagement, and disempowerment issues that hinder your success. List the things that you need to eliminate and start the hard work of making the correct system-level changes.
Action Step: Evaluate the customer experience and the investments that have been made or adapt to the changes in markets, customers, and technology. If they are no longer serving the best interests of the customer or organization, create the needed changes that will improve the company’s impact and customer experience.
There is a critical link between internal operational changes and their resulting effect on the customer experience. As VP of Customer Experience, our teams have seen the impact of organizational changes, especially in the areas of additions and subtractions. We’ve seen the positive impact of additions of new ideas, new processes, and new hires. Adding new hires to bolster staffing needs and avoid stagnation has allowed our teams to maintain a high customer satisfaction. As VP of CX, analyzing subtractions, past, present, and potential, has helped our teams develop plans to address knowledge and leadership gaps, and put plans in place for the succession of senior leaders that avoid huge knowledge loss.
10. Can you maintain annual reviews consistently year after year?
Annual reviews, with structure and diligence, have helped our team evaluate whether investments in new tools and technology have had a positive impact on the customer experience. I’ve seen investments in tools and technology improve the customer experience, while others are net neutral. As customer needs and the customer landscape have changed, an annual review has also revealed the necessary end of life for previous best practices, tools, and activities.
Action Step: Plan annual reviews that are consistent and reasonable and commit to performing them every year. One-off efforts are rarely successful.
Conducting a thorough assessment of your organization can help uncover hidden challenges, new opportunities, rising threats, resource constraints, increasing weaknesses, and other items to celebrate and invest in more heavily. Executing a structured annual review process, that evaluates data and metrics against their impact for or against an improved customer experience, is time well spent.
Don’t let the year pass you by without an annual review and reflection, and try some of these questions to increase the effectiveness of your efforts.