At W5, we work with organisations across service industries, and we know that customer experience is not one-size-fits-all. Programmes vary in purpose and sophistication, but the strongest share a commitment to understanding customers and continually improving their experience.
What helps a CX programme succeed? These three foundations can help, whether your organisation is navigating change or building on steady progress.
1. Establish your ROI
Demonstrating the return on investment from customer experience can feel challenging. But leaving it unaddressed can make it harder to secure support for your programme, particularly when budgets are under pressure. Starting with an approach that fits your business makes the task more manageable.
Establishing ROI does not have to be complicated, but it does need to be meaningful to the people you engage across the business. Connecting customer experience with retention, spending and advocacy can help make its value clearer.
A simple calculation can be a useful starting point. For example, looking at the spending, share of wallet or length of relationship associated with promoters, passives and detractors can help you explore how changes in Net Promoter Score relate to customer value. This connects customer measures with commercial outcomes understood across the business.
Using an agreed, even approximate, approach over time allows colleagues to understand it, challenge its assumptions and build confidence. Once established, you can refine it with more or less detail to meet your evolving needs.
Action: Start small. Build confidence in the value of customer experience.
2. Structure your programme for action
The most successful programmes drive measurable, customer-focused improvements, helping organisations deliver their brand promise through everyday experiences.
Your programme does not have to be sophisticated to drive action, but it does need to be relevant. Whether you are gathering feedback, mapping customer journeys or working across several parts of the business, the purpose is to enable improvements.
Customers experience your service as a whole. Their experience reflects how different parts of the organisation work together to meet their needs.
One client used a relatively lean Voice of Customer programme while ensuring that people across the business were engaged and accountable for improvements. Client-facing and back-office colleagues understood the results and the reasons behind them. With a focus on two or three key areas, they worked collectively to improve the experience.
Making CX relevant means building on structures and priorities that already exist, and considering them from the customer’s perspective. This can support more consistent customer experiences while helping teams deliver their wider business goals.
Action: Make it relevant. Help teams turn customer understanding into action.
3. Make governance your friend – to build engagement
Good governance helps a CX programme work consistently. It brings the right people together, with useful information, clear responsibilities and a shared understanding of what needs to happen.
Whether your programme is managed centrally, across individual teams or through a combination of both, its governance should support coordinated action across the organisation.
For one client, board-level engagement and shared accountability gave senior stakeholders clear responsibility for their contribution to customer experience. While the programme was managed centrally, ownership sat within existing business structures, supported by senior leadership.
Good governance starts with senior sponsorship and a clear customer experience strategy. It helps teams agree priorities, track progress against objectives and understand their responsibilities.
It also provides practical standards and enough flexibility to support decision-making. Clear, regular communication helps colleagues understand the programme and contribute from the outset.
Action: Set clear ownership. Bring leadership and teams together around the customer.