The Customer Experience Council — Almohannad Alsbeai

Introduction

In today’s article, I’ll cover one of the recognized practices in customer experience: the so-called Customer Experience Council. This article is aimed at fellow practitioners as well as executives across all companies. I previously wrote about CX Ambassadors — the other side of the CX improvement coin in organizations. The Ambassador program produces impact from the bottom up; the CX Council produces impact from the top down. And since poor collaboration and weak communication between departments — each operating as an isolated organizational silo — is one of the biggest problems negatively affecting customer experience, the CX Council provides a platform to enable greater cooperation, alignment, integration, and harmony between departments toward a single fundamental goal: delivering an exceptional customer experience.

What Is the Customer Experience Council?

It is a council whose members include all stakeholders who influence customer experience — usually the leaders of every department. The council is chaired by the CEO, because caring about CX starts with leaders (the role models) and is the biggest motivator for the rest of the employees to take customer experience seriously. The CX leader is responsible for facilitating and organizing the sessions.

The council meets on a recurring basis (the frequency varies from company to company and industry to industry) — weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, or ad hoc in case of urgent matters outside the normal course of business.

In the council, the CX leader presents the key indicators that reflect the overall picture of customer experience at the company. Ideally, there are also key performance indicators for every department, which are reviewed in the council so each department understands its role and its impact on the experience. The facilitator also presents the main improvement initiatives proposed — initiatives generated from a prior root-cause analysis of complaints, insights from the voice-of-customer program, or the detailed analysis of the customer journey map. Possible solutions for executing these initiatives are then discussed within the council.

Because the CX leader facilitates the meeting, the CEO’s primary role is to bless the solutions proposed for a given initiative and to cut off side disagreements and discussions that pull everyone away from the main purpose of the meeting: raising and improving the overall customer experience indicator through improvement initiatives, which are discussed and tracked for progress in subsequent meetings.

What Are the Council’s Main Objectives?

Bring all stakeholders who influence the experience under a single umbrella.
Work as one team — not as separate departments — to improve the experience.
Make sure every stakeholder understands their direct impact on the experience and grasps the touchpoints between their department and others.
Align on a unified vision for delivering a consistent level of experience across all service channels.
Identify current gaps, discuss improvement opportunities, and prioritize and plan their execution.
Review relevant KPIs and discuss the reasons behind drops or increases.

Everything that precedes the council — workshops, journey mapping, interviews, and so on — is like the honeymoon between the CX team and the rest of the organization. The moment the council begins, several departments will realize the rosy phase is over and reality has arrived. The challenge for practitioners here is to highlight the positive aspects of the new phase — that there are shared benefits and fruits everyone will reap from these initiatives. It’s hard to claim that the approach proposed in this article is the best way to activate a CX Council initiative, because every company has a different nature, circumstances, and culture. When planning, practitioners must keep the organization’s CX maturity level in mind before deciding how to run the sessions.

The First Council Meeting

Set clear governance for the council, and have it approved by your governance department if you have one. Council governance covers key elements: the council’s purpose, its roles and duties, members and chair, frequency, parameters (agenda, pre-meeting preparation, minutes documentation and distribution), and finally the council’s deliverables.

You must prepare well for the first council meeting to build a positive first impression. It’s important to notify everyone at least two weeks in advance, and I’d advise practitioners to visit each stakeholder individually to explain the idea (email is not enough).

Remember not to present all initiatives at once in the first meeting — you don’t want to shock people with the size of the gap, and you won’t be able to boil the ocean in one go anyway. Focus only on the initiatives with the biggest impact on the experience (the 80/20 rule) and explain in the first meeting how you arrived at them (your methodology/framework) for the sake of transparency and shared perspectives.

Before presenting the initiatives, thank everyone for attending and for their prior efforts. Tell them these initiatives are simply an extension of their previous work — you don’t want anyone to feel that their past contributions are being minimized or that what they did before was wrong (even if it was). In every company there are dedicated, hardworking people who are unfortunately digging in the wrong place. Still, show appreciation to everyone without exception.

Present the initiatives one by one and explain the root cause that led you to propose each. Acknowledging the existence of a problem and having stakeholders recognize it is the first step toward a solution. Each initiative can be broken down into smaller tasks — that’s better, as it gives stakeholders a sense of accomplishment. Broad goals can feel heavy.

Next, discuss the proposed solutions to activate the principle of shared ownership of change. If stakeholders can’t propose practical solutions, offer your help and share the solutions you believe could address the problem — with a disclaimer that you are not a specialist in their domain and they are better positioned to propose the best solutions (ultimately, you don’t want anyone pointing fingers at you if your suggestions fail to achieve their objective). Always remember your role is that of a guide who helps people reach solutions, not someone who serves them solutions on a silver platter.

Finally, with the council chair’s (CEO’s) blessing, approve the initiatives to be worked on and agree with stakeholders on a timeline for executing them.

The first meeting may be the longest. Subsequent meetings will be half that length or even less, because they’ll focus on follow-up on decisions taken in previous meetings plus discussing initiatives/solutions for other problems.

How Do CX Improvement Initiatives Succeed?

Improving the experience in any organization is one of the biggest challenges practitioners face. The reasons are many — we won’t cover them all here. I want to focus on one aspect in this section: the human element.

Remember that making friends is far better than making enemies. You need leaders to stand with you, not against you. So from day one in any company, aim to build good relationships with everyone, founded on trust and transparency.
Be a good listener and try to understand the context before passing judgment. Understanding the bigger picture (the ecosystem) will help you propose more logical and objective solutions.
Don’t dismiss a suggestion as wrong just because you didn’t like it. Don’t label someone who raises potential risks as negative — their words may save you from future disasters. I don’t mean the constant complainer who only sees the empty half of the cup and offers no solutions; that person is indeed negative.
Don’t assume everything you say will be heard. People only hear what they want to hear. If your point isn’t clear, simplify it further and ask questions that help others think. If the deadlock persists, focus on obstacles — perhaps the person sees this as an extra burden they could do without, or doesn’t know how they could contribute.
Speak with confidence. If you’re asking people to change while sounding shy or hesitant, you’re helping them push back. Your posture and behavior will shape how people respond to your requests.
Don’t assume people will cooperate just because what you’re asking is in everyone’s interest. People form tribes, and to win their cooperation you must find common ground with them. Keep building personal relationships with everyone, inside and outside of work.
Give everyone the assurance that you’re not chasing recognition or credit. Live this on the ground: even if you helped a stakeholder make the change — by suggesting ideas or helping with implementation — downplay your contribution and publicly thank and recognize them, even if everything they executed was your idea. Your success isn’t a momentary applause for some ideas; it’s witnessing real transformation in the customer experience across the company.
If you previously warned some about unworkable solutions and they pushed ahead and then failed, don’t go back and remind them you’d warned them (don’t worry — they’ll remember on their own, and they’ll trust your advice next time). If you remind and chastise them, they may dig in to protect their ego.
People naturally hate confrontation, blame, and denial of effort. There must be a culture that tolerates mistakes, so people don’t hide information that proves they failed in the past. Positive reactions from the CEO and the leadership team make everyone speak openly without fear of embarrassment or public criticism.
Some people are naturally controlling. This group will never accept being forced to do anything; they may do the exact opposite. With this group, tell them the destination and expected arrival time, and let them choose how to get there. Don’t try to grab the steering wheel and redirect them. Remember, you’re a guide. Even if you see them driving toward a cliff, you can jump out of the car or fasten your seatbelt — the important thing is not to make them feel they’ve lost control.
Remember that every person has finite energy, capacity, and resources. Be fair and don’t ask for what they can’t deliver unless you can support them and secure the extra resources they need. If you want to be obeyed, ask for what can be done.
“Those who do not work are pained by seeing others work” — Taha Hussein. Some of this group will try to provoke or attack you. Keep your composure, focus on the groups willing to cooperate, and ignore this faction until they realize their error themselves.
Always focus on what can be done, not what cannot. Try to steer the meeting toward solutions, not obstacles, and avoid blame and accusations as much as possible. The council is not a venue for settling scores.

The last lever to push improvement initiatives through — and perhaps the only one in some companies — is to use the council as an authority lever, leveraging the CEO’s authority to pressure stakeholders when every other approach has failed. I don’t recommend it unless you’ve exhausted all options and you’re under pressure from senior leadership to deliver the change. Changing the culture across the organization is the greatest success any practitioner can achieve, and I don’t think anyone wants their CX improvement initiatives to die after they leave the company — which is what happens when pressure is used as the sole lever. In any case, if you must use this tool (I prefer to call it the joker), choose your battles wisely. You don’t want the CEO inserting themselves into every detail.

Common Excuses for Failure

No one likes to be told what to do, and no one wants to look like they failed at what they did before. Expect a stream of excuses. A few examples:

“It’s not my responsibility.” This points to weak governance. The fix is to decide responsibility within the council, in front of everyone.
“I don’t have enough financial/human resources.” Can also be discussed outside the council, especially if the improvement requires additional resources.
“I don’t think the proposed solution is the real fix.” Ask the person to propose what they believe is the best solution; they may be right, and the solution gets approved during the meeting.
“The proposed solution already exists.” Maybe it does and was implemented as a one-off, but it’s ineffective as currently configured and needs a refresh to be more effective.
“This will take a lot of time.” That’s fine, as long as we can lay out a timeline for executing the initiative — which can later be approved by the CEO. If the issue is too many initiatives sitting under one stakeholder, agree with them to focus on the highest-impact initiatives, with everyone’s alignment.

Avoid reading into motives. For any excuse offered to dodge responsibility, try to understand the underlying driver. If you know the driver, you can use it to find common ground and craft solutions that suit all parties.

What’s the Difference Between the Council and a Project Management Office?

Council governance will look very similar to PMO governance (if one exists). The only difference is that the PMO focuses on tracking the company’s strategic projects and reports progress to senior leadership. The projects emerging from improvement initiatives may overlap with those tracked by the PMO, so it’s important there be no conflict — only cooperation. It may be wise for the head of the PMO to participate in the CX Council. In the end, the council isn’t a substitute for the PMO; both should complement each other and focus on the organization’s bigger goal.

In Closing

No matter how slow the execution of improvement initiatives is, don’t lose hope. Over time, culture changes and the wheel of progress turns faster. The important thing is to make continuous improvement, no matter how small the improvement. There’s no need for any company to defer adopting this practice until all prerequisites are in place. For example, if the company doesn’t have an effective voice-of-customer program or approved CX metrics, you don’t need to wait until they do to activate the council initiative. Convening the council is essential for building culture and for starting change and continuous improvement.

Related concepts: Customer-Centric Operating Model, Closed-Loop Feedback, CX Maturity Model, Voice of Customer (VoC).

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