Listen to your customers and challenge executives

Ahead of her session at CXN Live: Voice of the Customer, Lisa Kaufman, former voice of the customer (VoC) director at global payment processing company Worldpay/FIS Global, shares the story of her CX career so far and dives into the greatest lessons she has learned.

Kaufman has spent the past ten years building voice of the customer, partner and employee strategies across several organizations. She notes a key part of this career journey has involved educating and challenging executives on best practice, governance and strategies to ensure that VoC programs are impactful.

Build your business case and challenge executives

One of the greatest successes across Kaufman’s career is the business case she worked to create at Worldpay/FIS Global to reduce high levels of churn triggered by an antiquated customer service model.

Kaufman notes: “We had 280 mn [dollars] in projected losses due to churn, so that’s where I built out that business case for change.”

The former VoC director took steps to inspire executives on the possibilities of true customer success while educating frontline employees to limit the significant losses caused by churn.

However, Kaufman admits that bringing this to fruition represents a significant challenge, particularly when the program is not actionable and brand misalignment means that despite investment executives are not bringing brand promises to life as expected.

“That’s something that is really hard when you see what the vision is and you see that they want to make an investment,” remarks Kaufman. “So you definitely have to look for smaller wins and be open to educating and challenging executives.”

Let customer feedback guide business decisions

The biggest lesson that Kaufman has learned from her extensive career, is that the success of customer experience programs is truly dependent on how much executives value customer feedback versus their own perceptions and assumptions when making business decisions.

“The discipline of executive alignment and champions for change management are really what bring the program to life,” Kaufman explains. “Although there’s so much focus on feedback technology, its governance design around the program, executive communication and support that really make a VoC program actionable.”

Collecting feedback and building VoC tech stacks are just one piece of the puzzle, making VoC programs actionable from the top down is what really makes them a success.

Sign up to the upcoming CXN Live: Voice of the Customer online event to uncover Kaufman’s best kept secrets from 35+ years of VoC management.