During a recent Fuel Cycle webinar, we discussed the importance of customer voice with Jeff Dahms, the Director of CX at the First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO). Jeff emphasizes that while his organization can’t claim to have the “secret sauce” to voice of customer program success, they have found a model that works for them and one that your team may get inspiration from.
Before your CX team can become the customer’s voice within the organization, there are a few questions to consider, like “What does my organization value?” For example, at FNBO, they value customers, community, and personal connections across the organization. Other questions to ponder include, “How do things get done?” “Who, what, where are the roadblocks?” “How do we make changes?” “What can we take advantage of?” “How do we move forward?”
This article will dive into FNBO’s journey to becoming the customer’s voice within their organization.
Getting Started
To grow as a CX team, Jeff and company built their importance from the ground up in three main phases:
Functional – They received requests, filled orders, and focused on known problems
Purposeful – They then became intentional about how they positioned themselves within the organization. As they progressed from functional services, they connected with multiple departments and projects, asked for multi-department input, and illustrated the connection between those departments and the customer.
Strategic Partner – Once FNBO’s CX team became purposeful within the company, they evolved into a strategic partner. They acted as a consultant to others within the organization while, offering advice on strategic issues.
Throughout this growth, FNBO prioritized customer feedback instead of simply being informed by it.
Cycle of Success
Jeff’s CX team implemented a cycle of success to ensure that their department provides cohesive solutions that allowed customer feedback to drive business priorities. The process involves four parts: Customers, data, business line, and employees.
Customers
Determine what you already know about your customers, what you want to know about your customers, and what is missing
Data
Decide what metrics you want to track, how will this information be shared, what the challenges of collecting and sharing this data are
Business Line
Evaluate how the organization uses data to make improvements, what information is needed for strategic decisions, how data is prioritized, and what roadblocks there are to implementing feedback
Employees
Look into how employees use customer feedback, what skills you want your frontline staff to possess, and how you will measure their success
Continual Testing With Circle By FNBO
To further support their role within the organization, Jeff and his CX team created Circle, a customer experience platform available to their members via a mobile application. With the app, members can provide direct feedback to FNBO through surveys, forums, and community conversations.
Circle allows all departments within FNBO to get information that can better their services. For example, the mortgage team could use Circle to collect consumer data on their lending process.
Now that you know about how FNBO became the customer’s voice in their organization, you can learn how to amplify employee voices for improved culture and better business. Click here to learn more.
