Why Your CX Strategy Is Falling Short — And How to Fix It

Too many organizations pour time, energy, and budget into better customer experiences (CX) — and still fall flat. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. Chances are, you’re focusing on the visible elements of CX — the data, the tech tools, the dashboards — without addressing the real engine of CX success: your people, your culture, and your ability to lead change.

It’s not enough to compete in CX anymore. If you want to win, you have to master change management, collaboration, and communication at scale.

1. CX Requires Change Management — And Most Teams Aren’t Ready

Customer experience transformation isn't a tech project. It's a human project.

Leading great CX means preparing people — emotionally and operationally — to work in new ways: putting customers at the center instead of products, processes, or quarterly financial targets. It also demands cross-functional thinking, external partnerships, and new definitions of progress.

You can't just announce a shift to customer-centricity and expect it to happen.  You need a plan: training, communication, coaching, and reinforcement.  You also need new skills: negotiation for stakeholder buy-in, coaching skills to empower influencers, and financial acumen to prioritize initiatives and maximize productivity.

Sasha Fard, MBA, CCXP, former Canada Country Lead for Capital One’s CX team, credits the change management training his company provided for the effectiveness of his team’s initiatives.  “CX is not only about collecting feedback and generating insights,” he told me.  “It's about change management and problem solving -- you have to come up with implementation and solutioning as well. 

Translation: CX professionals must become change leaders. It's no longer optional.

2. Collaboration Isn't a "Nice to Have" — It’s the Foundation

Most CX leaders think they’re collaborating. In reality, many are just coordinating.

True collaboration demands empathy — not only for customers, but for colleagues. If you don’t understand the pain points, motivations, and unique perspectives others hold, you won't move the needle.

Guy Kawasaki’s advice to "trust first" is critical here:  Build relationships by demonstrating trust before demanding it. Share early, invite participation, and give up a little control. That’s how you create genuine buy-in across silos.

Collaboration may be more difficult with people and teams that don’t have a direct line of sight to customers.  They might not prioritize customer experience or customer success, so you must help them connect the dots between their scope of work and decisions and their impact on the customer.  Use customer feedback and share customer insights to make the case.

Also, don’t forget your external partners — vendors, channel partners, even customers themselves. To fully deliver on CX, you’ll need to craft value propositions that bring them into your vision, not only your internal teams.

And remember: Collaboration works best when everyone shares the same scorecard. If you want real progress, align incentives, define shared goals, and install systems that track them transparently.

3. Communication: The Underestimated Superpower

Jessica Shannon, Chief Experience Officer at Sandals Resorts International, captured it perfectly:  "Change management is really resistance management."  People don’t resist change because they’re stubborn. They resist because they’re scared.  It’s your job to lower that fear — through clear, open, two-way communication.

When you tell the story of why you're changing, where you're going, and how people fit into the future, you unlock commitment, not just compliance.

Plus, don’t just broadcast — listen.  Employees often spot customer pain points before the CX team ever sees them. By opening feedback loops, you not only solve problems faster — you build an army of advocates.  And communicate consistently over time to break through the noise and keep the focus on CX.

Finally: Don’t skip the celebration.  In a world where change fatigue is real, recognizing wins, calling out contributors, and highlighting progress keeps momentum alive.

CX Can’t Live in a Silo

HP Co-Founder David Packard once said, "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department."  The same goes for CX:  Customer experience is too important to leave to the CX team alone.

Building the right culture, winning hearts and minds, and scaling transformation across your entire ecosystem is the real differentiator.

That means you need to care as much about your internal stakeholders as your customers. You need to help them achieve their goals alongside yours. And you need to be as committed to leading change as you are to measuring NPS.

In the end, CX success isn’t just about serving customers better.  It’s about building a company that’s worth serving them.

#CX #ChangeManagement #Collaboration #Communication