6 Skills CX Professionals Need to Overcome Stakeholder Barriers

Featuring contributions from members of the Women in CX online community.

Every month, members of the first global community designed especially for women united by our interest in advancing customer experience meet to discuss, dissect, and disentangle an issue faced by customer experience professionals. 

These roundtable discussions seek to shed light on and offer solutions to some of the most pressing problems of the sector.

This blog summarises the forum where members examined how we can overcome barriers put up by stakeholders and the skills necessary in order to do so. 

What is a stakeholder?

A stakeholder can be defined as “a party that has an interest in a company and can either affect or be affected by the business.” (Investopedia) 

When stakeholder engagement goes wrong

Stakeholder engagement massively affects CX projects, and stakeholder expectations influence organisations in uncountable and often covert ways. Unfortunately, stakeholders often put up seemingly insurmountable barriers that can leave our hard-won projects in the dust.

What are the barriers put up by stakeholders?

The barriers we face are dependent on the stage of CX maturity of an organisation and also the countries that we work within. Sadly, gender, race, and age are often seen as obstacles too.

Barriers typically come down to stakeholders...

• Not understanding CX

• Not believing in the value

• Not having a clear business case

• Needing to see results quickly

• Frequently changing leadership

• Moving goalposts at regular intervals

… and organisations…

• Having conflicting priorities

• Putting profits before people

• Operating with siloes between teams

• Lacking CX capability at a senior rank to influence

• Start-ups being product-led from the offset

• Small businesses limiting CX to customer service

As well as barriers presented by the stakeholder or organisation, as CX-ers we can operate as barriers within our own right: over-reaching goals, being overly strategic, attempting to force frameworks, and being unwilling to adapt our approach to meet the business or stakeholder needs.

Where to start?

The first step is recognising the point the business is at, identifying the stakeholders to influence, and understanding ‘the environment’ within which the business is operating. Business awareness is critical for diagnosing the approach one should take and the path needed to get there. 

When overcoming barriers, ‘think big and start small’, with proof being provided at the early stage of engagement. For example, starting with a discreet journey, single account, or location, and demonstrating tangible impacts.

How to overcome the barriers?

Overcoming the barriers put up by stakeholders is often a case of trial and error, with experience the greatest indicator of success (and with those who do succeed facing many challenges and setbacks in order to do so!). 

What skills do we need to succeed in overcoming stakeholder barriers?

As well as professional skills such as stakeholder mapping and relationship management practices, we also require a number of personal skills unrelated to CX or the tools that we use. 

1. Self-awareness
   We have to start with ourselves and appraise our own behaviour, skills, and capabilities before challenging what may be lacking in others. 
   
   Asking for feedback from stakeholders about what you do well or could do more/less of is an effective way to gain perspective. Although this fills many of us with fear, it is without a doubt the best way to make the things that we don’t know about ourselves known to us!
   
   

2. Influence
   Why are stakeholder relationships SO important? Well, successful CX is reliant upon the relationship with the stakeholder and the stakeholder’s engagement with a given strategy. As CX professionals, we’re able to borrow power from those who have it if they know, like, and trust us enough to carry our ideas forward to the right people. 
   
   Identifying such a stakeholder and working to cultivate this relationship is the single best strategy for breaking down the barriers to CX (and getting the C-Suite onside). 
   
   “Influence is when you are not the one talking and yet your words fill the room; when you are absent and yet your presence is felt everywhere.”
   – Temitope Ibrahim
   
   

3. Resilience
   As women, we face barriers in many areas of our lives and, as such, resilience is a critical trait.
   
   When met with obstacles, self-care and a sense of community – the idea that a problem shared is a problem halved – can allow us to address both personal and professional issues and prevent us from becoming overwhelmed or chipped away at. 
   
   Having self-discipline when it comes to self-care, and by developing habits that encourage positivity, like gratitude and journaling, we’re better equipped to weather the storm and be undeterred by setbacks.   
   
   “One cannot pour from an empty cup.”
   – Anonymous
   
   

4. Courage
   Noting the difference in attitude and behaviour between men and women within corporate spaces (men challenging barriers head-on and pushing for more), it’s important to note that we too have the ability to push back, but we can do so in a way that demands greater emotional intelligence, as opposed to the creation of conflict.
   
   As female professionals, we have the potential to employ active listening, empathy, and responsiveness in order to win both hearts and minds. 
   
   That being said, we could all be a little better at promoting ourselves and our work. So, don’t forget to celebrate even the small wins!
   
   

5. Credibility
   Consultants are often perceived as more valuable than those working within an organisation (having your approach ignored, only for it to be enthusiastically adopted when proposed by Accenture). Borrowing power from a credible external expert can be one way to get the ball rolling in your choice of direction!
   
   Remember, backing up any proposals with evidence will always be critical to winning support, so make sure you have plenty of proof-points to evidence your theories!
   
   “Credibility is a leader's currency. With it, he or she is solvent; without it, he or she is bankrupt.”
   – John C. Maxwell
   
   

6. Storytelling
   When it comes to CX, storytelling is a powerful medium.
   
   Often tasked with proving the ROI of CX, the ability to humanise the data and to tell a compelling story about why your idea is so important and how it will affect the business’s bottom-line can be the difference between securing buy-in or having your initiative swiftly dismissed.
   
   It’s true that “stories are a communal currency of humanity.” (Tahir Shah)
   

In summary

Having the right CX tools and knowing how to implement them is only a very small part of the CX equation. To overcome barriers, we need emotional intelligence, self-awareness, influence, and courage to persevere in the face of rejection. 

Resilience and positivity, coupled with adaptability, will encourage stakeholders to let us try ‘new’ things. Then it’s up to us to prove these methods with commercial evidence of the impact. 

Taking into account stakeholder expectations and relationships, thinking of stakeholders as our internal customers, we will eventually succeed. 

“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.”
– Steve Maraboli

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Contributors

Thanks to WiCX community members Nicki Osborne, Amélie Beerens, Louise Wadsworth, Laura Sinka, Marta Domingo Alegre, Mandisa Makubalo, Jo Boswell, Ilenia Vidili, Karen De Lorenzo, Lara Khouri, Julie Tano-Lawson, Serena Riley, and Sonia Etxebarria for being part of this conversation.