To meet customers’ ever-growing expectations, both large and small businesses have realized the importance of customer experience (CX) over the past few years and have begun to implement CX initiatives. These well-intentioned programs have huge potential to shift internal cultures to a CX-focused mindset, however a lack of communication and transparency can often halt progress before it’s even had a chance to really begin. 

That’s why it's so crucial to incorporate CX into internal communications and employee engagement and incentives programs from the start. The more upfront buy-in you can create within all levels of the organization, the more you increase the likelihood and speed of accomplishing real change and delivering on real outcomes through customer experience.

Organizations that make customer experience part of who they are and part of their daily workflow never stop communicating about it. They communicate often and communicate earnestly. The following are five actionable tips for how to set up a successful plan for CX communications. 

1. Start with why. Why are we doing this and why is it important?
2. Ask your CEO to share why CX is important to them and share the article/video with all employees.CX can usually be tied back to the organization's mission and brand promise.
3. Remind employees why this is important and why it matters for your customers and your organization. 
4. What does success look like? 
5. Be specific about your goals for the CX program and share your plans to achieve success. 
6. Explain how everyone benefits from achieving these results. Do you plan to have a bonus program based on revenue goals? Or an incentive program for meeting CX performance goals? 
7. Implement monthly/quarterly team progress check ins and discuss updates, roadblocks and recent achievements.
8. Measure customer satisfaction and be transparent about results.
9. Survey customers about how you are doing in your CX areas of focus to create benchmark data and track improvement.
10. Discuss what the metrics really mean and be clear about what the goals are for the team and the individual. 
11. Be proactive about sharing data on a daily/weekly basis so your employees know where they stand.
12. Celebrate CX success and recognize top performers. 
13. Employees want to succeed - make sure you recognize and celebrate them when they do. 
14. Communicate success often and organization-wide. Think beyond the monthly newsletter and get creative with public displays of recognition. 
15. Co-create customer journey maps and share insights with all teams. 
16. Engage employees in creating CX journey maps and identifying opportunities for improvement. 
17. Share the findings, review the maps often and request feedback and ideas. Share your plans for acting on feedback and improving the journey. 
18. Let employees know how you heard them and how their feedback created real change.

Internal communications about customer experience programs shouldn’t be an afterthought. The more ingrained CX can become into the everyday culture of the organization, the better the long term outcomes.