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An increasing number of B2B organizations have begun to prioritize CX over the last few years. Customer intimacy and engagement are now getting the attention of the C-Suite in ways we have never seen before.

With this new emphasis on CX as a discipline, there is an opportunity for CX professionals to transform the way their organizations do business. This can be a daunting task at the outset. It’s often difficult to know where to begin and how. The first step in charting any course is to understand where you are and where you want to go. Too many CX professionals fall into the trap of merely focusing on the latter. The bright shiny future state vision. However, it’s impossible to get there if you don’t understand the current state of your organization and its overall CX Maturity. All lines have two points.

In the first 90 days of a new CX journey, the focus should be on discovery and assessment. The goal during this period is not to make a series of hasty sweeping changes to get to the future state as fast as possible but rather to listen, observe, and document. A successful discovery period achieves an understanding of five core elements:

1. Current and Past Experience of the Customer: This is number one on the list for a reason–there is nothing more important to a CX journey than understanding how customers feel about your organization. Don’t shy away from bad news. There are several ways to achieve an accurate pulse from your customers, but the best way is to simply ask them via a standard survey that identifies the holy trinity of CX metrics (NPS, Customer Effort Score, and Customer Satisfaction) and also allows them to vent via an open text question. This is usually where the meat of a survey lies. In addition, set up a series of face-to-face meetings with customers and ask them how your organization is performing. Customers are rarely shy when it comes to evaluating vendors.

2. Engagement Level of the Teammates that Regularly Interact with Customers: Quickly get a pulse of how engaged the sales and customer service teams are. These teammates are the face of your organization to the customer. If there are morale issues here, it’s likely affecting the way customers are perceiving your organization. The best way to achieve this is through 1x1 meetings as well as anonymous employee engagement surveys. The goal is to create a safe environment where you can get candid feedback. If done correctly, the results are invaluable. Also, take a look at the voluntary attrition numbers for these groups, as well as exit interview information. Are folks leaving these roles at high levels, and if so, what factors are driving this?

3. The Company’s Culture and Associated Change Management Hurdles: We’ve all heard Drucker’s famous quote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Well, guess what? It’s true. The greatest obstacle to creating lasting change and achieving a world-class customer experience will not be knowing what to do or how to do it but rather getting the organization to trust and follow you. That’s why it’s essential to meet with many cross-functional stakeholders before you start your program. You need to understand what makes the organization tick, what the likely objections will be, and what the formula is for gaining trust and support for change. There is no universal answer here. It depends on the company, the people, and, most importantly, the culture. That collection of values, beliefs, ethics, and attitudes that characterize an organization. It’s the key to success or failure in many situations. Dismiss it at your own peril.

"There are several ways to achieve an accurate pulse from your customers, but the best way is to simply ask them via a standard survey that identifies the holy trinity of CX metrics… NPS, CSAT, and Customer Effort… and also allows them to vent via an open text question."

4. Service Delivery Model Utilized to Achieve the Current State: From a more tactical standpoint, it’s important to understand your organization’s service delivery model. Theseare the people, process, technology, and data elements that enable service for your customers. For example, what are the core processes that drive customer interactions? Which of these processes and interactions are most important to the customer? Where is your organization excelling, and where is it dropping the ball? From a technology and data standpoint, are we enabling our customer-facing teammates for success? Do they have answers at their fingertips to the most common customer questions? Are we utilizing technology to move the focus of our customer interactions from transactional to strategic, from impersonal to intimate? With regard to people, do we have the correct level of talent in critical positions? Have we effectively trained them for success? Are we enabling a successful career and succession planning process to ensure business continuity?

5. High Impact / Low-Risk Opportunities: I know I referenced earlier in the article that the goal of the discovery phase is not about immediate sweeping change, and this is true. However, it’s always prudent to identify quick wins in your assessment that can yield immediate results. These are the low-risk, high-impact “just do it” ideas. You’ll typically come across a few of these during the discovery phase. Taking action on just a handful of these types of low-hanging fruit items will help you gain credibility with the executive team and customers alike and will make your more difficult and risky future initiatives less scary and more palatable to the organization.