Cross-functional VOC Committee

Jeff Breunsbach

Good Morning - We're working to establish a cross-functional committee that can work on customer-impacting projects. This will really be wrapped into our voice-of-customer initiative so that each function in the organization can be working from the same set of truths. 

Curious for the group if you can share any positive or negative experiences with this type of cross-functional committee? How often would you meet? How would you hold people/functions accountable? What did the project management look like? 

Any advice or feedback would be appreciated. 

Tagging a few folks who may have some advice to share...

@Sara Bochino
@Ben Bunting
@Alejandro Sanchez

@Anna Alley



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Jeff Breunsbach
Founder | Gain Grow Retain
Director of Customer Experience | Higher Logic

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Anna Alley

Hey Jeff,

We've actually been exploring something similar. We don't have an actual cross-functional committee at this time. What we do typically see is whenever we have an initiative at play that's going to impact the customer experience, myself and/or my team is engaged, as well as the customer marketing team. However, we've definitely had recent issues where there are too many initiatives happening in silos and trying to wrangle them together and look at them holistically (bundling communication, bundling change management, etc.). Because of this we're starting with formalizing customer communication process/requests, which include some basic questions and check points the requester has to answer (including if certain teams have been informed/engaged). This will likely evolve into a larger customer experience stakeholder group as we move forward. I don't foresee this group actually running the projects, but more has to stay informed, approve, and provide input into projects being run by others. If this group wanted to initiate a project, we'd likely engage the internal Project Management team that we have at our company to lead the project and hold parties accountable at a detailed level.
Would love to stay updated as you evolve this - maybe I'll steal something from you! :-)

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Anna Alley
Director of Customer Success & Advocacy
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-03-2020 12:34
From: Jeff Breunsbach
Subject: Cross-functional VOC Committee

Good Morning - We're working to establish a cross-functional committee that can work on customer-impacting projects. This will really be wrapped into our voice-of-customer initiative so that each function in the organization can be working from the same set of truths. 

Curious for the group if you can share any positive or negative experiences with this type of cross-functional committee? How often would you meet? How would you hold people/functions accountable? What did the project management look like? 

Any advice or feedback would be appreciated. 

Tagging a few folks who may have some advice to share...

@Sara Bochino
@Ben Bunting
@Alejandro Sanchez

@Anna Alley



------------------------------
Jeff Breunsbach
Founder | Gain Grow Retain
Director of Customer Experience | Higher Logic

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BenB

These can be fun... We had one at my last job.  After years of NO customer success and no customer success mind set (eveything was handled by Account Management or Support).  

We had executive engagement - and they had to be present at the meeting.  The typical challenge is people will come to the meeting BUT if not results are delivered, the only person who cares or is accountable is the CS VP or director.  Everyone walks away still blaming eachother (typically support and CS departments) and goes back into same habbits. 

So if the CEO can be a part in assigning who owns what, and what is truly expected  there should be better results.    but this came from my experience where we were climbing out of years of silos and differing agendas.

Sara Bochino

Hey @Jeff Breunsbach, 
We host a monthly #VoiceofCustomer meeting with sales leadership (what are we hearing in the sales cycle/renewal cycle?), marketing (what feedback are we hearing from market research?), services (where are our teams struggling?), support (are there themes we can learn from within tickets that help us get better) which I run, but is sponsored by our CRO (my manager). 

Each meeting we discuss direct customer feedback, learnings from the previous month, but most importantly we celebrate what we have accomplished. I think when you have these functions together its easy to focus on whitespace and get discouraged. I make a point to show where we've been so people can understand what we've done and how that impacts our next steps. 

We use a project plan template and are always evolving the priorities and materials to keep us moving.

Alejandro Sanchez

Jeff,

The type of committee, the size, who's involved and what is discussed will vary depending on the goals. The more informative and less actionable your goals are, you can have a larger group, make it a short meeting, with some visual aids or guiding questions/topics, and a format open to discussion. There also needs to be someone responsible for owning taking notes and following up. But for the rest of the attendees, there is no action and it's just a "we are thinking about this direction/project/initiative what d y'all think" type of meeting.

However, if what's being discussed has some meat already and it's time to take action (start developing the product, doing concrete market research, involve customers, etc) then less people should be involved (and only those that are directly affected by what's discussed) , clear goals and timelines should be established, and while there is still one meeting owner needed to be the secretary, it needs to be clear what's expected out of everyone attending. So clear expectations before and after the meeting are very important. 

So early stage meetings to brainstorm and share information work best if:
- shorter
- not very often
- have an owner who guides and follows up
- elicit participation of people but there are no action items in anyone's plate other than the owner
- make sure to address to do's in subsequent meetings so that attendees know it is not a waste of time

Later stage meetings where specific projects are being discussed:
- more detailed and potentially longer
- only relevant people directly affected are invited
- very clear goals before and after the call
- very clear expectations set for the participants about their involvement (why they are there and what is expected from them)
- clear action items with timelines need to come out of the meeting
- there is still a "secretary" but everyone in attendance also has ownership and accountability