How to Get Buy-In From Other Departments to Resolve a Customer Experience Issue

As your Team Lead takes yet another customer escalation about the poorly worded instructions in the user guide, they ask exasperated, “why can’t they just fix this?” Equally exasperated, you’ve tried. Nobody will listen. 

It’s a tough place to be in, but we’ve all been there. We want the very best experiences for our customers, and when something that seems so simple to resolve doesn’t get the attention from marketing, sales, logistics, product, or leadership in general, it can feel like the company doesn’t really care about its customers, or your department, or maybe even you. 

It’s a hard truth, but decisions on whether or not a business allocates resources for a solution can come down to how well we as service leaders have presented the case. We see the issue everyday, but they don’t. How big is the issue really and what is it costing us? 

Here are some steps you can take to increase the chances you’ll get a fix.

Establish relationships before you need them 

In customer service, we know how important relationships are to a business. You’ve seen your own people lock in customer loyalty for life because of one exceptional interaction, or end conversations for good because of one particularly poor one. The strength of your relationships with other departments are important too and can very much influence how steep a hill you have to climb when you want help. This doesn’t mean you need to personally befriend the social media team, but it sure does help to have a foundation of trust and respect in place before you ask for a change. 

Understand the other side

You want it done your way because it makes customers happy. They want it done their way because it makes more sales, or it saves money, or another business does it this way. Maybe they actually do want it done your way too but they don’t have time and resources now to make that happen. Whatever their side of the story is, it’s valid. You need to learn about their perspective and acknowledge their challenges so you’re capable of seeing the big picture. When you have both sides, you’re more empathetic to others’ needs, which makes you a more considerate collaborator and more likely to find a solution that makes sense for both teams. 

Collect data and connect it to a story

Be prepared to present numbers to justify why the issue is important enough to require a solution. This could be the number of inquiries related to the issue, the handle time for this inquiry type, the CSAT for this inquiry type, the NPS scores for the impacted customers, the retention rate for the impacted customers, the cost the issue has on the department, the feedback customers have submitted, even the engagement levels of agents having to solve the issue. When presenting your data, think about your audience and which “language” they’re most likely to understand. Someone on the product team for example may not be that moved by a drop in agent engagement or CSAT, but will become very interested at hearing the number of inquiries received and customer feedback in their own words. When in doubt, all departments speak dollar, and it will be the cost of the issue against the cost of the fix that will likely determine the outcome of the situation. 

It can also help to tell a few specific stories behind the data. Who was this customer? What did they experience? How did it feel? In what ways did the issue impact them? This helps others understand the emotional side of the issue.

When there is no action

You’ve shared, you’ve debated, and everyone decided to allow the issue to continue. Now what?

While it doesn’t make the jobs of the customer service department any easier, in some situations, not fixing an issue really is the best decision for the success of the business. If this is the case, how can you make the customer and agent experience as painless as possible? What is in your power to modify or improve? A/B test macros until you find the option that sits best with your customers. Work with agents on how to handle these challenging situations.

If you feel the wrong decision has been made and the company just doesn’t understand the impact of the issue, don’t give up yet. Sometimes “no” is just “not yet.” Continue collecting data and when the time is right, bring the issue up again. For big changes especially, it can take months, even years, to persuade.

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