Experience Is Everything: The CX Podcast with Jeannie Walters
Experience Is Everything: The CX Podcast with Jeannie Walters is where customer experience leaders get real strategy for building what comes next, not just managing what already happened. It explores what it actually takes to build proactive customer experience: the mindset that shapes how your team sees every interaction, the strategy that turns that mindset into a plan, and the discipline that makes it stick day after day. Hosted by Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP, and author of the USA Today bestseller Experience Is Everything, each episode gives CX leaders real answers they can put to work immediately.
Experience Is Everything: The CX Podcast with Jeannie Walters
Inside vs. Outside: Rethinking Who Sees Your CX Mission
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Should your CX mission statement stay behind the curtain or belong in the hands of the people who actually deliver your customer experience? We tackle a sharp listener question: in a B2B organization with an exclusive customer relationship, can sharing your customer experience mission statement improve alignment, especially when that customer shows up as your retail front line?
We start with what a CX Mission Statement is really for: a universal, aligned internal language that acts as a North Star for decisions and behavior. I explain why strong mission statements avoid corporate jargon, internal acronyms, and empty superlatives like “best” or “greatest,” and why the focus has to move beyond products and services to the real outcomes customers need. Then we dig into the risk of sharing it externally. If the mission is even slightly aspirational, customers can treat it like a promise and hold you to it when you’re not meeting it perfectly.
But partnerships change the equation. When a distributor, channel partner, or exclusive customer is helping deliver the experience, we can’t leave them out. I share a practical way to bring partners into alignment: identify overlapping moments in the journey, translate the mission into clear expectations, and provide “mission moments” that show what the mission looks like in real life. We also connect the dots to B2B buyer trust, where competence matters most and consistency and dependability sit right behind it.
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Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything -- http://experienceiseverythingbook.com
Learn more about CXI Membership™ and apply -- http://CXIMembership.com
Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP on LinkedIn!)
Listener Question Sets The Stage
Jeannie WaltersIf experience really is everything, then who should we include in who we talk to about it? That's one of the areas we're talking about thanks to a great question from Peter.
Listener QuestionHi Jeannie, I'm currently reading your fantastic book, Experience is Everything. On page 60, keeping the customer top of mind, you outline that the CX mission statement is not something you would necessarily share with your customers, because it is not intended for customers. My question is: if you're in a B2B organization, would you see sharing the CX mission statement with your one customer due to exclusivity with your product as a benefit to help align the organizations, especially at a retail
What A CX Mission Is For
Listener Questionlevel?
Jeannie WaltersWell, Peter, first of all, thank you for the shout out. Of course, I love that you're reading the book. Experience is Everything. And I love that you gave me a page number to talk about. So we are looking at page 60 where it says keeping the customer top of mind. This is all about how to use the mission. This is all about what to do once you have the mission statement in hand, which we cover in chapter one. So here's what I think is really compelling about the question that Peter asked. I believe that we struggle with this as CX leaders. We sometimes don't know who should we share the mission with? How do we actually do this? Who do we roll it out to? And what do we share with our customers? Now, the reason that we have the CX mission statement is to create that universal aligned internal language about who we are no matter what for our customers. It's our North Star. It's a way to really make sure we are speaking the same language around CX. Now, when we develop a CX mission statement, as I outline in chapter one of Experience is Everything, we have to avoid common things like corporate speak or jargon or internal acronyms, things that maybe feel meaningful in the moment, but might not be long-term, and they probably aren't what's important
Why Sharing Can Backfire
Jeannie Waltersto our customers. We have to think beyond our products and services and think about what is it that our products and services do for our customers. That's what we really want to dig into. We also want to avoid superlatives, those words like best or greatest or fastest, because frankly, we can't. We can't do it. So we can still be aspirational in our mission statement, but we want to make sure that it's realistic at the same time. The reason we don't want to necessarily share it with our customers is because if we share something that is slightly aspirational or more about kind of inside the operation, how we want to show up, they could take it like an agreement, like a promise, and hold that back to us when maybe we aren't living up to that mission 100% all the time. The way I like to use the mission is to make sure that we are using it as a tool, as a guide. So we can say, hey, did we live up to this mission or not? Why or why not? And what can we learn? How do we get better at this next time? How do we make sure that
When An Exclusive Customer Is A Partner
Jeannie Walterswe're delivering? So this question, Peter is asking, isn't really about customers in general. It's not even specifically about B2B. It's about something that sounds a little closer to a partnership. If you have an exclusive customer, and I'm putting that in quotes, who actually is helping you serve as your front line, which is what can happen in retail, what we want to do is make sure that we're including them in the understanding of what the experience is. If they're the ones who are actually delivering the experience, we have to include them in this conversation. We have to make sure that they have the tools in order to be aligned around the mission. So in the case that Peter discussed, you want to think about where are those overlapping moments, where are those joint points of documentation. You could actually use your CX mission statement in something like an annual report or investor presentations. That can be very meaningful as long as it's understood about what it is. So depending on the relationship, depending on if it's closer to a partnership or maybe it's more of a field distribution partner,
How To Share Without Confusion
Jeannie Waltersyou want to make sure that you are including them in that discussion. So instead of just sending it out and hoping for the best, you actually want to help translate what are your expectations around that? How can you help them deliver on that? Invite them into the discussion and conversation so that they will use it as a tool and not just some document that they got from on high. That's how I would do it. That's what I would look for. The last step in developing a CX mission statement is connect. It's around how do we put this all together so it makes sense. When you're doing that, it's great to think about how you will use this as well. And if you have partners like that to include, go ahead and include them in that development of the CX mission statement. If you already have a CX mission statement and you want to share it with your partners, don't just set it and forget it. Make sure that you are actually giving them more than the mission. Give them a guide around mission moments. What does this mission look like in the real world? How can we deliver on it? How can we make sure our employees understand it? What are the ways we can use it as a yardstick, as a way to measure are we delivering on this or not? As I often say, it's not really about the actual deliverable of the mission statement. It's how you use it. That's when you see real transformation, success, and alignment around who you are for your customers, no matter
Consistency Builds B2B Trust
Jeannie Walterswhat. One of the outcomes that the CX mission statement is designed to produce is consistency. And one thing we're seeing and hearing and learning is that customers want consistency. That's what builds trust. In Forrester's research around the global state of business buyer trust, they found that the biggest drivers of trust in B2B customers, competence was first, but right behind that, consistency and dependability. That tells us that the more that we can have alignment with our partners, with our main customers, perhaps, with everybody in the organization, we're going to be able to build trust with our customers. And really, that's what it all comes down to in today's world. What a great question, Peter. Thank you so much. Thank you for asking. Thank you for reading. Thank you for sharing.
Resources And Next Steps
Jeannie WaltersIf you're ready to turn insights into action, join CXI Membership, our community for customer experience investigators just like you. Get the tools, support, and inspiration to move from ideas to true impact. And don't miss my book, Experience is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations. A USA Today bestseller. And if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Until next time, keep asking questions, keep improving, and keep leading with experience.
