Did you know that today's customer experience is more important than ever? Over the years, companies have tapped into what it means to take care of their customers and, in return, learned how positive customer satisfaction improves business. To master the customer experience, companies must focus on every touchpoint, prioritizing breaking down organization silos to foster a collaborative employee experience.
Cross-team collaboration directly affects the customer experience. From breaking down silos to focusing on the same goal, improving collaboration, and centralizing every team member's primary focus proves to impact the bottom line.
A silo can be a department within an organization or company that stands alone and chooses what information comes in and out of its doors. For example, a marketing department may be disconnected entirely from the sales team, causing a lack of communication and shared information, impacting each department tremendously.
In a siloed organization, trust is disrupted between individual teams, and information is withheld. With the lack of free-flowing information, informed and strategy-driven decisions are rarely thought out. Organizations become less flexible, communication is slow, and they cannot act on immediate opportunities. This affects everything from the supply chain to sales and, ultimately, the customer experience. To be customer-centric and achieve long-term goals, silos cannot exist. Everything that a brand does should be driven by customer satisfaction to compete with the competition. By breaking down silos inside a company, a company's long-term success has a chance.
When leaders of individual teams are on board for cross-team collaboration, others will follow. This includes setting an expectation for cross-team collaboration and information sharing. Leaders can help improve communication by providing sufficient time for think sessions and internal presentations to help each team learn more about the other.
One tactical procedure to improve interaction is assigning individuals the role of being the main bridge between two departments. The individuals can relay information from their team and bring new knowledge daily. These team leaders can help foster trust and help their team get out of a department-focused mindset and into a more holistic approach to their role inside the company. When each team understands the other team better, mutual respect for team leaders funnels down to accepted feedback and everyday workflows. Thus creating the best end-product elevates the customer experience.
Each team inside an organization has individual goals and measures of success. However, each department should be aware of the company's broad, overarching goals and how to improve customer experience continually. This re-focus of company goals vs. team goals will unify and align the whole team, bringing awareness to each team's purpose in achieving these goals.
Tools can provide insight into the big picture, and a company can benefit from tools that help connect one team to another. By connecting CRM software to other teams' accessible data, everyone in the company can see sales' overall accomplishments. Other tools include project management platforms that allow for chat and easy collaboration, fostering cross-team communication habits.
When teams communicate more in an easy-to-use platform, collaboration becomes necessary in accomplishing high-quality goals. By helping individuals look past their team goals, employees' eyes will be open to how collaboration can help them achieve goals that improve customer experience and, ultimately, ROI.
Want to improve your cross-team collaboration? Contact GROWL today!