Strong customer experience (CX) is built through every interaction a customer or client has with a business. CX leaders are therefore fundamental to ensuring every person in the organisation plays a role in shaping and improving it.
In business-to-business (B2B) organisations like professional services firms, client experience (CX) is a firmwide initiative that requires broad and ongoing commitment. The best CX leaders build a culture where every employee, regardless of role, feels accountable for client satisfaction and wants to enhance it. Creating this excellent customer experience for clients is not just about implementing CX processes – it requires strong leadership to break down silos and empower all people across the organisation to “buy in”.
This article provides customer experience leaders and CX champions with an in-depth understanding of critical CX success factors.
Leadership’s role in CX success
Leadership support is important for any change initiative to succeed, including CX. As Paul Hugh-Jones, partner at Beaton says: “If you want to get anything done in a professional services firm, it needs leadership support.”
Beaton’s research into client experience in professional services demonstrates the importance of CX leadership in building a client-centric culture. In B2B firms that have excellent CX, every employee understands their impact on clients and is empowered to improve that impact.
CX champions ensure that CX is a strategic priority, influencing decision-making at all levels. They also play a key role in reducing obstacles to their CX strategy and ensuring firm-wide buy in and support.
Firms that prioritise customer experience through their leadership, including executives and board members, have a much higher likelihood of delivering excellent CX. In the Beaton study, 43 per cent (3 times that of developing CX firms) of firms with excellent CX reported client feedback to their leadership teams at an executive or board level either continuously or near real time.
Key themes emerging from Beaton’s report about the role of leadership in CX success show:
- 71 per cent of firms with excellent CX had customer experience leaders who worked across at least three different functional areas in their firms
- 93 per cent of top firms reported celebrating the success of team members who deliver excellent CX
- 92 per cent of top firms reported that everyone across the firm was empowered to contribute to improving CX processes.
This confirms the necessity of a whole-of-firm approach to CX, where CX leaders should have access to the resources and authority to pull operational levers across the whole firm.
CX culture in leading firms
Paul Hugh-Jones says that top firms have CX culture built into everything they do, empowering staff at all levels to be leaders regardless of role. Leadership has an important role to play in ingraining this type of culture and empowering the wider team to be part of the CX change. The executive and board should receive regular reporting and client feedback to ensure their experience is a positive one at all levels.
Hugh-Jones adds that CX-focused B2B firms also prioritise “leading” by beating competition based on metrics like external benchmarking or net promoter scores (NPS). This is what makes them industry leaders.
“That will be expressed by partners saying, ‘We want to be the leading firm in CX for law or accounting.’ The best firms then measure their progress in net promoter scores or share of wallet or another metric – they ensure that those metrics are visible and measurable to the firm.”
Characteristics of good customer experience leaders
Beaton research finds firms who have leaders championing CX culture outperform their competitors on multiple indicators. Client loyalty, retention and revenue growth are all higher in firms that are set up for and prioritise customer experience success.
The chart below illustrates key indicators of CX maturity discovered by the Beaton research. Having “champions who actively promote CX best practice” is a direct indicator of CX success. However, maintain all indicators below requires strong CX leadership.
Our research shows the best customer experience leaders:
- Promote a firm-wide CX commitment by aligning and empowering teams around a shared vision to improve client service.
- Work to ensure that clients receive consistent service across the firm.
- Allocate resources and strategic attention to prioritise positive CX change.
- Lead CX change management efforts to shift mindsets and behaviours toward client-centricity.
- Encourage breaking down silos for CX by integrating client-focused collaboration across departments.
What makes a good CX leader in B2B?
A strong CX leader in B2B professional services must possess a combination of strategic vision, client empathy, and organisational influence. Unlike B2C environments, where transactions are often one-off, B2B relationships with clients require long-term engagement and deep trust. This requires leaders to take deliberate, consistent action to progress CX across the firm.
As Mike Mortlock, Managing Director of MCG Quantity Surveyors comments in the State of CX report, “The client experience is everything. It’s the reason they’ll come back, tell their friends, or share a 5-star review. Without an understanding of your client experience, a firm is focusing on metrics that are less likely to move the needle and scale the business”.
Beaton’s research shows several CX critical success factors distinguish firms with strong customer experience leadership from others. These are discussed below.
1. Embedding CX into culture
“In firms delivering the best client service, being the best is part of the culture – it is not just in leadership,” says Paul Hugh-Jones.
“Those firms have an entrepreneurial client-centric culture where everyone talks about CX, rather than talking about doing brilliant legal work or whatever else. The client is everything, and nothing is more important to the firm than clients.”
For the best CX leaders, embedding CX into culture means making client experience a core value rather than an isolated initiative. Leaders must integrate customer experience improvement into everyday business practices, ensuring that:
- CX reporting to executives is continuous or in real time, keeping leadership informed of client insights.
- Employees are empowered and trained to prioritise CX in their client interactions.
- CX success is measured regularly via key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure it translates to growth in client relationships, positive return on investment and improvements in net promoter score (NPS).
- Client information is stored in a CRM for ongoing relationship building between multiple touchpoints/people.
Beaton’s research shows firms with excellent CX are more likely to invest a higher proportion of their learning and development budget into training staff in client-facing skills. Almost all (96 per cent) of the top CX firms had at least a small budget allocated to supporting their staff to improve client-facing skills, whereas almost one in five (18 per cent) of developing CX firms reported zero spending in this field.
In firms delivering the best client service, being the best is part of the culture – it is not just in leadership.
2. Establishing CX champions across the firm
Customer experience leaders recognise a top-down approach alone is not enough. They cultivate CX champions at different levels within the firm, empowering employees to advocate for excellent client service.
Beaton’s research highlights CX champions within a firm are a key indicator of CX maturity. Both the leaders and those they are leading appear to benefit from these unofficial roles. These CX champions serve as role models, demonstrating and actively promoting best practices in client interactions. They also drive engagement across teams, ensuring that CX is not just a leadership agenda but a company-wide movement.
As Tony Fittler, Chair of HLB Mann Judd Australasian Association says, “The client experience is intrinsically linked to the employee experience. Our staff enjoy supporting and engaging with the clients. It is important to consider the benefits of seeking employee feedback and how it fits into your CX strategy.”
3. Collecting – and acting on – client feedback
Firms with the most successful CX leaders are not only collecting feedback from clients. They go further by ensuring their teams act on it and use that feedback to guide decisions across the business.
The best leaders ensure feedback is collected through multiple channels. Most have firm-wide systems in place such as feedback monitoring software (such as Beaton Debrief) or participate in annual benchmarking studies to see how they compare to competitors. It’s also crucial to have key account management systems in place that create regular touchpoints for valuable clients.
Among top CX firms, 85 per cent of respondents to Beaton’s research felt empowered to act on client feedback – compared to 61 per cent of respondents in firms still developing CX. The most successful CX firms also “close the loop” on feedback by actioning and responding to clients, use it to make strategic choices and more – shown in the chart below.
4. Using data to drive customer experience success
CX leaders rely on data-driven decision-making to enhance client relationships. They monitor their firm’s net promoter scores (NPS)and regularly benchmark their organisation against competitors. This equips them with the evidence needed to make changes with impact for CX success.
Paul Hugh-Jones says the best firms work on improving CX “like well-oiled machines”.
“Inconsistency can be the biggest challenge in a people business. The best firms have significant and well-established client teams, who are consistently doing things right for the client,” he says. “They’ve got processes and systems in place, they gather and respond to client feedback really well. They find regular ways to check in, ensuring that all clients are happy and engaged.”
The best customer experience leaders in B2B organisations:
- Identify trends in client satisfaction and areas for customer experience improvement.
- Use predictive insights to anticipate client needs and personalise service offerings.
- Make informed decisions that support firm-wide CX commitment.
5. Celebrating CX success
Similarly to “closing the loop” on external feedback, it is important to celebrate team success when CX goals are achieved. Almost all (93 per cent) of the top firms responding to Beaton’s research reported celebrating success of team members delivering excellent CX. This helps nurture a client-centric culture and creates an environment where people in excellent CX firms feel empowered to improve processes (92 per cent) and act on client feedback (85 per cent).
Fascinatingly, the research notes that an “unexpected benefit of improving in CX” is the positive link between improving CX initiatives and employee satisfaction and engagement. Firms that are furthest ahead in CX development have higher net satisfaction scores among their employee and are more likely to report increasing satisfaction scores. Of the most successful CX firms, a net 43 per cent experienced employee satisfaction growth – compared to 17 per cent for developing firms.
“The best firms always make investing in CX a top priority,” says Hugh-Jones. “It’s never done and dusted – the fact is, you can’t ever move on from it.”
Conclusion: CX leaders matter
CX leadership can be a key differentiator in an industry where relationships are paramount. Beaton’s research highlights that firms prioritising customer experience culture and aligning leadership with CX goals achieve:
- Higher client retention and reduced churn rates
- Stronger reputation and referrals from satisfied clients
- Greater revenue growth from long-term client relationships
- Greater employee satisfaction
Customer experience leadership is more than a responsibility – it is a competitive advantage. CX leaders ensure success by embedding CX into culture, developing CX champions, and driving firm-wide CX commitment. By breaking down silos for CX and leveraging data for customer experience improvement, professional services firms can build lasting client relationships and drive sustainable growth.
Explore our client feedback tool for professional services firms, Beaton Debrief, built to boost your CX and automate improvement processes.
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