DYK # 36: Did you know… that it’s the job of the CX team to empower everybody else?
Last year, in December 2024, we predicted: Organisations will start treating CX as a team sport.
In hindsight, we should have titled it “Organisations MUST treat CX as a team sport or risk getting left behind”. Subsequently, we published our DYK # 25 last year, outlining: “Did you know... that CX must become a team sport to be successful?”
If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll know that we started to introduce the idea of “CX is a Team Sport” last year, and it’s becoming a key differentiator for organisations.
In fact, it’ll become the “secret” (not so secret) sauce to success that separates successful organisations from failing ones in 2026 and beyond!
Quick summary of our previous DYK # 25:
👉 Driving business growth with AI-powered CX only works if we break down data & technology but also cultural siloes, and embrace CX as a team sport.
👉 As an organisation, we must collectively and holistically understand and intentionally design experience for our customers and our people.
👉 Technologies and KPIs must be aligned to drive customer AND business needs, not purely driving success in siloed areas.
Today, one year on, we hear a lot more talk about the idea that organisations need to treat CX as a collective effort, break down silos and work together to truly become customer centric.
That’s great.
The question is, how do we actually do that? And if we’re all responsible for the customer experience, why do we still need a CX team?
So let’s look into this:
Why do we need a CX team?
Your CX team is your "orchestrator" or your “coach”, coordinating activities, and empowering and supporting all other teams to deliver great CX consistently across the entire organisation, end-to-end.
Your CX team sets the direction (CX strategy + vision), and provides the tools, guidance and oversight needed to coordinate all activities and ensure all teams are aligned on what you’re aiming for in terms of delivering “great CX”.
But it’s not the CX team that’s actually delivering the work, that’s all other teams.
Different approaches
If we apply a decentralised approach to CX, even with good intentions from all other teams, you’ll end up with inconsistencies, different approaches, uncoordinated activities, and a lack of clarity about what we’re aiming for.
When your marketing department makes promises your product team can't keep, or your digital team launches a broken feature, it's your frontline staff who face the fallout. They all have good intentions, but it’s not a connected undertaking and ends up as a disjointed experience for the customer.
What we’re aiming for is consistency and an end-to-end approach, with all teams clear on their role in the journey, working together to achieve our overarching goals.
We need to get everyone in our organisation to play together, so to speak. That’s the central idea behind our “CX is a Team Sport” concept.
The concept: CX is a Team Sport
If you’ve been enjoying our content for some time, you may know that I used to be a competitive athlete, and that I’m a world champion in the 500m sprint outrigger canoeing team boat event. So I like to compare CX success to success in high performing and winning team.
If we look at a waka ama (New Zealand term for Outrigger Canoe, see picture above), we typically have 6 people in a boat, and each of those 6 people have a slightly different job to do.
Seat one is the pacer, seat 2 is the pacer on the second side, seat 3 the caller, seat 4 is the powerhouse, seat 5 is a backup steerer, seat 6 the steerer.
All 6 paddlers have different jobs to do, just like departments in organisations have jobs to do to help the organisation perform. But they need to work together to win the race, and focus on the entire boat, not just their own job.
Winning teams typically have 2 things:
Clarity and buy-in on what they’re aiming to achieve and how each person contributes
Support from a coach to oversee the team, provide feedback, and guide and coach
It’s the same in organisations. Marketing’s job is different from Finance, from Product, from Operations, etc. but they need to work together to provide a better customer experience. Even if all departments agree to focus on CX, without an overarching approach, clear strategy, and cross-departmental coordination, we’ll end up continuing with disconnected teams, processes, and solutions.
We need “someone” to oversee, support and empower. That "someone" is your CX Team. CX is not another paddler in the boat, they’re your coach.
It’s not the job of the CX team to do marketing, finance, customer service, etc. but it’s the CX team’s job to help everyone see and understand how they impact the customer experience, and what we’re aiming for in terms of delivering great CX every single day, consistently across the entire organisation.
Your CX team is your organisation’s coach, who looks at your “waka” (aka your organisation) from an outside in view. Your CX team is your coach, empowering all teams to provide better experiences for your customers, and ultimately help us achieve sustainable business growth.
If you’d like to learn more about this, check out our recent CCNNZ Kiwi Collective podcast: Breaking down silos, the secret to world class CX. Tune in for a practical blueprint on transforming your organization's approach to customer centricity, and how to foster genuine collaboration and put your customer at the heart of every decision.
Stay tuned for 2026 as we’ll share more detail on this… And there might just be a “CX is a Team Sport” book in the making too! 📖
Thanks for tuning in, and as always, feel free to reach out to discuss how we can help you on your journey!
#CX #Customerexperience #VoC #CXTeamSport #customercentricity