April 2025 | VOL. 33

"The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking."

- Albert Einstein

Welcome to the April Verde Edition newsletter. This month, we focus our content on helping organizations overcome internal barriers to achieve their customer experience goals. Organizations often fall short of achieving business objectives not because of market conditions or customer issues, but due to internal barriers—siloed departments, misaligned priorities, the pursuit of success at all costs, or internal resistance to change. These obstacles create friction that slows execution, undermines alignment, and dilutes strategic focus. Helping organizations overcome these barriers starts with clear, financially grounded insights that reduce the influence of "opinions" and enhance discussions with facts.

Overcoming internal roadblocks can be challenging. In this edition, we explore how organizations can sidestep common pitfalls and implement solutions that offer clear direction and a measurable connection between CX initiatives and broader business objectives.

We also continue our exploration of how customer experience strategy intersects with loyalty program management—examining both the key drivers of success and the unintended consequences of the Boomerang Effect.

As always, we thank you for your support and welcome your input.

Cheers!

The Verde Group

Your CX Strategy Might Be Great—But Are Your Teams Talking?

You can invest in all the right tools, build the best customer journey maps, and still fall short—if your teams aren’t aligned. When departments operate in silos, even the most promising CX strategies can lose impact (and revenue).

In this new blog post, we dive into why breaking down internal barriers is essential for turning insights into action. Discover how forward-thinking companies are fostering collaboration and leveraging shared data to create customer experiences that truly move the needle.

Because CX isn’t just a department—it’s a team sport.

April Fast Five:

This month's fast five features how Verde Group's Revenue@Risk methodology helps organizations achieve business success and break through organizational siloes:

1. A Salesforce study revealed that 70% of customer experience professionals and executives view silo mentality as the biggest obstacle to customer service.

2. A 2024 MuleSoft survey of over 1,000 IT leaders found that 98% of digital transformation initiatives have been negatively impacted due to data siloing.

3. According to a year-long study of more than 100 global businesses conducted by Roland Berger, nearly 80% of surveyed respondents report “strongly pronounced” silos that negatively impact their company’s costs, innovation potential, culture, and profitability.

4. In a 2021 study by Forrester Research, departmental silos rank as the primary obstacle to customer experience improvement in 54% of organizations, outranking both budget constraints and legacy technology.

5. Organizational silos lead to data silos and poor quality data. According to IBM estimates, the annual cost of poor-quality data is $3.1 trillion. 

April 2025's Question:

Question:  Dear Verde Group, how can I overcome internal resistance and gain alignment across departments when my team members don’t see customer experience as a shared strategic priority?

Answer:  Thank you for your question. The good news is that you are not alone. Many organizations struggle to achieve alignment on the value of voice-of-customer insights and how much they should lean into this data to drive business decisions.

The truth is that many organizations struggle with traditional CX measurement findings when it comes to informing strategic priorities. The reason for this is the lack of financial grounding of the insights. Is the research and unstructured data analysis reliable? Is the data actionable? What financial returns should the company expect if they are to action on the insights? Many of these questions go unanswered or projected based on analysis that can be easily challenged by stakeholders who are not aligned with the CX effort.

This is where The Verde Group excels. A recent case study addresses this exact issue:

Verde Group's Revenue@Risk methodology identified and financially framed 13 specific experiences that, if addressed, would result in over $300M in economic benefit. These findings have been transformative in the C-Suite and have become a key component of their strategic decision-making process. 

READY TO TALK? Book an intro session with Dennis Armbruster, Verde Group Executive VP, to discover how you can enhance the impact of your CX program. We want to help you find methods to anchor your customer insights firmly within your business framework, driving stronger ROI and increasing executive buy-in. We want to learn more about your current challenges.

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