Influence With no
Authority
How CX Helped Bring the Customer Back Into the Room
Imagine the company as a room.
Outside the room is the world:
customers we serve and those we haven’t reached yet, potential markets, competitors, shifting expectations, opportunities we don’t even know exist yet.
Inside the room are the employees -
Product, marketing, R&D, loyalty, sales.
Some stand close to the door, hearing what comes in.
Some peek through a window, catching glimpses of the outside world.
Others have no view at all. And a few roles, like sales or support, live mostly outside.
And the CX?
We’re the ones who go in and out, constantly moving between the world and the room. Listening. Observing. Coming back with stories that matter.
And finding a way to tell those stories so that they land, so that they shift perspective, guide decisions, create clarity, and connect the company back to the people it's meant to serve.
But no one gave us a microphone
Our influence depends entirely on how well we can move ideas between what we hear out there and what others are ready to act on in here.
So how do I do that? This is one story.
Step one: Map the room.
I began by speaking with decision-makers across departments. Not to ask what they needed from customer, but what stories they already believed about them.
What types of users were they designing for, selling to, writing for?
What challenges did they believe were most important?
What were they unsure about?
Some answers overlapped. Some contradicted.
But more than anything, they revealed the internal narratives shaping the way the company thought about the outside world.
This became the foundation.
Step two: Get outside.
I gathered input from customer interviews, surveys (large-scale and in-product), online reviews, user forums, support logs, usage analytics, and competitor research.
I focused not just on features or feedback, but on recurring patterns
and emotional drivers.
I redesigned and scaled surveys to touch different stages of the customer journey.
I conducted interviews across user personas, each with distinct goals and relationships to the product.
And I mapped competitive experience benchmarks to identify gaps, expectations, and opportunity spaces.
What mattered was turning insight into
Communication Tools
-
And Targeted Presentations
For project needs or departmental goals.
-
Persona Frameworks
-
Prioritized Pain Point Maps
-
Customer Journeys
Behind the scenes: Building influence.
To translate insight into action, I had to work through people.
That meant building strong relationships with product directors, owners, marketing leads, loyalty managers, analysts, and support.
Sometimes I initiated product ideas
based on unmet user needs or emerging behavioral patterns.
Other times I stepped into initiatives
already in motion and worked to shape them
around real customer insight.
My goal was always the same:
Understand what the
business was trying to achieve
Clarify what
the user needed
and define the shared value
where those two stories could meet.
The challenge:
influence without authority.
All of this work wouldn't mattered if it didn’t lead to action.
Unfortunately, I didn’t own the roadmap. Or the messaging. Or the strategy.
What I had was the ability to translate complexity into direction, and to do it in ways people could act on.
That meant showing up in planning conversations, contributing to prioritization frameworks, and reframing customer narratives in ways that supported business and product thinking.
Sometimes I helped shape
Product
requirements through real feedback.
Sometimes I supported
Marketing
in refining segmentation based on behavior.
Other times I helped care and
Loyalty
teams reframe “difficult” users as signals of unmet need.
But often, the biggest impact came from simply shifting the conversation:
“Which customer is this decision for?”
“What outcome are they really looking for?”
“does what we build addressing the pain and needs of users?”
This was UX, applied to the organization itself
I used the same principles we apply to users: empathy, mapping, friction, and designing paths forward.
To embed a customer mindset, I had to first understand the narratives my colleagues were operating within, and then shift them through clarity, empathy, and results.
It’s subtle work. When people start asking the right questions without me in the room, that’s when I know it landed.
In the end,
CX gave me more than insights, it gave me a way to help people see differently.
Stories can change what people believe. And once that shifts, decisions follow.
Summary of the process
1
Narrative Mapping
Surface internal beliefs about customers
3
Pattern Synthesis
Translate findings into strategic tools & maps
5
Strategic Alignment
Bridge user needs with business goals
7
Cultural Integratio
Embedded mindset through tools, language, rituals
2
Insight Gathering
Conducted multi-source research and interviews
4
Relationship Building
Establish trust across key stakeholders
8
Impact Measurement
Tracked adoption and business outcomes
6
Influence Activation
Framed insights to guide product and priorities
“Curious about specific outcomes?”
I deeply respect the privacy of the companies I work with, but I’d love to connect and share more.
I’d be happy to walk you through real examples of the impact, results, and decisions I helped shape
Curious to dive deeper? I’d be happy to chat one-on-one.