Building a Culture of Customer-Centricity
How Change Influencers became the secret to sustainable CX Transformation
When companies commit to Customer Experience (CX) transformation, most start with technology, process redesign, or a customer journey map. But the companies that sustain transformation start with people. Specifically, the right people - those who influence culture from the middle out.
At ChangeAccelerators, we recently partnered with a global manufacturing company to design and launch a 12-month CX Change Influencer Program. It was built for one purpose: to turn CX strategy into CX behavior - every day, across every region, in every role.
This wasn’t a communications campaign or training initiative.
This was a human-powered movement.
The business challenge
This organization made a bold investment in CX Transformation. They had a new operating model. They had leadership buy-in, and they had a budget.
But they also had a major gap: Employees weren’t resisting the change - they just didn’t feel connected to it.
Without an embedded, grassroots mechanism to bring CX to life on the ground, the risk was clear: adoption would be shallow, and cultural traction wouldn’t stick, meaning no real business benefits from the investment.
That’s where we came in.
Hand selected change influencers
Instead of relying on standard roles like project managers or product owners or even managers and supervisors, we helped them identify and invite a different kind of leader:
Trusted voices within the business
Natural go-to’s during change or challenge
Employees known for making things happen informally
We called them CX Change Influencers. We invested in them, and we unleashed them.
What the program looked like
We designed a yearlong journey that would build skill, identity, and peer-powered momentum.
The design principle was simple but powerful: “Behavior is the strategy. Influence is the engine.”
We co-created a 12-month development journey that balanced structure and inspiration:
Each month focused on one practical capability - from storytelling and coaching to agile experimentation and CX metrics.
Each capability followed a Learn → Reflect → Apply → Reinforce model, ensuring it wasn't just absorbed, but practiced and reiterated for stickiness.
Each month had 3 learning modes to stimulate learning experiences: a video or guest speaker, a tool or template to use, and an article.
Each Influencer committed to being visible and active - sharing wins, coaching peers, designing rituals, and connecting leadership messages to real-life action.
Topics included:
Communicating the “Why” behind CX
Walking in the customer’s shoes
Mapping influence networks
Surfacing and reframing resistance
Designing CX rituals that reinforce new norms
Participants documented their progress in a digital workbook, submitted monthly reflections, and contributed stories that fed the broader transformation narrative.
We built a CX Community of Practice around the Change Influencers - a grass roots effort to invite more employees into the conversation to reach all corners of the company, led by the Influencers.
Global reach, local ownership
Because this was a global organization, the program had to transcend regional silos.
We created:
Regional cohorts to tailor context and build camaraderie
Shared visuals and toolkits so everyone spoke the same language
A kickoff kit and closing showcase complete with Capstone projects and a Graduation ceremony to build energy at the start and celebrate the ripple effects at the end
By Month 6, we saw informal influence driving formal impact:
A European Influencer introduced a customer empathy ritual that was adopted in APAC
A LATAM cohort ran peer coaching triads and reported clearer ownership of local CX KPIs
An APAC Influencer reframed team resistance through coaching, unlocking faster adoption of a new process
A robust global CX Community of Practice that was both growing and self-sustaining
Results that go beyond metrics
While we tracked engagement, completion rates, and leadership visibility, the real win was cultural:
Employees started asking, not waiting - “How can I improve this for our customer?”
Managers began embedding CX into daily routines, not just quarterly reviews.
CX stopped being ‘someone else’s job’ and became part of the way they worked.
And perhaps most telling: leaders outside of CX began asking how they could get their own Change Influencer network.
Executives may cast the vision.
But trusted, everyday influencers are the ones who carry it forward.
If you’re a leader or transformation owner asking:
“How do I embed this strategy into our culture?”
“How do we sustain momentum after go-live?”
“How do I activate my silent champions?”
Then you need a Change Influencer program.
And we’d love to help you design it.
