VP of Marketing and Customer Engagement at HUGHES, Sue Brady, shares insights about her team's CXNow! program, an innovative approach to unearthing ideas to improve customer experience. Sue and show host, Julia, discuss the genesis for the program, the resulting impact on the customer journey and what had put CXNow! in a different stratosphere from your run-of-the-mill employee suggestion box. If you’re interested in a real life example of how CX professionals are realizing change and making CX relevant in their organization, then this episode is for you.

A CX leader in action

Sue Brady is the the Vice President of Marketing and Customer Engagement, HUGHES Networks Systems. Sue is a strategic and results-driven marketing executive with a proven ability to grow revenue and profits through online and direct marketing channels. In addition to her marketing duties, in the last two years she has been co-leading a newly created Customer Experience Team. The goal of the team has been to spread the practice of always putting the customer first.Hughes Network Systems, LLC (we’ll refer to it as HUGHES from here on out) is the global leader in broadband satellite technology and services for home and office. Its flagship high-speed satellite Internet service is HughesNet®, the world’s largest satellite network with over 1.4 million residential and business customers across the Americas. Headquartered outside Washington, D.C., in Maryland, Hughes operates sales and support offices worldwide, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar CorporationLike many CX professionals, Sue comes from a marketing background, though she has been involved with customer experience for many years. HUGHES' parent company EchoStar has always emphasized customer experience, and when the leadership team decided to formalize a CX function, Sue was a natural fit for the role. Her skills have been complemented by those of her CX co-lead who hails from a customer service support background. They both had CX-related responsibilities already as a part of their ‘regular’ jobs, but this shift put more focus on CX. It sounds like HUGHES has found a way to bring together the best of both worlds to great a CX powerhouse in their organization.Sue Brady Vice President Marketing and Customer Engagement, HUGHES

To learn more about Sue, be sure to check out her LinkedIn profile or follow her on Twitter, where she often posts nuggets of insight about CX And digital marketing. If you'd like to learn more about HUGHES, they've got a great website with details about their products and services. CXNow! in the spotlight

Customer journeys are works in progress. As customer wants and needs or the technology underpinning the experience evolves, so should the journey. But how do CX teams gather ideas to improve customer experience? One approach is to go straight to the horse's mouth and ask customers what they want. Most organizations with a CX program do this, and it yields tons of insights, but it can also be difficult or time-consuming to manage customer listening on an ongoing basis. That’s why many organizations also turn to their employees as an additional source of ideas for journey improvement. Since employees have a unique perspective about what goes on behind the scenes, they are well-positioned to combine this with things they have had to troubleshoot in the past. HUGHES CXNow! program does just that. The program was designed to encourage employees, service center contractors and installers to start thinking about ways that the company could improve customer experience. Ideas are submitted through a centralized email inbox, where they are reviewed, vetted and actioned by a cross-functional team on a weekly basis. Team members who submit ideas are recognized through posters, video reels and badge pins. This campaign aspect of the program helps create a sense of ownership and sustain organization-wide energy around the program. CXNow!