Every year, hundreds of professional services firms appoint someone to "own client experience." Most of those people get a title, a vague mandate, and no map.
If that's you, you already know the feeling. Someone above you decided the firm needs to be more client-centric. Maybe a major account left without warning. Maybe a competitor started winning pitches your firm used to win. Whatever the trigger, the work is now yours. You've read plenty about CX. What nobody has handed you is the answer to the only question that matters right now: what do I actually do, in what order, and how do I know it's working?
We built CX Foundations to answer that question. It's a nine-month program that takes everything we've learned running comprehensive CX transformations for some of the world's largest firms and compresses it into the sequence a first-time CX leader needs to establish a working CX function. You finish with the function itself: a strategy, a roadmap, journey maps, trained colleagues, feedback systems, and a governance structure that keeps it all running long after the program ends.
Here's what it is, what you build each month, and how to know whether it's the right way for you to start.
New CX leaders get stuck in a gap. A full CX transformation with a big consultancy runs well into seven figures and takes years. Hiring one senior CX resource costs $200K+ before they've produced anything. Doing it alone means inventing the methodology while executing it, figuring out by trial and error what to sequence first and which steps are wasted motion. Trial and error is an expensive teacher when you only get one first year.
CX Foundations closes that gap. It's between 8x and 10x faster and less costly than a comprehensive CX program, and it costs less than half of what you'd pay for one skilled CX hire. You get a dedicated CX Pilots team, our full methodology, and every foundational component the big firms build.
It's also built around something we've learned the hard way: a new CX function lives or dies on visible progress. So the program is engineered to produce a quick win every three to five weeks. In year one, momentum is what keeps the firm leaning in.
Nine stages, each roughly a month, each ending in concrete tools that build on the last.
Month 1 — Assessment. We survey your clients and your employees using our Qualtrics platform, then analyze the results into a picture of your firm's CX maturity: where the gaps are, where value is leaking, and where different stakeholders disagree about how things are really going. You get the assessment strategy, the survey instruments, the invitation communications, and the full output analysis. This is your baseline. Every decision that follows is grounded in what your clients and colleagues actually said, not in whoever argues loudest in the partner meeting.
Month 2 — CX strategy. Two facilitated four-hour workshops with your team. Out of them, we build your firm's CX strategy: vision, goals, objectives, and an engagement model, aligned to your existing corporate strategy so leadership reads CX as business. This document tells everyone where the effort is going and, just as usefully, where it isn't.
Month 3 — Roadmap. A visual, milestone-based plan showing exactly what happens over time and what it produces. Firms that pursue CX without a documented path get perceived internally as improvising, and improvisation is what gets programs quietly defunded.
Month 4 — Persona and journey map. Together we build one detailed client persona and the full journey that client takes with your firm: every stage, channel, emotional high and low, moment of truth, and friction point. Journey maps are the MRI of your client relationships. This is usually the deliverable that turns skeptics. It's the first time operations, business development, and delivery are all looking at the same picture of the client, and seeing friction nobody owned because nobody could see it.
Month 5 — Coaching and training. Three custom training modules and 16 hours of directed coaching for the people who matter most, whether that's leadership, middle management, or the front line. Popular modules include The ROI of CX for your CFO, journey mapping teach-the-teacher, and spotting weakening relationships before they become departures. You choose; we recommend. After this month, CX stops being one person's project.
Month 6 — Opportunity framing. We convene your leadership, arm them with pre-work, and facilitate a working session where they decide, on the record, what CX is supposed to produce: better win rates, lower churn, more projects per account, more ideal clients. Most firms never realize CX efforts can be aimed at specific business outcomes. This is where yours takes aim, and where leadership shifts from watching the program to steering it.
Month 7 — Culture and communications. By now the program has produced real results, and people across the firm are wondering what all this CX activity means for them. We build the communications strategy that answers that, plus a fully designed CX Charter: a booklet in your firm's own language that tells every employee what CX is, why the firm is investing in it, and what their role is in making it work.
Month 8 — Feedback systems. Complete client and employee feedback strategies: what to ask, whom to ask, when, through what channels, and how to close the loop so feedback turns into action instead of dashboards. If your firm currently equates CX with "we send an annual survey," this month replaces that with a system that continuously feeds you the signals that predict account health.
Month 9 — Metrics and governance. The stage that separates programs that compound from programs that fade. We set up your governance structure (who meets, how often, against what agenda, tracking which metrics) so the CX function keeps making decisions and proving its value on its own. What you finish with is an operating machine.
You're just beginning and establishing the right CX objectives for your organization for the first time. You need a proven path from A to B, because you want to get this right the first time, without unnecessary steps or needless spending. You may have a small team meeting about CX, or it may be just you. Someone higher up handed you the mandate. And you don't have the budget to hire McKinsey, but you need outcomes anyway.
If instead your firm already has a mature CX program and you're looking to deepen one piece of it, Foundations isn't the fit. That's a different conversation, and we're happy to have it.
Less than you'd fear. You need a core team accountable for CX outcomes; for many firms that's genuinely one person, and it's probably you. You need an extended team of decision-makers willing to attend two or three workshops over nine months. And you need about two hours a week to coordinate with your CX Pilots team, with total internal effort across the whole firm landing between 75 and 125 hours over the program.
No new hires, no platform migration, no reorg. The scarce resource is decision-making time, and the program is sequenced to spend it only where it counts.
One thing: book a walkthrough of CX Foundations. Thirty minutes. We'll map the nine stages against your firm's specific situation, show you what your first quick win would be, and give you an honest answer about whether the program fits where your firm is right now. If it doesn't, we'll tell you that too, and you'll still leave with a clearer picture than you came with.
The firms that have a working CX function nine months from now are the ones that booked the walkthrough this month.
Every year, hundreds of professional services firms appoint someone to "own client experience." Most of those people get a title, a vague mandate, and no map.
If that's you, you already know the feeling. Someone above you decided the firm needs to be more client-centric. Maybe a major account left without warning. Maybe a competitor started winning pitches your firm used to win. Whatever the trigger, the work is now yours. You've read plenty about CX. What nobody has handed you is the answer to the only question that matters right now: what do I actually do, in what order, and how do I know it's working?
We built CX Foundations to answer that question. It's a nine-month program that takes everything we've learned running comprehensive CX transformations for some of the world's largest firms and compresses it into the sequence a first-time CX leader needs to establish a working CX function. You finish with the function itself: a strategy, a roadmap, journey maps, trained colleagues, feedback systems, and a governance structure that keeps it all running long after the program ends.
Here's what it is, what you build each month, and how to know whether it's the right way for you to start.
New CX leaders get stuck in a gap. A full CX transformation with a big consultancy runs well into seven figures and takes years. Hiring one senior CX resource costs $200K+ before they've produced anything. Doing it alone means inventing the methodology while executing it, figuring out by trial and error what to sequence first and which steps are wasted motion. Trial and error is an expensive teacher when you only get one first year.
CX Foundations closes that gap. It's between 8x and 10x faster and less costly than a comprehensive CX program, and it costs less than half of what you'd pay for one skilled CX hire. You get a dedicated CX Pilots team, our full methodology, and every foundational component the big firms build.
It's also built around something we've learned the hard way: a new CX function lives or dies on visible progress. So the program is engineered to produce a quick win every three to five weeks. In year one, momentum is what keeps the firm leaning in.
Nine stages, each roughly a month, each ending in concrete tools that build on the last.
Month 1 — Assessment. We survey your clients and your employees using our Qualtrics platform, then analyze the results into a picture of your firm's CX maturity: where the gaps are, where value is leaking, and where different stakeholders disagree about how things are really going. You get the assessment strategy, the survey instruments, the invitation communications, and the full output analysis. This is your baseline. Every decision that follows is grounded in what your clients and colleagues actually said, not in whoever argues loudest in the partner meeting.
Month 2 — CX strategy. Two facilitated four-hour workshops with your team. Out of them, we build your firm's CX strategy: vision, goals, objectives, and an engagement model, aligned to your existing corporate strategy so leadership reads CX as business. This document tells everyone where the effort is going and, just as usefully, where it isn't.
Month 3 — Roadmap. A visual, milestone-based plan showing exactly what happens over time and what it produces. Firms that pursue CX without a documented path get perceived internally as improvising, and improvisation is what gets programs quietly defunded.
Month 4 — Persona and journey map. Together we build one detailed client persona and the full journey that client takes with your firm: every stage, channel, emotional high and low, moment of truth, and friction point. Journey maps are the MRI of your client relationships. This is usually the deliverable that turns skeptics. It's the first time operations, business development, and delivery are all looking at the same picture of the client, and seeing friction nobody owned because nobody could see it.
Month 5 — Coaching and training. Three custom training modules and 16 hours of directed coaching for the people who matter most, whether that's leadership, middle management, or the front line. Popular modules include The ROI of CX for your CFO, journey mapping teach-the-teacher, and spotting weakening relationships before they become departures. You choose; we recommend. After this month, CX stops being one person's project.
Month 6 — Opportunity framing. We convene your leadership, arm them with pre-work, and facilitate a working session where they decide, on the record, what CX is supposed to produce: better win rates, lower churn, more projects per account, more ideal clients. Most firms never realize CX efforts can be aimed at specific business outcomes. This is where yours takes aim, and where leadership shifts from watching the program to steering it.
Month 7 — Culture and communications. By now the program has produced real results, and people across the firm are wondering what all this CX activity means for them. We build the communications strategy that answers that, plus a fully designed CX Charter: a booklet in your firm's own language that tells every employee what CX is, why the firm is investing in it, and what their role is in making it work.
Month 8 — Feedback systems. Complete client and employee feedback strategies: what to ask, whom to ask, when, through what channels, and how to close the loop so feedback turns into action instead of dashboards. If your firm currently equates CX with "we send an annual survey," this month replaces that with a system that continuously feeds you the signals that predict account health.
Month 9 — Metrics and governance. The stage that separates programs that compound from programs that fade. We set up your governance structure (who meets, how often, against what agenda, tracking which metrics) so the CX function keeps making decisions and proving its value on its own. What you finish with is an operating machine.
You're just beginning and establishing the right CX objectives for your organization for the first time. You need a proven path from A to B, because you want to get this right the first time, without unnecessary steps or needless spending. You may have a small team meeting about CX, or it may be just you. Someone higher up handed you the mandate. And you don't have the budget to hire McKinsey, but you need outcomes anyway.
If instead your firm already has a mature CX program and you're looking to deepen one piece of it, Foundations isn't the fit. That's a different conversation, and we're happy to have it.
Less than you'd fear. You need a core team accountable for CX outcomes; for many firms that's genuinely one person, and it's probably you. You need an extended team of decision-makers willing to attend two or three workshops over nine months. And you need about two hours a week to coordinate with your CX Pilots team, with total internal effort across the whole firm landing between 75 and 125 hours over the program.
No new hires, no platform migration, no reorg. The scarce resource is decision-making time, and the program is sequenced to spend it only where it counts.
One thing: book a walkthrough of CX Foundations. Thirty minutes. We'll map the nine stages against your firm's specific situation, show you what your first quick win would be, and give you an honest answer about whether the program fits where your firm is right now. If it doesn't, we'll tell you that too, and you'll still leave with a clearer picture than you came with.
The firms that have a working CX function nine months from now are the ones that booked the walkthrough this month.
