This article was based on the interview with Stephanie Leheta, Sr. Director, Client Experience Strategy at CIBC at Medallia Experience by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
We, as marketing leaders, have all been in the room where the new corporate purpose is unveiled. The words are inspiring, the posters are well-designed, and for a moment, a wave of optimistic energy fills the air. But we also know the feeling a few months later when that energy has dissipated, and the purpose has become little more than a tagline at the bottom of an email signature. The chasm between a stated purpose and the operational reality of a large enterprise is vast and notoriously difficult to cross. It’s one thing to declare a commitment to the customer; it’s another thing entirely to re-architect the systems, processes, and—most critically—the incentives of tens of thousands of employees to make that commitment real.
True transformation requires more than a brand refresh or a new set of journey maps. It demands a systemic overhaul, a rewiring of the organization’s DNA. This is the story of how CIBC, one of Canada’s largest financial institutions, undertook such a transformation. Over the course of a decade, they moved from a fragmented organization that was lagging its peers in client experience to a modern, relationship-oriented bank driving billions in revenue growth. They did it by moving customer experience (CX) from a siloed function to the core of their enterprise operating model, led from the very top. And they cemented it with a move so bold it’s worth a second look: tying nearly a quarter of every employee’s variable compensation directly to a comprehensive Client Experience Index. It’s a masterclass in making purpose profitable.
Making Principles a Prerequisite for Progress
The first step in any meaningful transformation is acknowledging the need for one. For CIBC, this started with the candid realization that the bank had lost its way. The brand felt dated, the infrastructure was lagging, and client experience scores reflected a growing disconnect. This provided the catalyst for a CEO-sponsored initiative to redefine the organization, not as a marketing campaign, but as a new way of operating. The goal was to become a “modern relationship-oriented bank,” grounded in the purpose of making their clients’ ambitions real.
However, a purpose statement alone changes nothing. The critical next step was translating that abstract idea into concrete, actionable principles: Always professional, radically simple, and genuinely caring. To prevent these from becoming just another poster on the wall, CIBC embedded them directly into the gears of the organization. As Stephanie Lehata explains, they made client-centric design a non-negotiable part of doing business.
“One of the first things we did was we built CX right into our enterprise delivery framework. What that means is day one, for every new client-facing project, CX gets involved. And so we’re there to help influence and shape the design, leveraging that outside in view of the client… And we made it a requirement for funding. It’s a formal gate.”
This is a powerful lesson in organizational design. By making CX involvement a formal gate for project funding, CIBC shifted it from a “nice to have” consultation to a mandatory checkpoint for any new initiative. It ensures that the customer’s perspective isn’t just an afterthought tacked on at the end of a development cycle, but a foundational input from the very beginning. For marketing leaders who often fight for a seat at the table in product and technology decisions, this model provides a compelling blueprint. It’s not about asking for permission; it’s about architecting a system where your insight is a prerequisite for progress.
The Anatomy of an Insight: From Complaint to Commercial Success
Having a robust system for listening to customers is table stakes in today’s market. With millions of call transcripts, survey responses, and digital interactions, the challenge isn’t a lack of data, but a surplus of noise. The real differentiator lies in an organization’s ability to move from listening to learning, and most importantly, to acting. CIBC’s evolution of its “Listen, Learn, Act” operating model provides a tangible example of how to connect a single data point to a significant business outcome.
The process began with building a connected data ecosystem, stitching together Medallia with their CRM and data lakes to get a holistic view. But the value was realized when their analysts began to dig into the signals. Lehata shared a story that every leader can appreciate—a moment when a seemingly minor point of friction revealed a major opportunity.
“…we noticed that there was a significant volume of complaints coming from younger clients… when the youth were transitioning into student, once they turned 18, they were aging out from the youth account and we were automatically applying a fee. But many of these were students… we actually worked together with our product partners, our tech teams and we actually developed a new product, which was the smart start account… we saw immediately complaints dropped 25%, but even more importantly, I would say, growth grew 40%.”
This is the ROI of CX in action. The insight didn’t come from a focus group or a high-level strategy session; it came from analyzing the complaints of real customers experiencing a flawed journey. By identifying a key moment of friction—the transition from a youth to a student account—CIBC was able to do more than just fix a problem. They created an entirely new product that was better aligned with their clients’ needs, turning a source of dissatisfaction into a powerful driver of acquisition and growth. This demonstrates the commercial power of a mature CX program. It’s not merely a defensive function for managing detractors; it’s a proactive engine for innovation and competitive advantage.
The Ultimate Accountability: Putting Your Money Where Your CX Is
Perhaps the most defining element of CIBC’s transformation is its enterprise CX Index. In a bold move to create universal accountability, the bank tied nearly a quarter of variable compensation for all 50,000 employees—from frontline staff to the CEO—to this index. This single decision elevates client experience from a departmental metric to a core business imperative, on par with revenue and profit targets.
Of course, any system tied to compensation is susceptible to being gamed. The key to its success and integrity lies in its design. CIBC built an index that is both comprehensive and rigorously governed, ensuring it drives genuine long-term improvement rather than short-term fixes.
“Every line of business is represented on that CX index. So you’ve got about 20 metrics. We include everything from NPS to market share, brand consideration, and of course, other external rankings and business performance… It goes directly to our board every year. We set new targets based on the macroeconomic environment, based on the conditions of each team. It gets approved at that level. So it it’s quite a quite a thorough and rigorous process.”
By blending internal metrics like NPS with external benchmarks like market share and brand perception, the index provides a balanced and holistic view of performance. The annual review and board-level approval process adds a layer of objective oversight, ensuring targets are meaningful and appropriately stretched. This isn’t about hitting a single, easily manipulated number. It’s about creating a shared responsibility for a portfolio of outcomes that genuinely reflect the health of the client relationship. It forces every employee in every function to ask, “How does my work ultimately impact the client?”—because their paycheck depends on the answer.
Proving the Point: The Rigor of CX Attribution
Even with impressive results—like $2.3 billion in year-over-year revenue growth—leaders must always be prepared to defend the attribution of those gains in the boardroom. Separating the impact of CX initiatives from market conditions and other business drivers is a perennial challenge. CIBC addresses this with a deliberately data-driven and multi-faceted approach to demonstrating ROI, building a credible body of evidence rather than relying on a single silver-bullet metric.
The strategy involves a combination of near real-time dashboards for trend analysis, pre-and-post performance benchmarking, and more sophisticated modeling. Critically, it’s about building credibility into the numbers themselves.
“We’ve also built a financial linkage model. So we’ve actually modeled out the value of a promoter versus a detractor versus a passive… I fund an analyst, a data scientist within our analytics team. They’re dedicated to CX, but I thought it was really critical that we fund them but have them sit in the area where they have access to all of the enterprise data. It also builds the credibility of the numbers right into it.”
This is a tactically brilliant move. By embedding and funding a dedicated CX data scientist within the central analytics team, Lehata not only gains access to enterprise-wide data but also ensures the analysis is vetted by an objective, numbers-focused part of the organization. This partnership lends institutional credibility to the findings, making the business case for CX more resilient to skepticism. It’s a practical and powerful way for marketing and CX leaders to ensure their contributions are seen not just as a cost center, but as a rigorously measured engine of financial performance.
CIBC’s journey offers a powerful reminder that transforming an enterprise around the customer is not the result of a single initiative, but the sum of a thousand interconnected, deliberate choices. It begins with an unwavering commitment from leadership but is sustained by weaving that commitment into the very fabric of the organization: its project funding mechanisms, its product development cycles, its data infrastructure, and ultimately, its employee incentive structures. This is not a short-term project with a defined end date, but a perpetual operating model built for agility and sustained growth.
As leaders, we are constantly navigating the path from strategic intent to tangible results. The CIBC story challenges us to look beyond surface-level metrics and initiatives. Are we simply talking about being customer-centric, or are we building the systems that demand it? Are we asking our teams to care about the customer, or are we creating an environment where their personal and professional success is inextricably linked to the customer’s success? The difference between those two states is the difference between a purpose on a poster and a purpose that powers the entire enterprise.
