Peer-to-Peer CCXP Preparation Community

As I was reading a sales advice article today, the author's warning to avoid "focus on making the number" reminded me of the ways "score focus" limits customer experience progress. 

• • Price incentives may increase mercenary customers
  • Discounts for new customers make existing customers bitter (creating hostages and defectors)
  • Shortcuts can weaken relationship-building 
  • Rush to close the sale can gloss-over info and needs (extra burden for service and success teams)
  • All of the above can dilute positive word-of-mouth and customer lifetime value

Focus on 'making the number' for your Net Promoter Score is a source of customer experience limitations:

• Pressure on employees may cause them to ask customers for a 10

• Emphasis on quick wins can lead to a hamster wheel of CXM value
  • Quick wins may not match the 80/20 rule: focus on the vital few 20% to solve 80% of the problem
    • The correct vital few issues to focus on must be identified via Pareto analysis
    • Fixing the symptom for the short-term doesn't fix the underlying root cause for sustained value
  • Find-and-fix closed-loop communication maxes out bandwidth of managers and CX team
    • A small percentage of customers participate in a survey or voice a complaint
    • Those who do represent a larger number with the same sentiment
    • A great deal of energy and budget is expended on a small part of the customer base
    • This makes CX work a Band-Aid, remedial, reactive, a cost-center
  • The most expensive customer experience issues don't get attention
    • They require cross-org collaboration over several quarters (not quick wins)
    • Technology can only go so far, since mindsets and hand-offs are core to these snafus
    • Ongoing existence of the same issues breeds cynicism among customers and employees alike

• Emphasis on touch-points can weaken customer-centric culture
  • While touch-points are important, they're hamstrung by non-customer-facing groups' decisions and hand-offs
  • Non-customer-facing groups assume they are exempt from CX responsibility
  • Organizational adoption and accountability for CX performance is immature
  • Changing customers' behaviors is an uphill battle as forces on customers are ever-changing

• NPS for transactions rather than overall company performance limits VoC value from being strategic to the corporation
  • Fine-tuning agents' performance and touch-points is useful, but there are other ways to gauge that besides asking customers
  • CX insights can be a North Star for how to run the business only to the extent that strategic insights are collected

• Voice of customer is a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator
  • Survey ratings and indexes reflect what customers already experienced, even if it's real-time VoC 
  • Key drivers of NPS are the starting point for actionability (org adoption & accountability for CX performance)
    • Sub-themes of key drivers must be identified for manageability (to avoid 'boiling the ocean')
    • Key driver sub-themes can be best identified via Pareto analysis of customer comments
    • 5 why's analysis identifies the true root cause, which is always a diamond in a work flow
    • Root cause workflow diamonds are faulty filters that are letting garbage out
    • Customers experience the outputs of a company's workflows
    • The leading indicator for NPS is the faulty-filter tied to the 5th why tied to the Pareto vital few tied to the loyalty key driver

• Gaining a capability by dissecting and memorizing multiple-choice is like cramming for a college test
  • Performance may be good for the exam itself, but don't count on enduring wisdom for real life

• Multiple choice practice is useful only to get used to reading carefully
  • The CCXP exam question pool is less than 200 questions which have been guarded carefully: they aren't available publicly
  • CCXP questions underwent scrubbing, replacement, expansion and other rigor within the past couple years

• CCXP is meant to gauge CX wisdom
  • 3 years career experience is a prerequisite
  • Real-life observations of what works or not is foundational to making good CX decisions, growing our profession

• Best practice isn't always common practice
  • Current approaches in mainstream use have perpetuated a lot of myths (see the NPS section above)
  • We ran a 5-year global study of CX practices, and the ROI success factors we identified were practices in the minority
  • Since 2017, Forrester's State of CX report has proclaimed a wake-up call for brands, citing static mediocre performance
  • Many other studies have shown that CX as a field, across every sector and industry and geography, is not outperforming customer expectations

• Adult learning requires real-life application
  • Scenario questions, like an end-of-semester presentation or paper, generate in-depth reflection and logic that embeds wisdom for an exam and on-the-job application, producing greater value
  • Comparing new information with what you've already experienced in life embeds new facts, techniques and caveats in the brain's filing cabinet

• Shortcuts aren't really shortcuts
  • Money is precious, but time is even more precious: learn from CXPA's Recognized Training Providers
    • RTP is a rigorous credential these trainers have invested in to raise the bar of knowledge-sharing for your benefit
    • What you learn in an RTP's class exceeds what you learn at a typical conference 
  • Get assistance with the same rigor you'd use to hire someone to do something important for you
    • Books will provide interesting case studies, but won't teach you the technical details needed
    • Some study sources are generic, taking up a lot of time and mindshare with extraneous stuff
    • Some sources have career background only outside CX management, or limited to certain functional areas or business units

Score focus limits customer experience in so many ways! It limits the value attained by customers, companies and CX professionals. Don't stunt your career potential and job security by focusing on scores. Avoid limiting financial growth from buying into common practices that aren't best practices.

The author of the article I was reading made this insightful statement: 


Let's make more meaning in our sales efforts, our customer experience management efforts, and our career development efforts. We'll all be better off!