Most credentialed customer experience (CX) professionals know the foundational competencies that guide the work we do: strategy, experience design, employee engagement, metrics, and voice of the customer, for example. A lot of fabulous, pioneering work has been done over the past 10 years with customer feedback, process improvements, cross-functional teaming, journey mapping, and mobile tools, for example. This is true for business and government agencies!
Innovation continues to be everywhere. Change is ever-present. Competition is fierce. CX leaders have helped to keep customer needs front-and-center. That’s work to be proud of! So, in the spirit of innovation, it's time to step back and assess: is the CX leader's scope of influence evolving at the right tempo? Is the work in full alignment with the full range of customer needs?
Is the CX leader’s scope of influence evolving at the right tempo? Is the work in full alignment with the full range of customer needs?
From my recent client conversations and observations, there are some gaps. Here are four conversations that CX leaders need to make sure they’re not overlooking.
1. The connection between data security and customer experience.
Data security breaches, hacks, and leaks have become so common that you can't help but wonder, "Should customers just expect to have their personal and transactional information stolen at some point, as part of their experience?"
No industry has been immune to breaches. Millions of customers of organizations like Target, Verizon, Deloitte, Yahoo, and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have had their personal bank account numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, passwords, and home addresses and phone numbers stolen, exposed, held for ransom, or offered for sale on the dark web. When that happens, it almost always requires extra burden on customers, sometimes to an extreme.
That's not ok.
CX leaders should now embrace data security with just as much vigor as their voice of the customer programs, customer research, journey mapping, and design thinking. Security is now a part of the customer’s reality. That’s why it should also be part of the CX leader’s reality.
2. The connection between policy and customer experience.
A few months ago I wrote an article for NextGov about the connection between organizational-level rule making and customer experience. The article was based on that awful incident earlier this year where a passenger was physically harmed while being dragged by security agents against his will off of a United Airlines flight.
Rules and policies were most certainly to blame for what happened. After the dust settled on the incident, there was a lesson to be learned. My colleague, Kevin Carter, articulated the rationale very well in a comment on my original blog:
“We employ user experience testing when designing software and technology tools, why don't we do the same when designing programs or policies?”
Think about the way rules and policies typically are created: oftentimes at the senior-most levels of an organization, sometimes in small groups, or during governance proceedings. Rarely, if ever, are customer voices included. CX leaders need to step in as that voice.
3. The connection between agile project management and customer experience.
Even if technology isn’t your strong suit, it’s important to understand how the work that ripples out to customers gets done behind the scenes of your organization. Let's be realistic. If digital projects are being developed and presented to customers the same way today that they were 25 years ago, then that's probably going to be a problem for end-user customers, and customer satisfaction scores will likely tell you so. Satisfaction will never improve if the behind-the-scenes work processes stay the same. Understand the basics, and how customer input intersects with agile methodologies like scrum or burn down. Advocate for better, more modern work processes.
4. The connection between strategic planning and customer experience.
The strategic planning process is rarely simple, and, due to organizational complexities or time constraints, it can be easy to leave customers out of planning processes. But if you’re making a plan to serve customers, does it make sense to leave customers out? It doesn’t make sense, but it happens. At a minimum, CX leaders need to bring data to the strategic planning process: revenue, new customer numbers, lost customers, repeat business, referrals, contact center KPIs, event participation, and social media interactions, for example. In a perfect world, customers themselves would be included in live planning sessions. But in the absence of a live customer’s voice, CX leaders need to challenge colleagues to honest reflection: "Based on the data in front of us, what will it take to win, retain, and protect the identities and accounts of our customer base? "
CX leaders need to understand how data security, agile methodologies, strategic planning, and policymaking apply to the customer work that needs to be done in today's ever-changing world. This caliber of work is on an all-new level. It goes deep into the core competencies of CX as a management discipline. The good news is the work always has been, and always will be, worth doing.
All views are mine. Follow me on Twitter: @stephaniethum
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