Global CX Standards: A Strong Sign Of Maturity

What does it mean to be a professional? When do you get to think of yourself as an expert at something? The value of customer experience standards is not that they magically confer a status of legitimacy to the profession. But rather, that they reflect the legitimacy that already exists.

CX Standards are a clear signal that CX is a real, professional discipline. For most of the readers of this newsletter, this is not news. But for many that you work with, for many that you need approval from, customer experience as a profession is not an unquestioned certainty. And that’s where the standards, and the legitimacy they lend will help.

The new Global CX Standards, developed jointly by 贝恩公司 , 凯度 & Qualtrics are the inspiration for this edition of the CX Patterns podcast and newsletter.

I was so excited to talk with Erin Wallace from Bain about the development of the standards. She was a big part of their creation, and tells us about the origin story, and the best ways to use the new set of standards.

The Global CX Standards Arrived Right On Time

The moment that the customer experience profession is in - declining scores, headcounts and budgets - means that a signal of legitmacy is very welcome indeed.

I don't mean to dismiss or minimize the Global CX Standards - I really don't. I think they're great. And I think the timing of when they have arrived is a big part of why they're great. The customer experience profession needed a shot in the arm, and the standards provide that.

But also, part of the doubt in the CX profession is down to the lack of certainty about what CX expertise looks like, means.

The Standards provide clarity about what good looks like in CX, and a touchstone for practitioners to compare their own approach to.

Clothes don’t make the man, but it doesn’t hurt to dress well. Standards don’t make a profession legitimate, but they don’t hurt.

The Standards Reflect The Practices In The CX Field

Erin talked about the development process of creating the standards - the thousands of case studies that Bain had, the multiple different maturity frameworks in the CX space already, the client case studies that the other partners, Kantar & Qualtrics had.

And they used their clients to provide feedback about the standards, to be part of the process, co-creation as it were.

I love this as an origin story for Standards in the customer experience space

The Global CX Standards codify what works for CX professionals. Their creation process applied CX best practices.

What Is Included In The Standards

There are 55 standards, separated into three categories main categories, each with two sections:

1. Supporting a Customer Centric Culture. This includes both Purpose & Leadership practices (such as the company mission and purpose mention enriching customers' lives) as well as Employee Experience practices (Employees have an easy way to submit feedback about EX issues)
2. Developing Customer Experience Capability. This includes both Feedback Management practices (such as tracking customer feedback at multiple levels) and Data Management practices (using data science techniques to identify improvement opportunities).
3. Leading Customer Experience Execution. This includes Value Management practices (having a clearly defined target customer) Journey Management practices (we have a single, defined way of describing customer needs, and journeys), and Lifecycle Management practices (having a clear predicted value of each customer).

You won't be doing everything that is detailed in the CX Standards, and that's ok. Complete coverage is not the goal. Finding something new to add to your existing toolkit should be the goal

I encourage you to download the Standards and go through them for yourself. There is a lot of detail in the document about the standards, and how to use them.