How The CXPA Sees The Future Of The CX Profession | Part 2 With Greg Melia

Greg Melia, CAE and I had too much to talk about to contain in one podcast episode, in one newsletter edition. And so the latest edition of the #CX Patterns podcast and newsletter feature him once again.

This time, we're looking to the future, and talking about what the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) is doing to create a stronger, more impactful place for #customerexperience teams in the future.

CX Strategies Must Be Tuned To Desired Business Outcomes

Greg cautions CX teams to not oversimplify the narrative around CX and ROI. Better customer experience can be great for business results, but only if you design and deliver experiences with clear intention.

For example, Safelite Autoglass and Starbucks should have very different ideas about what types of experiences they want to deliver, based on their desired business results.

Safelite is not in the loyalty business. Their customers don't want to replace their car windshields ever again, ideally, let alone regularly.

Starbucks customers will be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.

Safelite needs to create a wow moment, and a strong memory that gets their infrequent customers telling a story.

Starbucks can focus much more on setting clear expectations for the experience that it can consistently meet over time, so that its customers feel good about coming back again and again.

Many Experiences Don't Need To Wow Customers

The reality for companies like Starbucks that should put emphasis on expectations and consistency, is that it's true for many companies, and most experiences, that the goal should not be to wow customers.

Most experiences don't need to wow your customers.

Greg referenced the work of Professor Gary David at Bentley, highlighting the importance of mundane experiences to customers' every day. Those should not have wow moments, because surprise and delight would be a distraction.

Greg also referenced a framing from Megan Burns highlighting that companies should strive to be consistently good and strategically amazing. I love the way she puts this. By showing up the way you said you would, day after day, many companies can build up loyalty with their customers in small, every day trust-building interactions.

"Be consistently good & strategically amazing" - Megan Burns

The Expectations You're Meeting Should Be The Expectations You Set

The secret to meeting customers' expectations is to work at setting their expectations ahead of time. The better that companies do at spelling out who their experience is for and how the experience will go, the more likely they are to have customers who have their expectations met.

Meeting customer expectations is all about setting customer expectations

Starbucks, Dunkin, Blue Bottle, they can all have happy customers - possibly even the same person - because they've set expectations for very different coffee shop experiences.

But if Blue Bottle customers are expecting Dunkin prices, or Dunkin speed, well, they're going to be very disappointed.

Customer Experience Education Pivots To Future Executives

Greg surprised me with his reveal during our conversation that the future of CX education is not about degree programs or certificates to mint more CX professionals, but rather bringing CX education to the future leaders of companies - MBA programs.

MBA students learn strategy. They learn financial analysis and rigor, and we see that influence in how businesses are run. Why not customer experience too? I think this is a great focus for CX education. Make it part of the existing curricula in MBA programs.

There's so much more wisdom shared by Greg in this conversation. Give it a listen.

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