The State Of Customer Experience: As A Job & Business Discipline

I know what #CustomerExperience is. If you're reading this, you know what #CX is. But does everyone else understand it at your company?

In this edition of the #CX Patterns Podcast & Newsletter, I'm talking with Greg Melia, CAE about Customer Experience as definition, as business discipline, and as professional role.

Greg should know! He is the CEO of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA)

We see the muddling, the confusion between these popping up all of the time.

It’s why there are so many jobs with customer experience in the title, and in the description that we as CX professionals wouldn’t recognize as CX jobs. They are however jobs that are integral to delivering a customer experience – whether that be in customer-care or retail. It has become much more common to list customer experience in these front-line, customer-facing roles. I see the logic here. But it does add to the confusion of a three-pronged definition for customer experience.

Understanding vs. Influencing

Greg made a profound point early in the podcast conversation. That when we focus too much on the customers’ perception of our experience, we have a tendency to slip into the passive role of monitoring, of understanding, and move out of the more active role of influencing that perception.

When we focus too much on monitoring the experience, we can forget to actually improve the experience.

I have been talking a lot lately, as have others, about the cul-de-sac that CX has found itself in with over-dependence on surveys, and over-investment in CX measurement and Voice of customer programs.

I think Greg’s articulation here gets at why that is such a problem – we’re focusing too much on more and better understanding of the customers’ perceptions, leaving less time and resources to enhance the experience.

Design, Collaboration & Long-Term Viability

Fine, another diatribe against over-surveying, but what’s to be done instead? Greg has an answer!

Focus on the design of experiences, the collaboration across the organization – starting with all those colleagues who have customer experience in their titles and job descriptions, but of course behind-the-scenes folks as well – and ensuring that the experience we are delivering is viable over the long term.

This puts me in mind of not one but two Maxims my old boss Harley Manning used to drill into us about Customer Experience:

First, that it’s not Day 1 that gets you, but Day 2 through infinity. Can you show up and deliver that same level of experience quality day after day? If not, then you need to rethink your strategy.

Second, that you cannot ever prioritize customer experience over profitability. As companies, we are trying to improve the customer experience in order to improve the business results. Thinking about the sustainability of your experience requires you to ensure that the level of experience quality you’re delivering won’t saddle the company with unreasonably high costs, or unreasonably low margins.

You cannot prioritize customer experience over business results. CX must drive business results.

The good news – great news in fact – is that better customer experience leads to better business results: Stronger revenue growth, higher profit margins. Just make sure that your CX equation is leading to better business results.

Moderation In All Things

Greg talks about the balancing act that companies must strike.

Balance Between Shareholders, Customers and Employees.

If we only maximize shareholder returns, we are taking a short-term view that makes it harder to attract and retain customers, and employees. If we practice culture-driven heroics, expecting our employees to overcome inefficient processes, or ignore misaligned goals and incentives to deliver great experiences, that too won’t be sustainable. And we’ve covered the experience that is so generous to customers that it loses for the business.

There is also Balance between Marketing, Sales and Product/experience.

The idea that what we as a company promise, and what we sell is something that we can actually deliver in our products or experience. Run it reverse, and you need products and experience that have a clear angle of distinction that can be marketed, and clear value to target customers that can be sold.

The bottom line: Customer experience must exist inside of organizations with healthy tension between other disciplines.