What is Customer Experience?

What is Customer Experience when it comes to Customer Experience appointments?

A quick search for the words 'customer experience' in LinkedIn UK jobs delivers over 17,000 results.

Of course, all of these word searches are not actual Customer Experience roles but as someone who has been supporting and placing customer focused Directors and CX leaders for over 16 years, I am still yet to find two customer experience roles that are exactly the same.?

Dependent on the business, CEO, the vision, culture and maturity of their Customer Experience programmes, or thinking. Customer Experience for one, is very different to another.

When it comes to talent acquisition and recruitment across CX, this is a major challenge and why I believe many Customer Experience appointments don't always deliver what was hoped.

Many CX leaders who join organisations, often leave frustrated with the lack of a serious mandate, or the ability to make real transformational change across the number of areas they need to influence.

For most companies or, hiring managers, they may have very little, if any experience hiring a CX leader or, Director before, so when they see and hear the words Customer Experience in either a CV and or, interview, all too often a mis match can occur.

Customer Experience is a relatively immature function, which is why we see the positions appearing across Marketing, Data, Operations and other specialist functions, as they try to find their place, and if the business hiring them doesn't already have a board level Chief Customer Officer, CX or Customer Service Directorate.

Even when a business creates a Chief Customer Officer role, whilst on paper this might look like a good thing, many CCOs may not have worked in a customer service operational function, or, a CX Design or strategy role. In our 2022 Customer Director Report,?looking at the role of the Chief Customer Officer, 26% came from a marketing background, whilst this was down from with 40% in our 20/21 report, it was still higher than those from across operations, service, success or sales.

In a recent poll I asked my network; When considering more than 50% of their duties what does Customer Experience mean in your role?

As you can see the majority of respondents were focussed more on Strategy and Journey Design 43%, followed by Customer Service Operations at 39%.

Forrester has defined six disciplines of customer experience maturity: Strategy, customer understanding, design, measurement, governance and culture.

The Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), identified the following competencies for CX in the development of the CCXP accreditation programme:

• Customer Insights and Understanding
• Customer Experience Strategy
• Metrics, Measurements, and ROI
• Design, Implementation, and Innovation
• Culture and Accountability

Whilst every role is unique dependent on the business, ambition and level of CX maturity I see Customer Experience falling into two primary categories. A generalist role, someone who has a good overarching level of skills and experience across all CX disciplines but who will probably hire, or call on specialist skills in certain areas; such as, Design, Analytics, Data, Research, CRM etc and then the CX Specialist roles, which will be more focused on these skills and experiential areas.

If you are looking to appoint a CX leader or professional and didn't see it already, then check out our top interview questions here.

Regardless of the role, hiring managers need to get crystal clear on what they really need and expect of their next CX Director or leader and those Customer Experience professionals looking for a role, should be able to clearly articulate the value they bring, the resources they need and processes they will look to deploy to achieve the desired outcomes to help make for a more successful future match.

In addition to the experience and role responsibilities, looking at some of the primary requirements for Customer Experience roles advertised, these were the key asks:

• Communication skills
• Excellent working relationships with customers and colleagues
• Alignment with the mission
• Commercially aware
• Strategic thinker
• Effective influencer
• Customer satisfaction focused
• Improving the journey
• Analysis of the data
• Storytelling and vision

What do you think, do you see customer experience as something else, or have any observations or experience on roles and individuals, please do pop your thoughts in the comments.

If you still have some questions around Customer Experience roles and opportunities, I would be happy to talk through with you. 01543 231071, or email me at michelle@douglas-jackson.com