Is the Customer Experience Really Everyone's Job?

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Is it really everyone’s job?

Pundits and experts alike say that customer experience is everyone’s job. If you google “customer experience is everyone’s job” and “customer service is everyone’s job,” you’ll find endless articles, blogs, and webinars with that very title.

It’s true. Technically, it is everyone’s job. 

The spirit of the statement, though, is this: every employee impacts the customer experience, whether he’s part of your frontline interacting with customers face to face/phone to phone or she’s behind the scenes making sure the website works well or designing brochures to describe your products. Every employee matters; every employee contributes.

It seems like that’s just one more proof point that the employee experience comes first – and drives the customer experience.

So it kills me when I see so many job postings for “customer experience” roles. In this regard… NO, customer experience is not everyone’s job. I’ve seen positions posted with titles of Customer Experience This or Customer Experience That. Ironically, the postings were really sales/retail  positions or call center/customer service jobs. And sadly, many of the job descriptions never even mentioned the customer! How can that be?

I am an active member (and a Board Member) of the Customer Experience Professionals Association; my colleagues and I are fighting to get recognition for the customer experience profession. This means that we’re looking to legitimize, validate, or otherwise verify or confirm that if your job entails listening to the customer and using what you hear to develop and to execute on a customer experience strategy, or if you oversee a team of folks doing the same, or if you are tasked with ensuring the entire organization drives toward a better customer experience, then you are a customer experience professional. If that’s the case, then your title should have the words “customer experience.” (If you’re a consultant who consults on one and the same, it’s fine if your title contains those words, too.)

Instead, what we’ve found is that, with the popularization of customer experience roles and the push to improve the customer experience, everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, making it trendy to put “customer experience” in every title. Unfortunately, this simple action dilutes the profession and what we’re trying to do.

The good news is, customer experience has gained attention. The bad news is, with that, it can also become meaningless. When job descriptions have a customer experience title but never mention the customer in the actual description, a major fail has occurred.

What should you do?

Do your job, the one you’re hired for. You don’t have to have “customer experience” in your title in order to prove that you impact the experience. If you’re a true customer experience professional, one whose role is to make customer experience management an integral part of how their companies operate, do all that you can to stay true to the profession… for yourself and for those around you. For those whose job is to deliver a great customer experience, give the CX professional a chance – they are taking what they hear from customers and translating it into a story to help you deliver a great experience.

In the end, yes, we are all responsible for ensuring our customers have a great experience – title or not. How will you execute? 

When it comes to creating a great customer experience, everyone within the company is committed to doing what it takes to succeed. -Quotepedia 

Image courtesy of Nikolai Berntsen

Original Post: http://www.cx-journey.com/2015/10/is-customer-experience-really-everyones.html