Earlier this year, I wrote an article about CX Teams: Who, What, Where, How Many, and How Much?, answering all the questions that you might have about what a CX team looks like, i.e., the make-up of the team, size of the team, who it reports to, budget responsibility, barriers to success, and more. I wrote a little bit about titles and roles, but I’ve since written an article for GetFeedback that goes into much more detail about the roles and the skills needed on this team.
That article starts off like this…
Building a customer experience team requires knowing what that team will do and what skills you’ll need to do those things. Seems simple enough, and yet it’s challenging to build said team because oftentimes companies don’t have the funds or don’t want to add headcount to their rosters.
It’s important to note that no two CX teams are alike. Factors like business size, executive commitment, and more drive whether there is a team of one or a team a 50 – or no team at all. Regardless of size and make-up of the team, there is still a lot of work to be done.
The CX team is comprised of the staff that does the critical underlying work to ensure that the customer experience solves problems for customers and meets their needs. Basically, the team keeps the CX engine humming, so to speak. At a high level, this team does the following and more.
- Develop, implement, and manage tools and processes to understand customers
- Monitor and measure performance against customer expectations
- Co-create and design new experiences with customers
- Centralize, analyze, and synthesize customer feedback and data
- Identify metrics to track and ensure those metrics are linked to business outcomes
- Share insights from customer understanding tools throughout the organization
- Provide tools and guidance to support improvement initiatives and to help drive change
- Develop the strategy to achieve the desired and intended customer experience
- Prepare internal and external communications about the work that is being done
- Drive clarity of expectations, consistency of experiences, and education of colleagues around the experience to be delivered
For the team’s leadership, I would add the following.
- Educate the rest of the organization about the customer and the customer experience
- Align and unite not only executives but also the rest of the organization around the customer
- Ensure that the customer and the impact on the customer is embedded in all decisions, discussions, and designs
- Partner with HR to ensure that employees have a great experience, in turn leading to a great experience for customers
- Partner with the CIO to ensure that the right data is (a) accessible and (b) shareable; able to get to the right people at the right time
It’s a lot of work to ensure the customer voice is listened to and then heard within the organization. While everything a business does is about the customer, this team provides valuable information and services that feed into and facilitate the customer-centric culture.
What are the general skills that are needed to make all this happen? In a nutshell, your CX team is comprised of trainers, educators, influencers, problem solvers, change agents, evangelists, listeners, analyzers, assessors, auditors, planners, coordinators, advisors, coaches, entrepreneurs, innovators, communicators, designers, researchers, project managers, strategists, and critical thinkers. Let’s parse that out a bit and talk specifics.
To read about the nine skills required to build a multi-faceted CX team, please check out the rest of the article here.
By the way, the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) recently penned the definition of a customer experience professional. “A CX professional is a catalyst who enhances an organization’s results by understanding, designing, and improving experiences across the entire customer relationship.” Here’s the corresponding video.
You can cut down a tree with a hammer, but it takes about 30 days. If you trade the hammer for an ax, you can cut it down in about 30 minutes. The difference between 30 days and 30 minutes is skills. -Jim Rohn
Annette Franz is an internationally recognized customer experience thought leader, coach, speaker, and author. She recently published her first book, Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business); it’s available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats. Sign up for our newsletter for updates, insights, and other great content that you can use to up your CX game.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.
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