The customer experience industry continues to pick up pace as the practice matures. It’s evolving fast and while the challenges of being a customer experience advocate in a company are many – building awareness, finding budget, organizing a team, developing an entirely new practice – there are quite a few perks as well.
New Challenges
Many customer experience practitioners we encounter are relatively new to the role. They tend to have track records of success that make them natural choices when senior leaders begin looking for someone to develop the customer experience strategy, manage customer analytics, and/or implement a Voice of the Customer program. Taking on the role of customer experience advocate presents an exciting challenge for these passionate, driven change agents.
Access to Individuals Across Departments, Teams, and Hierarchies
Customer experience improvements rarely happen in a silo. A customer experience advocate never has to fear boredom or separation from the strategic goals of the organization. Their role requires the ability to network all over the organization, sway senior leaders, encourage co-workers, and preach the customer-centric message like it’s their job…because it is.
Becoming the Go-To-Person for Customer Insight
While everyone thinks they know what is best for the customer, few people really know – except for the customer experience advocate. Many in this role find that it doesn’t take long before even the doubters are coming around to ask for their input. Armed with customer feedback the customer advocate is uniquely capable to not just tell others in the company what they should be doing, but to demonstrate how recommended changes will improve the customer experience.
Hearing Why Customers and Clients Love the Organization
Typically companies embark on systematically collecting customer feedback because they understand the need to root out the causes of customer problems and complaints. A pleasant surprise, however, is the number of positive things customers have to say. The majority of our clients, in fact, receive a far greater proportion of Recognize Alerts that call out employees for going above and beyond than they do Recover Alerts that report problems. Access to this positive customer feedback, and the ability to spread the positive news, brings passion and engagement to the job.
Access to an Amazing Group of Professionals
The Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) is a growing organization representing the interests and efforts of a still relatively new discipline. The organization offers onsite visits, member insight exchanges, and a growing body of carefully crafted tools and resources. The people are friendly, smart and engaged and offer a valuable starting place for others just beginning their customer experience journey.
Opportunities for Advancement
In our client base we frequently see those leading customer experience initiatives being promoted. The nature of customer experience work is cross-departmental and highly impactful. Successes can be measured through reduced churn, increased customer loyalty, and lower operational costs – all compelling KPI’s. For individuals looking to make a contribution to their company in a big way, finding a place on the customer experience team is a great place to start.
~Janessa Lantz
