A CX leader recently asked me, “But where is the Customer in all this?” That question made me wonder — have some of us become the CX Police rather than true advocates of Customer-centric action?
This article is part of our Customer Experience Hub — a collection of articles that explore the architecture, practices, and mindset behind great CX, all grounded in real-world teaching and consulting experience.
“But where is the Customer in all this?”
That’s the question I was sent by a CX ‘expert’ who had seen my course outline for a Contact Center leadership workshop.
This workshop, developed in partnership with a global client for their entire management team, spans four days and covers nine modules.
I took the question posed, “But where is the Customer in all this?” seriously.
So here’s what I did.
I went through each module and wrote down exactly where the Customer ‘was’. And not surprisingly the Customer was represented in every module.
Three examples of ‘where the Customer was’
To answer the question “Where is the Customer here?”, let’s look at three modules that reveal how deeply Customer impact is embedded in effective practice:
1. Service Level & Response Time
Selecting Service Level & Response Time objectives and managing those well are specific to how we deliver the Customer wait time experience.
These metrics also lie at the heart of our Employee experience as well. Because performance in these metrics impacts the pace & predictablity of work for our Agents.
And as Service Level & Response Time performance is positively correlated with Quality, improving performance here improves Quality.
Which improves – when Quality is well designed – our Customer’s experience interacting with us.
Where’s the Customer here? My goodness – everywhere in this module.
2. Metrics & Interrelationships
In interrelated ecosystems like a Contact Center, it is vital to understand relevant cause and effect relationships between metrics.
Because only then can a Customer professional understand and diagnose what is going on with outcomes.
It usually involves working backwards.
If we’re not meeting a specific metric we work back to see what the key drivers are. And what’s happening with those drivers.
And since Customers are a big part of our ecosystem, when we work to intelligently improve that ecosystem, we tend to make Customer and Employee lives better.
So once again – the Customer is everywhere in this module.
3. Monitoring & Coaching
The greatest gift a Manager can give their people is to develop and grow them.
In the Customer Service industry, regular and meaningful ‘transaction’ coaching helps us develop the confidence and skills of our Frontline folks to have great conversations with Customers.
And over time these coaching conversations help us to build trust with our people.
How could this not be at the heart of what the Customer experiences?
Related reading: 15 Quiz Questions on Contact Center Operations Management
Admittedly no single module in my course outline had the word ‘Customer’ in it
But that didn’t mean that the Customer wasn’t there. The Customer was everywhere – along with Employees and the Organization.
But somehow I felt like I had been pulled over by the CX police. Ugh.
Another CX ‘expert’ wrote to me and suggested, “Just teach people Journey Mapping. Because once they know the Customer journey, they will know how to deliver a great Customer experience.”
I find it interesting that the Journey Mapping recommendation was offered without any questions asked about business goals or context for the training course we designed.
Journey Mapping is obviously valuable.
But a knee jerk recommendation (Journey Mapping in this case) without working to understanding the business context (train our Customer Service Leaders who manage thousands of globally sited Agents) strikes me as a bit presumptuous.
The questions I wish I’d been asked
Off the top of my head here are a few questions that I might have expected a CX ‘expert’ to ask me about our 4-day course outline –
- Do you mind sharing your Client’s overall Job To Be Done?
- How do you get folks who are already Customer-centric to be even more Customer-centric with a course like this?
- What did the Participants tell you after they went through this course?
- Do you mind sharing what some of the business outcomes were for your Client?
These feel more like questions that a CX ‘expert’ would ask.
The Collaboration Monster
I came across an article that I really enjoyed. In that article the author wrote that we CX people can and should strive to be Collaboration Monsters.
Isn’t that just a superb term?
A Collaboration Monster is a CX professional who reaches out to their Colleagues across the Organization to understand their work, their motivations and their business objectives.
They ask smart questions and listen carefully to the answers.
They work to understand the context of what their Colleagues do and what they’re trying to do.
And they think carefully about how their expert CX know-how could be of help to their Colleagues.
And make considered recommendations where they believe they can help.
Because drip by drip by drip, project by project, that’s how you both build relationships and earn a track record of CX success.
In closing, let me ask you this –
If you had a sticky business issue to solve, who would you rather work with?
The CX Police, or someone who collaborates across the organization to understand the problem and help solve it?
Thank You for Reading
I regularly share stories, strategies, and insights from our work across Contact Centers, Customer Service, and Customer Experience. If this resonates, I’d love to stay connected.
You can drop me a line anytime, or subscribe on our site.
Daniel Ord
[email protected]
www.omnitouchinternational.com
