If ‘Customer Experience’ is in your job title, it’s time to reconsider your branding



This will sound like an odd proposal to hear from me given that I was acknowledging #CXDay2019 only last week, and I’m judging later this week at the #CustomerExperienceAwards. These awards offer a great opportunity to learn from and celebrate the hard work that leaders have put into raising awareness of CX as a vital business discipline – and delivering positive customer and business outcomes.

So why does #outwith invite CX leaders to adapt their language?

We regularly talk with C-level leaders who, at first glance, interpreted ‘customer experience’ as shorthand for improving the #NetPromoterScore (NPS), responding to customer feedback at face value, throwing money at ‘wow’ moments, or creating a transformation programme that runs parallel to business-as-usual. Too often, C-level leaders who are on the hook for financial performance see this all as ‘cost’. They just don’t believe the claimed cause-effect when it comes to prioritising their investments.

This should concern CX leaders greatly. Of course, this is in part a perception challenge – but as we all know from customer research, ‘perception is reality’. And don’t get me wrong – #weareoutwith don’t really have much time for talking about roles internal to Customer/ User Experience functions, as my recent post on UX reveals. I’m talking here about the external branding of what has become a focus of strategic investment for many organisations.

So, what works better? Well, we’re seeing a pattern emerging – Director of Customer Value… Head of Social Value and Customers… Journey Product Manager… Customer Value Strategist … Customer Outcomes… Customer and Commercial Excellence …Head of Value Proposition and Customer Journeys … to name a few.

Again, this is based on what C-level leaders share with us and what they respond positively to. These roles exist today too – they are strong contenders based on the people we know who are succeeding with customer (or digital) experience change.

You’ll spot the common factor: they are strictly customer value-based in their approach. The data points they are tracking for any component of the customer journey are “less NPS, more commercial” in outlook.

I’ll be looking out for this at the CX Awards – and we invite others to take a moment to think about how the brand of “CX” is evolving in their organisation.