Customer Experience V.P. Wannabes

Mark Hurst over at the Good Experience blog posted his 10 steps for becoming the VP of Customer Experience at your company.

He speaks of forming stakeholder groups and offshoot ad-hoc teams, implementing “skunk work” projects, and championing the cause throughout the organization.

Good stuff ... but his 10-step process could use an extra step … a step zero.

For anyone wanting to be a VP of Customer Experience, especially at an offline retailing business, start at STEP ZERO and immerse yourself fully in the role of the front-line employee and treat every interaction with customers and fellow employees as a learning experience.

Experience your business as employees and customers do by GETTING OUT OF THE OFFICE and GETTING INTO THE STORE!!!!

Learn first-hand the nuances of the customer experience from the employee perspective.

Learn the challenges front-line employees experience in delivering consistently good experiences to customers.

Learn how front-line employees can be better equipped with tools, resources, motivation, and training to deliver consistently great experiences.

Learn how to better design store layouts and improve merchandising sets from watching and helping customers navigate through the retail environment.

Learn how to improve upon products/services offered by hearing first-hand feedback from customers and by seeing how customers interact with products on the selling floor.

And when you return to the office to form teams of stakeholders charged with improving the Customer Experience, don’t forget to include the most important stakeholder – THE CUSTOMER.

It’s just as much a necessity, and maybe more of an imperative, to include the Customer perspective in Customer Experience projects just as you include the perspectives of marketers, product developers, and operators.

Comments

[Jeannie Walters]

I agree that companies make this more complicated than it needs to be.

The bottom line - it's very difficult for employees who are living day-to-day INSIDE the experience to gain the outside perspective. That's often what we bring to the table. You don't need a huge focus group to tell you that the call center experience bites!