MC: 0:00

Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, Jeannie Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences. Ready set action.

Jeannie Walters: 0:31

It's graduation season here at the Experience Action Podcast and it might be where you are too. Let's dive into this great question from a recent graduate.

Listener Question: 0:44

Hi, my name is Nick.

Listener Question: 0:45

I'm a recent graduate at the University of Cincinnati and I'm just wondering what advice do you have for someone with a marketing background looking to break into CX?

Jeannie Walters: 0:55

Well, first of all, Nick, congratulations on your graduation and welcome to the wonderful world of customer experience. I think this is such an astute question because so many organizations actually don't necessarily know that they're looking for customer experience people. Sometimes they are putting people into marketing and saying could you help us with this whole customer experience thing? So having this type of acumen can really help you be flexible and dynamic and adaptable in the changing world that we live in. So kudos to you for even asking this question. So let's dive in. First of all, when we think about marketing and customer experience, in many ways they share a lot of DNA. They are focused on getting customers to really at least enter the journey and continue through the journey. They are all about understanding customers, building relationships and communicating value. So there is a ton of overlap here. Now, when we think about how to move from maybe understanding marketing to more of a customer experience lens, the first thing I want you to think about is how you can leverage what you already know through marketing. So, for example, your marketing background probably gives you some great understanding about audience segmentation, messaging, customer journeys. Those are all foundational in the customer experience work that we do. So maybe some of the things to consider. Think about how customers feel, not just how they convert in the journey, and think beyond the sale. Sometimes in marketing we're all about getting them to that moment of conversion, but when we think about the customer experience, we have to think about the holistic journey way beyond that. We also want to make sure that we are applying how to get people's attention. Storytelling is incredibly important in customer experience work and we want to tie that back to branding. If we are not reflecting the brand promise in every step of the journey, then there's misalignment there. So really think about the aspects of marketing that apply directly to customer experience. Really, this is your chance to start seeing every touchpoint as a chance to reinforce loyalty, trust, reduce friction all of those things that are so important. Number two I want you to think about what does it mean to understand the full journey?

Jeannie Walters: 3:30

One of the biggest shifts we have to make from marketing to customer experience is thinking way beyond that first part of the journey. I have talked to a lot of marketers in my day and many of them talk about how it's really about how much does it cost to get somebody to that point of sale. That is really what they're charged with. That's how they measure success. But when we're talking about customer experience, we're not only talking about before the sale and when they are getting to know our brand and taking that next step in the journey due to building that trust, but we're also talking about what happens to keep them customers. How do we retain our customers? How do we make sure they spend more once they become a customer? How do we make sure they tell their friends and family about our brand? All of that is part of really thinking about the customer journey in a more holistic way.

Jeannie Walters: 4:27

We also want to pay specific attention to when they have the points where they're deciding whether to stay or leave. I'm talking about things like contract renewals or subscriptions or cancellations. How are we handling those points? Because even if we're losing a customer in that moment, we are still delivering a customer experience, so that can make or break the relationship. As customer experience professionals, we need to think about the entire journey from the customer's perspective. That will allow us to look for points of friction, that we can avoid things, things that we can help them build trust and reassurance so that they can take that next step in the journey, and ultimately, we want them to look back on their time with our brand and think that was worthwhile, I appreciate that brand, even if they're no longer a customer, because that's what they will share with their networks as well.

Jeannie Walters: 5:22

Frankly, customer experience includes everything. This means support and journey mapping, voice of the customer, all of those things. So you probably are pretty good at persona development. I would think about how can we use those personas to really understand journey mapping, for instance, for our customers. Those types of skills will really help you understand the entire journey. And here's a shameless plug we cover a lot of this in our CXI membership and you can figure some of this out by taking our assessment, the CXI Compass. You can find both of those at experienceinvestigatorscom.

Jeannie Walters: 6:02

Now, of course, we want to understand the full journey, we want to apply those marketing skills, but we also have to make sure we're building cross-functional awareness. CX is not one department, one section, anything like that. Customer experience does not live in one place. It is a team sport, as we like to say. It touches operations, HR, technology, product development, you name it. And so, as a customer experience professional, think of your job partially as talking to people across your organization about how they define customer experience. How can you make sure there's alignment there? Learn how success is measured by department or team. That will tell you a lot about how much you can build cross-functional awareness into your customer experience programs. So what does success look like for your support team versus your product team? How can you make sure that people have a consistent way to measure success with customer experience throughout the organization?

Jeannie Walters: 7:05

The best customer experience pros they're more than just design advocates. They are more than just strategists. What we have to be, frankly, we have to be translators. We have to communicate in ways that get people to understand what this is and how it impacts them and the customers we serve. We are essentially bridge builders across silos and departments. I can't stress enough how important that skill is. And then, of course, when it comes to customer experience, there are some foundational skills that are super important to understand. One, of course, is empathy. How can we really show compassion and understanding for both customers and employees? How can we make sure empathy is woven into every part of the experience. Of course, there's strategic thinking. We don't do this because we want to fix those onesie-twosie things. We do this because we want to view this strategically, make big-picture decisions and set the right goals for success.

Jeannie Walters: 8:06

Data literacy is incredibly important here. We need to know what metrics matter, why they matter and how to tell stories with data. Please, don't just take what they say is what you should measure. Understand the why behind it. That's what will drive better decisions, better actions and better outcomes. And a big part of our work is change management. Most organizations do not have a fully functional customer-centric culture yet. What we're trying to do is move them closer to that. That means a lot of change management getting people to understand why we're changing, what we're changing, how we're changing. We want to make sure we are influencing people and leading that customer experience evolution.

Jeannie Walters: 8:52

And then, of course, in today's world, I don't think it matters what role you're in we have to have some sort of tech acumen. We have to understand how to use tools like customer relationship managers, artificial intelligence, machine learning, conversational AI all of those things that we use now pretty much everywhere. We have to understand at least how and why to use them. We may not understand the code, we may not understand all of that, that's okay, but we have to be articulate enough to explain why we're using it and to double check its work. Frankly, we have to know enough to know when something isn't quite right.

Jeannie Walters: 9:31

Last thing I want to say is that in any customer experience work and this is exactly why I named the company Experience Investigators we have to stay curious. We have to simply stay curious because this is evolving all the time. We are constantly looking for better, more efficient ways to do things, to bring in more revenue and lower those expenses while at the same time, delivering meaningful experiences for our customers and helping them live better lives. That is a big ask, so the more that you can stay open to that, stay humble, look around, see what people are doing and ask for help when you need it. Customer experience professionals are incredibly friendly and open.

Jeannie Walters: 10:16

I have found the CX community to be one of curious people who share learning, who ask when they are stuck and get the answers from the community. So, if you're not already involved, get involved. There are some great organizations out there. You might have things in your role, wherever you end up. Look for people who are passionate about this and share with them. They are willing to share with you. So, Nick, stay curious. To all of us out there, we need to stay open and curious and keep sharing. This is how we grow together.

Jeannie Walters: 10:53

I wish all of the new graduates incredible congratulations and I can't wait to see what you do. Fill us in, especially if you are looking for a customer experience role, or maybe you're there now. Let us know what you're doing, let us know how we can support you. And if you haven't already check out our Learning Center, you're not done with learning yet. Check out our Learning Center at experienceinvestigatorscom. Thanks so much for this question. Thank you for being here and we'll see you next time.

Jeannie Walters: 11:24

To learn more about our strategic approach to experience. Check out free resources at experienceinvestigatorscom, where you can sign up for our newsletter, our Year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.