A Customer Experience Designer Does What?

I began calling myself a customer experience designer this year because no other job title was really capturing what I do.

The short version: a CXD (customer experience designer) is the champion of happy customer interactions.

The long version:

Here goes–we use a variety of tools to help us figure out what those happy interactions are, and define end-to-end experiences for customers to meet those expectations.

Customer experience designers take a unique, multi-disciplinary approach to solving complex business challenges by asking, “What are the frictionless interactions that resolve most of our customers’ current problems?”

Additionally, we ‘future-proof’ our clients and their businesses with research and initiatives that layout plans to solve the next batch of problems they will inevitably face as customers’ needs change.

Problem-Solving for Real Humans

A good customer experience officer is a keen observer of both the internal organization and customer perceptions of a company. We go up, down, sideways and spin all around in our respective organizations. UX and creative types are jumping into CXD/CXO roles because there is so much more clarity around customer interactions from data and analytics that companies collect. We create scenarios and corresponding personas as part of our strategy to outline resolutions to a customer’s need.

A competent CXD should be able to align a strategy with a business goal and attribute successful initiatives with data and insights. That process never stops, either. They look at the marketplace, the brand promise, and define what a successful interaction looks like across the customer life-cycle. Then, they go up and down and communicate that to everyone in between.

We configure technology and resources to resolve their problems from a human point of view. And, that’s a really complex undertaking for any one person or organization.

SOFTWARE IS NOT A SILVER BULLET

Interface design, brand identity, and software platforms are the trifecta of good technology. Most people assume buying an expensive software system will somehow solve a business problem. Nope.

The opposite is true — software is only as good as the operator running it, and that’s another expensive proposition. A good website design or app interface should solve problems quickly and pay-off a brand promise for the customer using it.

A problem I consistently see in organizations is that companies charge brand managers and marketing teams with website redesigns because it’s a visual display of brand identity. Makes sense on paper, right?

Most people engaging a brand are less interested in listening to corporate narratives but are instead looking for quick resolutions to their big problems and daily annoyances.

But here’s the thing: most marketing people don’t care about resolving core customer service issues. Why? That’s not their job. They think about marketplace positioning, brand equity and whole host of other things. Plus, they usually have a good eye for visual design so they are really good protectors of a brand.

A better role for these people is advising, not implementing the customer experience interfaces of online experiences. Consider for a minute the last website redesign your company undertook. It probably was an internal nightmare for the team. Setbacks. Change orders. Delays. Scope change. Plus your vendor is powerless to push the project forward without necessary approvals.

Why is that considered normal? In my opinion, there is a better way — with a CXD collaborating with every team member to push these project forward.

WHERE WE FIT IN

A good customer experience officer sits at the center of the table. They might have different job titles but they do very similar activities. They find mutual alignments between all people: both customers and the business. Then they integrate all that feedback to a project or initiative. They listen first and act on insights for the benefit of the business and customer.

Most of our day-to-day work involves some level of customer interaction. We don’t discount any single person’s role or position in an organization but instead hope to amplify their work with our insights.

We constantly ask ourselves how can we help?

And, that’s the long version.

Articulative.co is a customer experience company. We take a workshop approach to all of our projects, processing some of the most difficult challenges that any company will encounter.

There are a lot of talented people in the world and we know some of them. Our methodology centers on the customer first and we use creative approaches to solve problems.

How are you incorporating customer experience design at your company or organization?

Would love to hear from you, ping me at marty@articulative.co to talk shop.