CX: ‘Unlearn Your Mindset’
8 years ago, I began to work as a waitress in a local restaurant. Of course, as a young college student, It wasn’t a pleasant experience, since I did not have much to bring to the table (knowledge, skills, etc.) but a willingness to work and earn lunch money. But I learned how to take orders and other basic tasks, it also taught me the elegance of self-discipline and how to work within an organizational structure.
Fast forward a few years later, I switched to become a barista at an International coffee shop chain which taught me a lot about B2C relationships, there forth it taught me the dynamics of customer interaction and business entities. Its famous mindset that has been taught throughout its employees is “We are not in the coffee business serving people, we are in the people business serving coffee”. It was such a revelation, not because the CEO said it; but rather because it captures the essence of how human interaction (or, ‘customers’ as we may say it) is rooted deep within and can be the ‘make-or-break’ point of a business. A vision that carries within every touch of our daily routine significantly impacts how we present ourselves in front of our customers. Ultimately, it becomes the identity of the brand.
I grew a mindset of a barista serving cups of coffee into ‘your go-to customer service’, and I took pride in it. We were demanded to put our customers first, in complaints and compliments. We were there to serve.
After I graduated, I began to take a career in customer service in a tech company; the only customer interaction we had was from emails to confirm bug fixes in the app. We were expected to bridge the gap between our devs and users, explain users’ expectations, and step-by-step in replicating an issue. However, our main job was limited to only responding when it was needed. We weren’t expected to maintain the users’ loyalty or to enhance their experience when using our service (since it was a secure and private communication app anyway, we remained anonymous, and had no KYC procedure).
A year later, I began to work at Farmacare as a Customer Success officer. A start-up company where all members are deeply involved in every process from development to sales pipeline.
Then our department grew into Customer Experience. It confused me at first since we only changed one word from the title but it modifies so much in what we do.
So, what is Customer Experience, and how is it different from Customer Service?
Simply put, Customer Experience (also known as CX), is defined as the interactions and the experiences your customers have with your business throughout the entire journey (from the point of not knowing your brand, to establishing transactions with your brand). CX is the integral (or parent) part of Customer Relationship Management, and Customer Service is part of customer experience. Maintaining the CX aspect is important since customers with positive experiences are more likely to become repeat and loyal to the brand.
Almost all companies have a Customer Service department, but only a few comprehend why they ought to stress a client’s involvement. Many of them collect and evaluate information on it but don’t circulate the discoveries, still come up short to form the data to utilize and the responsible team to analyze and create an impact from it. Research by American Express found that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better experience, and companies that successfully implement a customer experience strategy achieve higher customer satisfaction rates, reduced customer churn, and increased revenues.
CX begins the first time a potential customer attempts to find out more about our business. For instance, When we take a look at a website of a service/product, and there are pop-up ads or too many complicated web designs that make it difficult for us to find certain information; which drives our interest in the product lower than our first intention to contact the company, it could be an example of a bad experience of customer interaction.
In our new role as CX, we are expected to tailor our customers’ journeys. From research on what our customers need, how we could implement and align our company’s value in our product, being involved in the development process, educating and bridging the communication as advocates between our company to our customers, to overall maintain customer satisfaction and retention to our product.
I have to unlearn ‘how to be a good Customer Officer’ and rebuild a mindset of consultancy. I have to unlearn what I thought was an easy job, just to hear complaints, and deliver them to the team; to construct a new understanding of what it is that I’m actually doing and what impact could I make out of it.
Here on, I learned that being a CX specialist is also to recognize our customers’ pain points as our mainframe to create a journey; and I learned that our customers are not only from external ‘buyers’ but also the people within the organization and we ought to advocate from both sides. We shift our perspective from being Customer Service that only responds when needed, to proactively finding solutions and ways to communicate prior to issues to being happening as preventive measures.
It’s an exhilarating journey to learn how big Customer Experience is and how it grows us.
