The value of certifications
I once had a mentor whose cubicle walls were covered in certificates and evidence of completion of training and qualification. People considered him a bit of an egotist and obsessed with certifications. Credentialism is a thing, after all. But I asked him once about all his accreditations. He said, “Some people say, ‘Sure, well you’re just good at taking tests,’ and I say, ‘Yea, I am, I guess.’” Point being, he was pretty humble and casual about them, but wasn’t kidding himself that lots of folks take them to heart. In his mind, it didn’t hurt that some people weren’t impressed—he likely wouldn’t lose favor with any of them for being credentialed (he was, it should be said, supremely smart and talented too…that always helps). But for those who did care, why not jump through a little hoop here and there to get your foot in the door? I’ll just say, it served him well.
I wrote recently about hiring your CX leaders from outside of your industry. I understand that that’s quite a plunge to take for some folks: You mean you want me to go with a complete novice in our industry and trust that person with our Customers? Our entire CX program? You must be nuts. […]
Be hungry for negative feedback
The topic of the Voice of the Customer (VoC) has many branches and sub-categories. Just on the topic of surveys alone (which is only a part of VoC), there are tons of thoughts: We discuss things like the formatting of surveys, the proper response rates, how and what sorts of questions to ask, which channel we should use to survey, even whom to survey. Beyond that there are numerous other methods of collecting the Voice of the Customer: market analyses, social media (SoMe) monitoring and analysis, competitive comparisons, and of course we can’t forget Walking in the Customers’ Shoes. Each of these other methods likewise comes with their own set of approaches and execution methods.
But what about what comes out of those efforts? Sometimes we concern ourselves so much with the day-to-day transactional concerns about collecting the VoC, we forget why we’re doing it in the first place. In the worst case, we substitute raw winning vs. losing motivations for insights, and devolve the entire process to: “What’s the score today?” Let’s back up a bit, though, and recognize what I’ve said so many times I should just make a bumper-sticker out of it: VoC insights are of no use if you don’t use them to improve your Customers’ experiences. That leads to a remarkable—and to some, shocking—conclusion:
You should be hungry for negative feedback. […]
For a CX leader, don’t hire from within your industry
There’s a meme going around LinkedIn these days about a job posting that requires of the ideal candidate experience that’s physically impossible: a history of use of a platform or programming language that’s longer than the language’s existence in the first place. There’s even been a mocking job posting put up with a cascade of similar impossibilities as requirements.
But that led me to thinking: As I’ve written about before, I sometimes browse through job postings on LinkedIn and Glassdoor in the CX field. What I mentioned in that previous post was how disparate the actual jobs are that are all listed as “CX” in some way or another. But the joke about a job requirement for experience that’s literally impossible to have acquired set off a bell in my mind that reminded me of another thing a lot of these CX job postings have in common: They almost universally require extensive experience in the hiring company’s industry. […]
Three uses of your feedback
I’m a big fan, as you know, of negative feedback. I suggest that CX professionals be greedy for negative feedback. Since slaps on the back and hoorahs from your most ardent fans don’t really help you improve, you should be eager to hear “suggestions” from your Customers as to how you can better serve them. Fortunately, there’s rarely a shortage of such inputs. So what do you do with this feedback? There are three ways in which you should be using every negative piece of information you receive from your Customers, regardless of the method of transmission: […]
Dynamism over products or services
There are articles all over the place and books overloading shelves in the business section of the stores having to do with strategies and branding. One of the theories that I find appealing is that, when it comes to strategies and visions and missions, it’s important to leave your products or services out of these guiding statements altogether. A company that determines its goodness or place in the lives of its Customers based simply on what they produce or do is missing a bigger piece of the puzzle: Why a Customer should care in the first place.
It has repercussions on the ground: If you make men’s shoes, that’s great. But your brand and your vision should likely be more than simply, “we make good/great shoes.” One reason for this is if the maker of “good/great shoes” were to go out of business tomorrow, a competitor would simply come in and buy up whatever is left of value—be it the supply chain, the raw materials, the cobblers (or elves?), the brand logo—and run on with whatever they’d been doing all along regardless of any greater purpose the recently out-of-business company may have had. In short, the erstwhile shoe maker wouldn’t be missed. […]
Hire for compassion…but also make sure your culture matches
Steve DiGioia asks a great question about your Customer-facing team members’ words, but it can be representative of a more deep-seated issue: Your culture!
Steve, great question… Sometimes you need to coach, and sometimes you need to take a look at your culture: Is it compassion-based, or compliance-based? https://t.co/fweEXrZikq pic.twitter.com/rNrDtx6B5y
— ✵Nicholas Zeisler (@NicholasZeisler) August 28, 2020
