Customer Experience Manager – between responsibilities and challenges

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of companies looking to recruit Customer Experience Managers or Customer Experience Specialists. It is good news that organisations in Romania understand the usefulness of these roles and are willing to take steps to develop the CX function. Depending on the specific domain or industry in which they operate, the positioning of a CX professional may differ, but certain requirements remain the same regardless of the business.

The purpose of this article is to provide more information about the role of the Customer Experience Manager in an organisation, what his or her duties are, what his or her responsibilities should be, and what challenges and obstacles he or she may face.

Responsibilities of a Customer Experience Manager

Every organisation, depending on the industry it operates in and the services and products it offers, assigns a number of responsibilities to the CX position, and a range of knowledge and skills are required to fulfil them. According to the Customer Experience Professional Association (CXPA), there are five competencies that a customer experience professional must have knowledge and experience in:

• Listening and understanding customers
• Ability to define, build and implement CX strategy
• Defining and calibrating the indicators and metrics that show return on investment
• Ability to design, innovate and implement CX projects
• Organisational culture and accountability

If you want to be a CX manager, you need to have these competencies. Of course, you can have more experience or specialise in just two of the five competencies, but you need to know at least the general elements of the others in order to have an overview of the customer experience, but also of employees and business partners, and to make correlations between activities within the organisation.

In large organisations, more than one resource is needed to build a strategy and implement all the CX competencies. In this case, the company decides to create a customer experience department with professionals specialising in one or more of the above competencies, or to create a cross-functional team to work with the CX manager.

Positioning the Customer Experience Manager

When we think about the positioning of a Customer Experience Manager in the organisation chart, depending on the size and specifics of the company, it is recommended that he/she should be part of the C-Level, reporting directly to the CEO. Why is it necessary for a Customer Experience Manager to be so high up? Quite simply. In order to build a customer-centric culture, the Customer Experience Manager needs to work cross-functionally with many departments in the organisation. The CX manager must therefore be the customer’s advocate, first and foremost looking out for the customer’s best interests, but also delivering personalised experiences that stick in the customer’s mind. In addition, the CX manager must have the support and cooperation of top management, be in the loop and contribute to the strategic decisions of the organisation.

Gemma Colby, winner of the title of Best CX Leader in the UK, attended the “What makes a great CX Leader?” event in December, organised by Awards International, CXPA and CX professionals from Central and South East Europe, including Customer Experience Romania.

Gemma believes that the 4 key responsibilities of a CX Manager in any organisation should be:

1. Facilitate cross-departmental discussions where customer interests are at stake. The role of the CX manager is to be a connector of the organisation, creating a context to amplify the voice of customers and employees to break down the barrier of ‘departmental agendas’ and drive a customer-centric culture.
2. Tell the customer story. Complaints, compliments, social media comments, absolutely everything the customer says needs to be heard and listened to by the whole organisation. How he does this is up to his creativity and that of his HR and marketing colleagues. Here are some examples of practical measures that can be taken: organising regular meetings to analyse research results, listening to customer calls, analysing the reasons for complaints or comments on social media, specific customer experience newsletters, posters with customer comments, short pill-like messages sent to employees’ e-mail or via the internal communication system (intranet). In addition to the voice of the customer, the voice of the employee and the voice of the business are equally fundamental to measuring customer orientation and the agility with which the organisation adapts. The three voices, customer, employee and business, bring real value to the organisation when viewed and analysed together, as there is a cause and effect synergy between them.
3. Focus on actions with impact. The customer experience manager must ensure that customer stories are heard and turned into a ‘happy ending’ for everyone. Well, the happy ending needs to be built brick by brick, with concrete actions taken and impact measured. We can only control what we measure!
4. Create an organisation-wide community of CX ambassadors. People are the most important resource in customer relationships. CX Ambassadors contribute to the implementation of the CX strategy, the execution of projects or the training of colleagues. Having a CX ambassador in every department helps to create a customer-centric organisational mindset – not in a short period of time, of course, but with small steps and perseverance.

Gemma heads the CX department at Yeld (Yellow Pages UK) and when asked about the composition of the department she heads, she told us that the team has 8 members and is divided into 4 streams, as follows

• 2 colleagues in charge of CX Insights (collecting, analysing and communicating the voice of the customer)
• 2 colleagues in the Customer Journey stream. They design the end-to-end processes based on the feedback collected from customers and employees.
• 2 colleagues in the Digital CX area, whose role is to identify processes that can be digitised so that the company can be proactive in its customer relationship.
• 2 colleagues who manage CX tools (CRM) to identify customer personas, create personalised experiences and measure the effectiveness of CX initiatives.

For more details on Gemma Colby’s achievements, watch the recording of the event “What makes a great CX Leader” on the Customer Experience Romania Youtube channel.

Top 3 challenges for a customer experience department

1. One of the key responsibilities and challenges of the Customer Experience department is to build a CX strategy and customer-centric culture. This is not an easy task as each department in the organisation typically has its own agenda and operates as a silo. In order to create a governance that works towards a common goal, the CUSTOMER, the CX manager’s skills are needed to build interdepartmental links, motivate managers and communicate the benefits of putting the customer at the centre of their actions and decisions in a way that is tailored to each department. The role of connector across the organisation is achieved by communicating customer stories, demonstrating with concrete figures the importance of customer loyalty and retention, streamlining processes and motivating their own people. Collaboration with HR, operations, customer service, marketing, product and sales is essential. At first glance, one might think that only those employees who interact with customers are related to customer experience and should be part of CX governance. However, companies with a customer-centric culture understand the important role that back-office departments play in streamlining processes and supporting customer-facing employees. In essence, these departments have internal customers – the front-line colleagues.
2. Involving top management and “using” them as an example for the whole company is the challenge with the greatest impact in building the customer-centric culture, but also in supporting the customer experience strategy. I have heard several CX managers say that if they don’t have senior management support, they are “like fish out of water”, unable to turn customer feedback into concrete actions and unable to get resources to develop projects. In this context, the CEO plays a key role in setting the direction and empowering the Customer Experience Manager to deliver the CX strategy and initiatives.
3. Demonstrating the short-term financial impact of CX initiatives is another challenge for the customer experience department, as these projects have a long-term impact. While initiatives that involve implementing new technologies or streamlining processes have an immediate impact, when it comes to employee attitudes, motivation and the development of new skills through training, coaching and mentoring, the time and financial impact is difficult to estimate. However, the impact can be seen in customer loyalty when customers receive a quality service in a time efficient manner.

The position of the CX manager in an organisation’s structure and the composition of the CX team, if any, does not have to follow a standard matrix. It all depends on the industry in which the company operates, the number of customers it has and how it interacts with them.

A CX manager’s best team is actually the entire organisation, aligned in implementing actions that support the customer-centric strategy.

In recent years, both in Romania and around the world, I have seen different concepts of the customer experience function and I can confirm that each approach had its positive sides as well as areas where improvements could be made.

One approach, most common in Western Europe and the US, is the CX team as an independent department with representation on the board of the organisation.

Another approach is that of the CX function, represented by a manager or specialist, who centralises and aligns all initiatives and actions aimed at the company’s customers.

Integrating the CX function into the remit of a department or position within the company is also a successful approach.

However, the most complex expression of the integration of the CX function in an organisation has been where the CX function is virtual, polarised by a CX steering committee with the presence and participation of all departments of the company. This is a solution that I have seen work successfully in some companies, but with many hiccups in others.

As I said, there is no perfect solution, but the responsibility for centralising and aligning actions, initiatives and reporting on results must be clearly defined. Simple, isn’t it?