And the scarcity of learning opportunities
Customer Experience (CX) as a discipline is relatively new. Believed to have emerged early in the new millennia (based on a literature review and terminology search) Customer Experience is the latest wave of thought on how organizations interact with their customers or clientele base. When taking into account the rapid advancement of technology, it’s easy to see how consumer behavior has shifted to give customers more control over their buying decisions. Customer Experience is increasingly being taken more seriously as a strategy after more research is showing its financial impact and evangelical effect on a brand’s relationship with consumers. Additionally, the rise of the Chief Experience Officer (CXO; an executive position overseeing CX strategy implementation) is bringing CX to the forefront of an organization’s structure and goals.
This begs the question: Why is the landscape for Customer Experience training so sparse?
A simple search for CX training will result in multiple opportunities for live, in-person workshops or webinars, but this requires the person to be physically or virtually present, which takes time away from work and a commitment reserved for serious learners. There are also white papers, case studies, and books for someone to brush up on Customer Experience. However, what many organizations need is more than just “brushing up,” they need integral changes to their systems to put the customer at the center around which they can build memorable experiences.
Training is not only important for the C-suite and those at the administrative level, but for every person in the organization so they too can know what CX is and why it’s valuable. Each member of an organization deserves to know how their role impacts the organization and, ultimately, the bottom line. Referring back to the trainings found in a simple search: many of them are broad-strokes trainings that don’t teach the organizational values and goals that each employee needs to learn. What the Customer Experience discipline needs is training tailored for each company, B2B, healthcare and non-profit organization, and higher education institute because each sector and each organization is unique.
When CX University was founded in 2015, it started off providing online courses to CX professionals and aspiring practitioners. The online courses offered are vastly more comprehensive than the 60 minute training you might find with other training resources. The benefit of such comprehensiveness is that anyone who wants to take CX leadership seriously has a place to go and receive thorough academic training to tap into the resources and literature that comprise the foundation of the field.
What has set CXU apart, and has challenged the discipline and its training offerings, is the option for companies to co-create custom training eLearning modules for its employees. These eLearning trainings are designed to be convenient, economical, and integral to the brand’s mission and values. Employees are learning the best practices of their organization, as they would with any corporate training, but these practices underline the CX strategy designed by leadership.
Imagine you’re a new-hire for a company. Your first couple weeks are for training and easing into the new culture of your work. When you sit down in front of your training module, you receive interactive video lessons, activities, and assessments that teach the core values of the organization as well as practical steps to integrating CX practices in common daily scenarios. Each person will not only recognize how the organization is structured and why CX is important, but also how they are an important facet to the adoption of CX within that organization.
If consumer behavior has evolved to demand better customer experiences, then internal trainings need to start teaching their employees how to adopt CX at a practical and organization-specific level.