One of my sons is heading toward to the end of his teen years. He’s sailing through it like an OG. Assured. Confident. Way too adult in some ways, but I’m proud of him. Unlike his old man at the same age, he’s comfortable in his skin, knows who he is. But that’s not the experience for many, perhaps even, for the majority.
Acne, awkwardness, and growing pains while making major life choices and navigating puberty, an increasing independence, the threat of anxiety and depression, academic strains and peer pressure – all at once.
But we get through it, don’t we, and we stride out into the world. Aspiration. Education. Success.
Of all my students, it strikes me how analogous this is for those in CX.
Do you remember when you first became interested in the customer domain? There’s no template story, no standard answer to that question. It’s a broad church.
Some hail from time in UX, web and mobile. They see everything as a design problem. Others from research. They see everything as an issue of “insight”. Some are marketers who moved sideways. Acquisition-everything, they say. There are folks from technology, usually CRM: sales, service, or marketing automation with a workflow and conversion mindset. Some came through the contact centre, some through retail, both with a myriad of popular transformation ideas. Others immigrated from finance, or general management.
There was a time in the 2010s, where the ground was most fertile for these occupational transfers. The business world, or parts of it, tended toward the idea that brands should be more “human”, where the many merits of DEI far too belatedly found a home, and when companies explored the nuance of the triple bottom line.
In this world the CX fraternity gained pace. It swelled. The splendour of its diversity offered both strength and weakness. A growth spurt to be sure, but a severe outbreak of pimples with it.
Adolescence abounds
What happens when such a wide array of interests and backgrounds collide in a necessarily singular field? What happens, when all those interests bring their historical lens, and baggage, seeing each problem as a nail, just perfect to hit with their own particular brand of hammer?
And what happens as this fraternity gains voice in the business, only to find itself alongside vocations that aren’t similarly characterised by competing tribes, or by an absence of a singular, disciplinary mode of practice?
Finance teams are staffed by trained accountants all speaking the same language. So too the legal team, and the HR team. Across industries and professions, the same uniform standards are found whether in engineering, medicine, design, teaching, and blue-collar professions: plumbing, construction, electrical, and more. General managers collide operational and financial discipline crafted in the textbooks of commerce degrees, or MBA papers – tried, tested, and proven through time. Each occupies the grown-up world of an established profession. Reliability, and regulation. It’s a platform on which they stand in absolute authority.
But there has been no such platform in the customer domain, even if many strive to project confidence, usually wrapped up in industry-speak.
“Customer obsession!”
Can you imagine a professional accounting body embracing such a breathless invention? Would a CEO trust their company’s international treasury function, to someone proclaiming expertise based on a “numbers obsession”?
Hyperbole to disguise vulnerability, rarely does the job.
Early stumbles
The first attempt to resolve the optics, and that feeling, were of course, industry-created “certifications”, issued without academic jurisdiction, to itself. Sounds silly when you say it out loud, doesn’t it? It was certainly well intended, noting the gap in training, but it lacked both the pedagogy and credibility to do the job.
Case in point, CX associations were not forged in the study of market economics or customer science – and it shows. In fact, the most popular of them, was instead founded by a survey software analyst to deliver, and I quote, “standardisation”. Just think on that for a moment.
It’s just one example though. Through the years, there have been many vested interests with their hands out, and with their fingers in, so-called industry training. It’s been tolerated, not because of a lack of aspiration in the field, but due to the inherent absence of more serious education.
But you already know this. Our 2023 study found a whopping 90% hunger for proper training. We are on the verge, I think, of the most meaningful time in the customer domain.
A line appears in the sand
Eventually, thankfully, adolescence is replaced by adulthood. It begs the question, then, “What’s driving the next generation of CXer?”
Well, after two decades of populist ideas and corporate shortcuts, the slow realisation has dawned that the economics are bad, very bad indeed. In fact, studies from the likes of Accenture through to the IMD Business School and onto the UK’s Customer Service Institute, collectively suggest corporate losses, directly correlated to customer program failure, now exceed 10 trillion USD.
It just hasn’t worked, folks.
But it’s not just the executive class that is starting to ask questions. Take a wonder through LinkedIn and you’ll find CXers at war – with each other.
Debates range from survey spam to customer journey “mapping”, NPS, and the effectiveness, or otherwise, of personalisation, to name just a few battlegrounds. Perhaps most tellingly, they rage over their search for value, or “ROI”, its communication – and why no one trusts its metrics. As one post put it, “CX is still seen as the ‘arts and crafts’ corner”.
Combatant’s sense that they are now being observed by those outside the ranks, and that repeating yesterday’s talking points might not cut it. The slow decay of adolescence, often so liberating in the natural world, is now upon the global CX fraternity. The line is drawn, demanding a choice.
This is, frankly, a truly exciting time for those that chose to cross it.
You know, it took over a century after the end of the industrial revolution, for marketing to establish its foundation management model, necessary to cope with the mass markets that the revolution spawned. So, while it may seem to have taken a long time – the early 2000s to the mid 2020s – for customer leadership to finally attain its own more advanced management education, it’s been relatively fast by comparison. On the other hand, it’s still been slow compared to quality management practices – now some 80 years old.
Irrespective, as the customer domain catches up to the scientific management revolution, those with the aspiration to grasp it can finally stand on a level playing field with peers from established professions.
The CEO’s call holds no fear for them.
I’m reminded that the real gift of education is very personal. Aside from the security if offers, and that collegial connection that forms with qualified others, it’s very much about confidence – and clarity.
Of course, some will hold onto the past. It won’t be without consequence, but that’s their choice.
The real question is, what’s yours?
Authors note
As I write this, our September intake is in full swing. It features folks from the many diverse nooks of marketing, customer management and service, as well as executives and general managers. They’re drawn from all 5 continents, studying together in my virtual classroom.
But as far as I’m concerned, we’re all one.
It’s impossible to execute any of these roles, or to collaborate and integrate with proper effect, without a liberating command of the relevant critical theory, the hard evidence, and the language of the modern customer base. Oh. And the chops to apply it.