Ever heard of Customer Experience Officer? While User Experience specialists are steadily growing in the digital workplace, the demand for this job will eventually spike to humungous proportion this year. This could due to the industry’s return shift to customer-centric campaigns that the need to touch on every segment of customer experience must be established as clearly as possible. From marketing and advertising to sales, product delivery, customer service and after-care, brand-building and customer engagement have become more fiercely competitive requiring steady hands and attentive eyes to focus on them. If you plan to be in this new trend, it is high time to ask yourself if you have what it takes to be a Customer Experience Officer.
What’s In A Name
If you try to search the net for a clear definition of a Customer Experience Officer, you will most likely end up befuddled. It’s an entirely new concept in such a way that it is closely related to the concept of User Experience. According to Wikipedia, it is the job of the “chief experience officer” (aptly labeled CxO) to take hold of the “overall user experience” of a business. On the CxO’s shoulders will depend the strategizing of user interface design of products and services as well as taking responsibility of other aspects like marketing, internal and external relations, community engagement, and communication as well as some aspects of HR relations particularly in training customer service reps.
Yes, it is going to be a tough call. Even when not a CxO but just part of the team as a Customer Experience Officer, this job is going to place you right in the eye of the storm. This is even more so nowadays when consumers are more active online allowing them to gain access on seemingly infinite sources of information. With consumers gaining traction by the minute with a simple tap on their mobile gadgets, this job is going to rock your world.
What You Need
When thinking of building a career around Customer Experience, the following habits and skills will set you off in the right direction:
Tech-Savvy. As this job will most likely entail monitoring online customer experience, being tech-savvy is a must. One needs to be fully equipped with the right training and skills on digital media and subsequent quirkiness, from social media to everything that the Internet has to offer.
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Receptiveness. One also has to be willing to accept suggestions and ideas. A certain level of open-mindedness or flexibility is essential when handling a highly volatile and competitive sector. You need to easily blend in without losing focus.
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Goal-Oriented. Business goals and customer experience always go hand in hand. Losing grasp on one will be crucial to the other. Having a clear focus on one’s mission will help craft the best strategies and tactics to augment customer engagement and improve customer experience.
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Clear Communication Skills. A customer experience officer will be exposed to different aspects of the business. To successfully throw a message across, it is essential for one to have clear communication skills.
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Patience. Of course, one will need patience as well as dogged persistence to pursue every goal in mind. Customers may seem irrational but with patience as well as being receptive, one will end up learning more in the process.
Now, do you have what it takes to be a Customer Experience Officer? If there’s a reason to believe that you are not, it is high time to reassess your options. Train to be one by learning new skills. Develop your inner savvy. By opening to the possibilities, you may end up where you truly wanted to be.
