My 6 Daily Priorities as a CX Leader

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What does a day in the life of a CX professional look like? One of the reasons I asked this question recently during the daily Customer Experience Question of the Day (CXQOTD) was that I thought we’d see a varied response from the CX community. Consider the consultant versus the chief customer officer versus the contact center leader. The responses didn’t disappoint.

Being a customer service and contact center leader, also tabbed with customer experience responsibilities, here are my six areas of daily focus.

Priority #1 – Reviewing metric performance

First thing every morning I have a series of reports that I review. Some of the key metrics include:

  • Customer interaction arrival patterns – I want to see if our ticket volume was consistent and ensure that they arrived in their typical distribution. Any abnormal spikes or dips could indicate a customer-impacting issue or trend.
  • Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) – We measure customer satisfaction. But on a daily basis, the score doesn’t mean a whole lot. What’s more important is reading customer responses and making every effort to close the loop and turn around dissatisfied customers.
  • Team performance – I monitor agent productivity to ensure that everyone on the team is staying on task. Along these lines is our service level and making sure that we are responding to customers in a timely manner.

There are other metrics I aspire to track but these are the big ones I look at each morning.

Priority #2 – Checking the pulse of customer service

This involves some combination of scanning through our ticket queue, reading through Slack conversations, and interacting with a handful of customers. This allows me to stay attuned to our customers and their daily needs. One of my biggest fears is sitting in a bubble or ivory tower and losing touch with what’s actually happening on the contact center floor. By interacting with agents and customers, it’s easier to feel the pain when things are broken in the customer experience.

Priority #3 – Editing and publishing self-help content

Our team has a major emphasis on evaluating whether or not our knowledgebase content is current and able to answer the questions customers are asking. I’m finding that we are making edits and additions almost daily — and each of these updates potentially reduces the number of unnecessary contacts from customers. Customers don’t actually want to contact support so we need to continue to proactively answer their questions.

Priority #4 – Check in with engineering on top priorities

I work at a start-up and the fun thing about that is that the contact center sits right next to the engineering team. I have an ongoing list of bugs and feature requests and am constantly working with our entire team to make sure we prioritize the projects and fixes that will have the greatest impact on customers. Sure it would be great to fix everything now but it helps also to gain an appreciation for the fact that resources are limited so prioritization is a must.

Priority #5 – Read and learn

As a CX leader, I aim to learn something new every day. This might involve reading a blog or book, learning about a new tool or technology, attending a webinar, listening to a podcast, or watching a video. As Stephen Covey says, sharpening the saw is one of the habits of highly effective people.

Priority #6 – Plug into the CX community

The community of CX professionals is incredibly vibrant. Looking for ways to get plugged in? Here are some of the communities I’m involved in on a daily basis:

  • CX Accelerator – This Slack group just exceeded 2,000 members. I guarantee that regardless of the issue you’re facing, someone else in this community has faced something similar and is more than willing to share.
  • Twitter – There are so many great Twitter chats out there. One of my favorites is #ICMIChat every Tuesday a 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacific. Also, look for people talking on the #CX hashtag and you’ll be surprised at how a few tweets can lead to some incredible collaboration.
  • CXQOTD – OK, this is a shameless plug because I post the question daily. But this isn’t the Jeremy Watkin show. This is about me talking about what I do and then listening to and valuing the input of others in the community. And we talk about a wide range of topics.

My other daily projects and priorities vary depending on the day but these priorities help me identify some of the best initiatives and ideas to improve our customer experience. 

On that note, my good friend Ben Motteram, the CXpert wrote a wonderful response to this question on his blog titled A Day in the Life of a CX Manager. I especially like when he talks about the ongoing priority to help all employees understand “what CX means, how it related to overall organizational goals, and what people could be doing in their day-to-day jobs to help.”

And now I ask you. What does a day in your life look like as a CX professional? Leave a comment below.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Jeremy Watkin
Jeremy Watkin is the Director of Customer Support and CX at NumberBarn. He has more than 20 years of experience as a contact center professional leading highly engaged customer service teams. Jeremy is frequently recognized as a thought leader for his writing and speaking on a variety of topics including quality management, outsourcing, customer experience, contact center technology, and more. When not working he's spending quality time with his wife Alicia and their three boys, running with his dog, or dreaming of native trout rising for a size 16 elk hair caddis.

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