Decoding the Customer

Customer experience transformation expert and Director of Experience Analytics at Magellan Health, Jennifer Wright, shares insights on CX in the age of Covid 19 and beyond. Jennifer leverages her knowledge of consumer behavior and experience as a CX leader across multiple sectors to provide insights about how customer experience is changing in response to the current global health pandemic. Jennifer and show host, Julia, discuss what “good” customer experience looks like these days, some examples of organizations that have been able to quickly pivot, and how the pandemic may change the way organizations measure and manage CX. If you’re looking for insight about Covid 19 and customer experience, and what you can do to help your organization prepare for CX management in the “new normal”, then this episode is for you. Expert insights Jennifer Wright is a customer experience transformation expert who designs and grows CX capabilities that generate actionable insights for business leaders. Through her experience building multiple CX capabilities across both the public and private sectors, she has developed a deep understanding of the common challenges faced when creating a superior customer experience. Jennifer delivers innovative solutions to these challenges by leveraging cross-industry knowledge and service design methods. Jennifer is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and holds a doctorate in industrial-organizational psychology from the University of Oklahoma. Her work in the field of customer experience spans multiple industries. Jennifer has worked in the financial services sector, helping writers, data scientists and psychologists to leverage behavioral economics or 'nudge' techniques to help homeowners through the post-mortgage crisis period in keeping their homes. She served as the Branch chief of business analytics at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, building and leading the Voice of the Customer (VoC) team within this US Federal government agency. And most recently she’s worked at Magellan Health where she’s led the customer analytics function for this managed healthcare company. Jennifer Wright, Phd, CCXP If you'd like to learn more about Jennifer's work, be sure to follow her on LinkedIn, where she often shares insights about customer experience and more. Covid 19 and customer experience Covid-19 has changed everything. In a mater of a few short weeks, this health pandemic has brought entire sectors of the economy to a standstill, closed schools, forced a good chunk of the world’s population into some form of lockdown, and brought the term “social distancing” to the forefront of everyone’s mind. It has left a lot of CX professionals wondering what's next. Jennifer anticipates that the next 1-2 years will be very fluid. We've seen a dramatic swing to remote and digital experiences, but the impact will be different for various industries. Within healthcare, the overnight transition to telehealth has been one of the biggest changes, but it's just one of many experiences that has moved from the in-person to the digital realm. Jennifer points out that once people get used to the convenience and safety factor, these changes may remain permanent. Experiences that can't be completely moved to the virtual space, such as dining out or going to the grocery store, have been significantly impacted, and Jennifer suspects there will be some lingering changes in consumer preferences, even after the Plexiglas barriers are removed. She anticipates that consumers will be hesitant about things like touching surfaces for some time. This will fundamentally alter the sensory aspect of physical customer experiences and attitudes towards these interactions. Time will tell if these attitudes and preferences become permanent. Honestly, it's going to be a tough call for probably the next year to two years. We're going to see a lot of different impacts and probably differences by sectors. ...

This CX Mini Masterclass explains customer touchpoint maps, how these differ from journey maps, and their place in the CX professional's toolbox. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, breaks down what a touchpoint map is (and is not) and this tool's role in helping teams build and manage customer experiences. If you’re interested in learning about touchpoint maps, what they're used for, and tips on how to build one, then this episode is for you. The #1 misused term in CX Touchpoint maps are often confused with journey maps, much to the frustration of CX professionals. In fact, the word "touchpoint" is so frequently misused, that many CX professionals have an aversion to it all together. That said, a good customer touchpoint map can serve an important purpose. These maps help teams understand how a customer interacts with a brand. They can be useful compliments to journey maps, as touchpoint maps can serve as a the link between the outward-looking perspective of the journey map and the inward-looking perspective of a process map or service blueprint. First off, it's important to understand the concept of a customer touchpoint, and how this differs from a customer experience. Touchpoints are the conduits for experiences throughout the journey. They are the channel or mode of interaction, not the interaction itself. For example if a customer is on a journey to get medical treatment and one of the experiences is calling their health insurance company to check on the status of a claim, the experience is calling in, and the touchpoint would be call center. To take things a step further, one could break down the specific touchpoint components within the call center like the IVR system, the agent and maybe even the phone connection itself. These would also be considered touchpoints. Touchpoint map vs. Journey map A customer journey is the series of events or experiences that a customer has as they are trying to fulfill some need in their life. Sometimes this need is referred to as a “job to be done”. A Journey map is the visual representation of this series of experiences, presented from the customer’s point of view. (If you are at all unsure about the definition of the terms touchpoint, experience or journey map, be sure to check out episodes 14, 15 and 16, which cover these concepts in detail.) Example Journey map (Source: Jim Tincher) A touchpoint map is a visual representation of the channels of interaction that a customer interfaces with throughout their journey. To understand the touchpoints you have to first understand the journey. And the touchpoint map is the representation of a customer persona’s journey, not all the possible touchpoint possibilities out there (which would be more of a touchpoint matrix). It’s also not the touchpoints that you want the customer to interface with (which would probably be considered a touchpoint design). Example touchpoint map (Source: Synegys) It's easiest to think about the touch point map as a byproduct of the customer journey map. A team will be best-positioned to build a touchpoint map only after they've crafted their journey map. Once the journey map is built, a team can then create an overlay of the touchpoints that a customer interacts with, delving into deeper levels of detail as needed.  When considering possible touchpoints, keep in mind that customer journeys don’t happen in a vacuum, they happen in the real world and so they are rarely isolated to interactions with just one brand. As a result, you may want to include touchpoints that aren’t in your control. In the example of the call to the health insurance company, the customer's phone is an important touchpoint in the journey, even though that isn’t something that the health insurance provider can control. Putting your touchpoint map to use Touchpoint maps are surprisingly versatile tools, though most frequently when used in conjunction with other CX artifacts like journey maps and...

This CX Mini Masterclass explores the benefits of interviews as an effective approach to gain customer insight. Special guest and CX thought leader Stephanie Thum shares when and where this Voice of Customer (VOC) strategy can be most useful, best practices for conducting customer interviews and 5 practical tips for designing an interview research initiative. If you’re looking for some tangible advice about how to leverage interviews to better understand your customers, then this episode is for you. Insights from a special guest Stephanie has amassed deep expertise through her diverse professional background in the field of customer experience. While she’s often best known for her experience as one of the US federal government's first agency CX leads, she has also been a practitioner and consultant in the B2B world, working with small and mid-sized companies and was one of the founding members of the CXPA. She's a CCXP and has remained active with the association, even spending some time as part of the association's HQ team. She's written an ebook, Where Customer Experience Practices Haven't Landed in Business. If you'd like to get in touch, connect with her via LinkedIn or Twitter.   Stephanie Thum, CCXP If you'd like to hear more of Stephanie's insights on the show, be sure to check out her previous episodes. In episode 45 Stephanie re-framed how organizations should think of customers and shared practical ideas on how to do this. In episode 50, Stephanie dove into her area of expertise and covered trends with how CX is taking hold in government organizations. And in episode 55, she provided a step-by-step guide to CEOs on how to lead customer-centric change. In episode 63 she explored some of the most pervasive missteps organizations make with their CX metrics and how to avoid these. Many ways to gain customer insight There isn't a one-size-fits-all answer for Voice of Customer. Industries and journeys are different, so each organization needs to craft its own best strategy for understanding customers and their needs. When planning your voice of customer approach, there are many different methodologies to choose from. Episode 79 covered 3 lesser known methodologies, but surveys, focus groups and interviews still rein supreme as the dominant research approaches. And with good reason. If done correctly, they can yield amazing insights. Customer surveys are especially popular for collecting customer experience feedback in the B2C world. But in B2B, where human-to-human, long-term relationships and RFPs make or break the journey, collecting feedback sometimes needs to take on a more human touch to have a meaningful impact. In this case, Stephanie advocates for a client interview program as a great way to gain customer insight. Understanding the methodology Client interviews are just that, face-to-face or telephone conversations with a selected group sample of clients or customers. Interviews are more flexible than surveys. Often an interviewer will come prepared with a set of planned, yet adaptable, questions about the customer or client's business and their experience with the brand. The objective of the conversation is to glean insight about client needs, how the client views the business relationship and how the supplier organization's products or services help address these business challenges. The selection of clients should be guided by the objectives of the research. If the research is designed to gain customer insight across the entire portfolio of customers, the sample should be reasonably representative of this. If the objective is to dive into the needs of a specific customer segment or product opportunity, the sample should be tailored accordingly.  5 expert tips for setting up an interview program Stephanie provided 5 recommendations for any CX team that is looking to integrate client interviews into their Voice of Customer research program: An impartial,

Seasoned CX leader and Customer Experience Design Partner with Verizon Business Group, Michelle Morris, shares insights from her rich and varied career in customer experience. Michelle helped shape one of the earliest formalized customer experience organizations in corporate America and has led CX teams at global brands from across a diverse array of industries. Michelle and show host, Julia, dive into the critical success factors for making CX change “stick”, approaches for calculating the ROI of CX including what Michelle calls the “4-R model”, and some ideas for those who are interested in pursuing a career in CX.  If you’re looking for some insight, inspiration and practical advice from an acclaimed CX leader who has been working in this field about as long as anyone can say they have, then this episode is for you. Expert insights Michelle is a Customer Experience Design Partner with Verizon Business Group.  In this role, she helps Verizon's business customers create better customer experiences for their customers. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) as well as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (LSSBB). Prior to joining Verizon, she led multiple CX organizations and has received many awards for her work in CX, including the esteemed CX Impact Award for Outstanding Practitioner in 2014, as well as the CX Innovation Award for her unique work titled, Pay It Forward – Improvements in CX through Employee Engagement. Her work has been cited in more than 20 industry publications including a featured case study by Forrester, "The CX Transformation Success Secrets of Crowe", May 22, 2019. Michelle is currently serving as a board member for the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) board since January of 2020. Although her passion today is in Customer Experience, her roots as a Chemical Engineer with 6 patents adds innovation, creativity and passion to her work. Michelle Morris, CCXP Michelle has been working in CX roles just about as long as anyone can say that they have. She established the CX organization at the laser printing and imaging company Lexmark in 2008, and went on to do award winning work at the accounting firm Crowe before moving to Verizon. It's a pleasure to hear insights from someone who has been leading formalized CX teams for as long as Michelle has. If you'd like to learn more about Michelle's work, be sure to follow her on LinkedIn, where she often shares insights about customer experience, the CXPA, and much more. The key to customer-centric transformation During her career, Michelle has seen the field of CX evolve, but the foundational critical success factors for meaningful CX change have remained a constant. CX transformation is still a lengthy process for most large or established businesses, and Michelle cited leadership support as one of three critically important components for the success of customer-centric transformation. If your CEO, your board or the leadership of your company isn't really investing and caring about customer experience, then you're beating your head against a wall because you're not going to make a lot of progress. Michelle added that it's possible to win over the hearts and minds of senior leaders, but that it can be incredibly time consuming. If embarking on a campaign to win hearts and minds, CX leaders need to bring in solid change management principles and understand what motivates leaders. Also, don't underestimate the power of a little peer pressure to help rally unified support. Michelle highlighted grassroots support for CX as a second key success factor. Everyone in the organization needs to believe in the mission that the organization is there to create great experiences for customers. Communication and employee education can be effective ways to get the message across, but there should also be mechanisms to engage employees and reinforce the right behaviors. While at Crowe,

This CX Mini Masterclass explores 3 low-cost unique customer experience research methodologies. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the benefits of expanding VOC efforts beyond the survey and focus group, several ways you can do this, and how to deal with potential push back around sample size. If you’re interested in learning about 3 simple VOC approaches that will help you gain new insight into the lives and experiences of your customers, then this episode is for you. Unique customer experience research Surveys and focus groups have long reigned supreme as the most popular Voice of Customer (VOC) approaches. And with good reason. If done correctly, they can yield valuable insights about customer experience. But, they have some limitations. They can be expensive and time consuming to facilitate. Both rely on customers reporting on what the think they do (which may differ from what they actually do). Surveys allow researchers to engage a large number of customers, but are always subject to bias and may yield limited insights. Focus groups provide a deeper look, but a group setting can impact what participants say. No VOC methodology is perfect, and each one yields unique customer experience insights. That's why it's important to have a multifaceted approach that utilizes several different tactics. Some of the lesser-known methodologies are easy, low-cost, and great complements to the traditional VOC favorites.  Fly on the wall observations - Understand your objectives, grab a clipboard, find a discrete spot and just absorb. This is particularly helpful for filling in blindspots along the customer journey that don’t leave a data trail (e.g. retail before the point of purchase, a customer waiting area). It's a great starting point for VOC research, as it normally generates additional questions that can be included in supplementary research. Job shadowing or "day in the life of" - A researcher spends time with a research subject while they do a particular task or just go about their day. The researcher should have clear direction on the objectives, but also the latitude to ask questions and engage with the research subject. This approach often yields surprising insights about things the research team never expected. It can be particularly useful in a B2B setting, where customers sometimes view their suppliers as partners and might be open to job shadowing as a way of helping suppliers gain insights that can improve products and services. Journaling - this last approach is all about unleashing the customer with a mandate to record their actions, thoughts, feelings, emotions or observations on a specific topic. It's a great window into customers' lives and what they actually do. The age of smartphones opens up many options to make journaling easier for researchers and participants. Instead of logging actions in a physical journal, participants can take photos, screen grabs or video testimonials about a certain activity related to the area of research interest. Commitment to participation is key, so this might be a place where it's appropriate to use incentives or engage with a professional panel of research subjects. Dealing with push back on sample size When exploring these unique customer experience research approaches, it's not uncommon to get questions about sample size. Anyone who's taken a stats course knows that is important when you are looking at things like probability and predictive modeling. On the spectrum of Voice of Customer methodologies, there is narrow-but-deep at the one end and wide- but-shallow at the other. A massive survey, for example, would be wide-but-shallow. There is the opportunity to reach a larger sample size, but limitations in the depth of perspective about a customer's life. On the other hand, something like a Day in the Life Of study is narrow but deep. It’s obviously not feasible to shadow thousands of customers,

This CX Mini Masterclass explains CX maturity models, what they are and how to leverage them. As organizations work towards their customer-centric objectives, they need to find ways of measuring, evaluating and charting their progress. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, demystifies CX maturity and shares practical ideas for how CX maturity models can be used by CX professional to help drive change. If you’re interested in learning more about a tool that is fundamental to customer-centric evolution and goes straight to the heart of the CX profession, then this episode is for you. Why CX Maturity is matters Truth be told, when the Age of the Customer arrived, most established businesses were ill-prepared. They were inward-looking and had been set up to solve business problems, not customer problems. The process for companies to change, adapt with the times and become customer-centric was just that, a process. And generally speaking, the larger the business, the longer that tends to take. There isn’t a cut and paste solution for customer-centric transformation. This will be a unique journey for each organization, but if a leadership team wants to achieve a particular goal, it's helpful to understand where things are and the work that awaits them to get to where they want to go. CX Maturity models help business leaders and CX teams understand the typical mileposts along the way. Demystifying the models As more and more businesses began responding to the new market conditions of the Age of the Customer, CX professionals started to see patterns and similarities within these business transformations, which gave rise to the development of CX maturity models. These models normally track the different phases of CX evolution from outright denial of customer experience as a strategic imperative to a fully integrated customer-centric business utopia. Some of the most popular models out there have been developed by the likes of the Temkin Group, Forrester, Gartner and other big name research houses. Many of the popular models are conceptually similar and vary mostly in their terminology. The magic is in how you use the model, not which one you pick. Bruce Temkin's CX maturity model is one of the most popular and a great example How to use CX maturity models A CX maturity model might sound like some sort of convoluted strategic thing at first, but it’s actually incredibly useful as a means to move from goals to action. CX diagnostic - evaluate where your organization stands in terms of its CX evolution. Use this as a conversation starter with leadership. Understand your strengths (and weaknesses) - most CX maturity models assess different competencies. CX leaders can use this level of granularity to evaluate what might be holding them back from progressing towards their customer-centric goals. Chart the course - There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for customer-centric evolution, but understanding the common competencies and milestones helps CX leaders manage expectations within their organization and plan for the big chunks of CX work.  Want to keep learning about CX? If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast. Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including CX strategy, voice of customer and culture change) or get in touch via email. 

This CX Mini Masterclass explores how organizations can leverage social media as a rich source of Voice of Customer (VOC) insight. It can be frustrating for brands to have their journey pain points laid bare for the entire internet to see, but social media platforms also provide a unique window into the priorities, motivations and attitudes of customers. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares the top 3 ways that CX teams can tap into social media to learn about customers' wants and needs. If you’re looking for tips and ideas on how to turn a thorn in the side of the business into a fountain of rich VOC insight, then this episode is for you. Social media is here to stay Love it or hate it, social media is part of the fabric of our modern world, and it is here to stay. The platforms have evolved over time, their popularity ebbing and flowing, but the overall trend of global social media usage has steadily moved in one direction, and that’s up 📈. The 2020 Hootsuite/We are Social Digital Report, found that there were over 3.8 Billion social media users globally. This is up from 3.5 Billion global social media users in 2019. The report also found, unsurprisingly, that social media is a huge part of our lives. Internet users who are on social media spend an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes on various platforms. The tip of the iceberg In the late 1980, the White House Office of Consumer Affairs conducted a research study, which found that only 1 in 26 consumers actually says something when they’re unhappy with a brand. The vast majority, or 97% of people, stay silent. This study might yield slightly different results in a modern context. With social media, the barriers to providing feedback are much lower, but it's likely that most consumers still say nothing. Reflect on your own experience for a moment. How often do you provide feedback when you have a bad experience? Certainly not all the time. Probably not even most of the time. That means that unprompted inbound customer feedback, like what we see on social media, is still just the tip of the iceberg. Below the waterline, there are a lot of unhappy customers who said nothing. Every bit of customer feedback is a gift. It provides an opportunity for the brand in question to rectify their relationship, and look for the root cause of customer experience pain points. Through what they say, customers are highlighting what’s important to them. Plus, the presence of unprompted feedback also indicates that a customer cares enough to say something. Again, reflecting on your own experiences as a customer, how often did you remain silent because you didn't care enough or thought the feedback would fall on deaf ears? If customers are providing feedback on social media, it means both that they care enough about their relationship with the brand in question, and that they have some faith that the situation will be fixed. CX teams shouldn't let these tiny gems from customers go to waste. Leveraging social media for VOC insight Social media has brought about challenges and opportunities for customer experience management. It's not surprising that CX leaders often have mixed emotions about social media. On the one hand, it’s a public forum for consumers to share their feelings about brands, which means it can be a real sore point for CX leaders. On the other hand, it's an incredible source of data about customer perceptions, opinions and priorities. The key is to effectively harness that information. Topic and trend analysis - if customers are organically telling a brand, en masse, that they love or hate something, that’s incredibly valuable information. Teams can leverage this insight to identify trending feedback topics which could become opportunities for product innovation or journey enhancement. It’s very difficult to get this information through a survey, as surveys nearly always contain some element of bias.

This CX Mini Masterclass looks at the practical realities of managing the customer journey in time of crisis. Interactions during a crisis can be the ultimate moment of truth for the customer, but experiences will only strengthen loyalty if brands have made appropriate adjustments to the journey. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explores how the customer’s perspective changes and what businesses need to do in response. If you’re looking for insight, guidance and practical ideas on how to modify customer experience in times of unprecedented uncertainty, then this episode is for you. CX in times of crisis The world is currently facing an unprecedented global health crisis in the form of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Over the course of the last week, the spread of this virus has skyrocketed in Europe and the US. It’s become a global pandemic, travel restrictions have been put in place, industries such as the travel sector have had the rug pulled out from under them, global stock markets have tanked and businesses are scrambling to respond. Some businesses face total shutdown during government lock-down, but many others such as pharmacies, retailers and grocery stores are still providing essential services. B2B services provides are pivoting to change how they support customers whose workforce is now either operating on reduced capacity or working from home. This crisis will (hopefully) pass, but one thing is guaranteed, this time of uncertainty is not the first and it won't be the last. CX leaders and practitioners need to be prepared to jump in and redirect customer journey management when the unexpected happens. Adjusting customer journey management Interactions in times like these can be the ultimate moment of truth for a customer. It’s an opportunity for brands to demonstrate their loyalty to the customer in a time of need, but it’s also a moment when the relationship is especially susceptible to damage. The key to success is for brands to listen and respond quickly. There will likely be aspects of the customer journey that need immediate attention and change. Regardless of the nature of the crisis at hand, there are several aspects of CX management that are especially important. CX leaders should consider these when deciding how to guide changes to customer journey management. Changing priorities When a "new normal" arrives, it brings with it a whole new set of needs and concerns. CX leaders need to understand how customer perspectives and priorities have changed. Something that might not have mattered yesterday is now important, and what was top-of-mind yesterday is now on the back burner. Changing priorities bring about a heightened awareness both in terms of individual behavior and what consumers expect of others. In the case of the coronavirus, health hygiene has been thrust to the front of everyone's minds. Consumers expect brands to provide experiences in the safest context possible, and they are suddenly scrutinizing the details of cleanliness. Brands need to respond to this new expectation by altering their actions and communication with customers. Today it's cleanliness, but the next crisis might bring about a different set of priorities, concerns and expectations. Brands need to be dialed into Voice of Customer Data so they can stay attune to these changes as they happen and modify the journey appropriately. The ripple effect of new needs Brands should also consider how customers’ need have changed, and what this means for the customer journey they deliver. It might be helpful to ask: what aspects of customers' lives are they leaning on more now than they used to before? How does this impact the customer experience we deliver? Taking another example from the current coronavirus crisis, more customers are practicing "social distancing" and living their lives from within the confines of their home. This means they are relying heavily on remote channels of interac...

This CX Mini Masterclass explains the concept of the Voice of Customer (VOC) Feedback Loop and why this is important for customer journey optimization. It's one thing to map the customer journey, it's another to improve customer experiences on an ongoing basis. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, defines the VOC Feedback Loop and shares some practical tips for implementing a framework for continual journey optimization. If you’re looking for guidance on how to move journey management from haphazard to gold standard, then this episode is for you. A framework for customer journey optimization As an organization progresses up the CX maturity curve and customer experience moves from being a “project” to a permanent fixture within the way of doing business, a key component is establishing a mechanism for ongoing management and improvement of the customer journey. This framework is known as the VOC feedback loop (also sometimes called an insights-to action feedback loop or customer journey optimization). The underlying idea is that organizations must have an ongoing, sustainable process for unearthing insights about where to improve the journey, prioritizing solutions, implementing change and measuring the impact. This process is continual. As journey improvements are implemented, it creates an opportunity for measuring results and listening to how customers respond. This in turn creates insights that might lead to future improvements, hence the term "feedback loop" and not "improvement process". The VOC Feedback Loop is not to be confused with Closed Loop Feedback, which is the process of getting back to a customer, after they’ve provided feedback about their experience. For more detail on Closed Loop Feedback, be sure to check out episode 42.  Why this matters When an organization launches a customer insights initiative or maps the journey for the first time, this undoubtedly highlights opportunities to improve experiences. The natural reaction is for the organization to establish a project or a task force to identify, prioritize and implement possible solutions. This can be an effective way to raise the profile of the customer journey, but the challenge with ongoing sustainability is twofold. First, the list of identified improvements is often overwhelmingly long, so much so that it’s not really suitable for a 3, 6, 9 maybe even an 18-month project. The second challenge is that the journey and underlying needs of customers aren’t stagnant. They’re ever-evolving. If a CX team were to do customer research or map the customer journey today, 6 months later there would be new needs and issues. Why? Because products, services and customers are always changing. For these reasons, CX leaders can’t expect to just map the customer journey every few years, come up with a big list of fix-it items, go to work on those and call it good. Ultimately, to establish sustainability and realize the business benefits of customer journey optimization, there needs to be a Voice of Customer Feedback Loop so that issues with the customer journey are constantly being scrutinized, solutions developed and improvements deployed. Tips for an effective VOC Feedback Loop As with most things, there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for ongoing customer journey optimization. That said, there are best practices that CX teams can adapt to their context: VOC insights: Establish an ongoing process for aggregating customer insights from across the organization. The answer for where to get this data will be different for every organization, but regardless, CX teams need to be continually sourcing, consolidating and reviewing voice of customer data. Ownership is key, this should be part of someone's regular job responsibilities. (VOC is a huge topic, so be sure to check out episodes 39, 40 and 41 for more detail.) Understand and prioritize: As issues are raised and solutions are vetted,

Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at VisionPoint Marketing, Josh Dodson, shares his insights about how the field of higher education is embracing customer-centricity and responding to the demands of the Age of the Customer. Customer experience leadership is quickly becoming an enabler for success in higher education. Josh and show host, Julia, discuss how changing market dynamics are forcing schools to turn up their game, the importance of ease of use in student journeys, the role of personalization in engaging students and how CX success is measured in higher education. If you’re looking for some insight into how customer experience is playing out in an industry facing disruption and steep competition, then this episode is for you. Driving change in higher education Josh Dodson is the Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at VisionPoint Marketing. Josh doesn’t just strategize, he delivers results. With his uncanny ability to author strategy, execute nuanced, technical tactics and leverage big data, Josh has helped countless institutions modernize their enrollment and marketing programs. His expertise with digital marketing, analytics and SEO for higher education has made him a sought-after thought leader in the industry. Before joining VisionPoint, he led digital marketing efforts at Bentley University, Southern New Hampshire University, Eastern Kentucky University, and Lincoln Memorial University. His experience both inside the university and partnering with them from the outside gives him a unique perspective that clients find invaluable. While Josh doesn't have "CX" in his title, his work is very much focused around helping higher education institutions deliver better customer (i.e. student) experiences. As a marketer, Josh's work with schools might start with exploration into how to improve the sales funnel and engagement with prospective students, but he's not shy about pointing out the importance of managing the full student lifecycle. He notes that most institutions regard the student lifecycle with a siloed view of the student as a prospective student, student or alumni, though he's working to change this. Josh Dodson, Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at VisionPoint Marketing Responding to a tough market The numbers of college students in the US have been on the decline over the past decade. A decline in the pool of high school graduates paired with concerns about the cost of college and changing attitudes towards higher education since the 2008 financial crisis have led to a 2 million student drop in enrollment during the last decade. This has hit for-profit schools the hardest, along with public 2-year schools in the US. And the bad news is that it looks like the same trends will persist through the mid 2020s. Adding to the challenge of dropping enrollment is a rise in alternative avenues for education. Josh notes that students are increasingly turning to "bootcamp" style learning over multi-year degree programs, meaning that a larger pool of organizations are now competing for the same (shrinking) pool of prospective students. In response to these changes, US colleges and universities are turning to student experience as a way to stand out and differentiate. From the enrollment side of things, schools are becoming more clever and streamlined about they way that they engage with prospective students, aiming to provide a frictionless experience that integrates digital engagement and personalization a la Amazon. To realize these changes, schools have had to completely change the way they think about the student journey.  Schools historically have tended to look at [the student journey] from the perspective of the school and not necessarily from the perspective of the student. And I think that that's also a shift that a lot of schools are really having to reckon with at this point. Just like their business counterparts in the for-profit corporate world,