Post-it Ninja

"Improving the customer experience, that's what we're doing." I'm talking to a CX colleague at a government agency. At a big brown paper, she explains to me what I see on this. A beautiful customer journey, full of ups and downs in emotions and lots and lots of post-its. Unfortunately not of very good quality, because there are also many on the ground. But that's not what this blog is about.

Now I'm a big fan of the post-it myself. Super handy with all your customer travel sessions, workshops, improvement sessions and whatnot more. But I've also sometimes wondered how others see me and my CX colleagues. Whether we have a customer journey manager, service designer or customer experience expert as a job title.

Let's step into the shoes of our colleagues. What will they see and what will they think? Could it be like, "Hey, there she goes again. Always busy with those brown papers and all kinds of coloured self-adhesive little papers. Where's that post-it ninja going now? And what happens to that brown paper? Does she take it off the wall and something happens to it? Or will this customer journey soon be hanging on the wall like beautiful office art and will it be a reminder of a wonderful session?

Yeah, that could just be the picture. And if it is, we caused it ourselves. It's up to us to show that something's really happening to it. Because what else are we doing? Of course, one of our roles is to increase the customer awareness of colleagues. But we are only successful when the customer notices something. I really do know that we are sometimes seen as those post-it ninjas. Like those guys with the biggest plans and the best sessions, but with too little impact. And we are responsible for that ourselves. Also to change that, because we really need to get rid of that image.

We owe it to our CX booth that we have customer impact. That we are where the customer is. That we really know how to improve that customer journey. That we seduce leaders to participate in the contact centre. That we sometimes bring the major customer issues to the attention with brute force. That we subtly let everyone realise that we can't do things like that by having a few conversations now and then. Sometimes with post-its and much more often with the 'voice of the customer'. But always with the honest customer story and a lot of do-it-yourself power. We as CX professionals are responsible for our own impact. Away with office art, hello customer success. From post-it ninja to customer hero; let that be our goal.

 

This blog was written for CustomerFirst and published on 11 March 2020

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