CX Day is October 5th… so what?

To say that technology has disrupted the practice of customer experience (CX) management is an understatement. The advent of real-time software revolutionizes the way companies get feedback from consumers, democratizing data and empowering all levels of an organization from the front line to the C-Suite to take action against the information they receive.

October 5^th is CX Day. so what?® you may ask. It’s a day for those who champion customers’ voices. And while certainly the tech and ops teams will be lauded, we should reflect on the evolved role of researchers in this process and celebrate as well.

Just a few years back, the researcher played the role of data controller, reviewing the quality and representativeness of data, culling over reports for insights and disseminating learnings to the right people to make strategic decisions moving forward. The needs of our clients and organizations have changed. Technology has allowed us to get information to the right people at the right time. Researchers’ role in this new world is to make sure the information we deliver is the right information.

Companies still need the deep consultation from their research teams and partners to deliver excellence in their customer experience programs. Accordingly, researchers have an opportunity to shift their focus from being data controllers to data enablers, offering strategic consultation. Specifically, what we mean:

• Provide guidance and analytic frameworks to ensure strategic and financial impact. The new technology-enabled CX requires much shorter surveys than ever before, which makes survey design even more important. Making decisions on the right information to capture is harder than ever with so little space available.  Researchers must combine the “art” of survey design with advanced modeling techniques to identify what are the most important metrics.  These cutting-edge modeling techniques are needed to measure the impact of customer experience metrics on bottom line profitability, integrating survey data with operational and financial data.
• Leverage research to enable a culture of innovation. Technology can enable a researcher’s best fantasy – the ability to test and iterate among their clients quickly and easily. In the past, these questions may have required separate research studies and findings that could take months to execute and analyze. By micro-testing through their CX programs, researchers can leverage these programs to innovate more frequently.
• Work with teams to develop and measure solid action plans. Researchers are uniquely qualified to support their company’s strategic goals and develop measurement systems to track and monitor success against these goals. How often have we seen the best action plans developed, only to fail because they weren’t measured, supported and adjusted over time? The researcher is adept at understanding how to measure and set processes for initiative tracing. This is key to implementing and executing successful action plans.
• Bridge connections between the front line and the executive team. Technology can push the right data to the right groups at the right time, but the researcher should look for opportunities to bridge these insights across roles and divisions to ensure that companies are moving forward together instead of implementing potentially disconnected or even conflicting strategies. Integration is still one of the major challenges within the industry. Research has a unique position within the organization to build these connections.

As researchers join the festivities on October 5th, we should also celebrate the evolution of the industry and what we can do to enable even more positive growth moving forward. So what do you think? What other ways can researchers become data enablers?