Accountability for the Digital Customer Experience

Cisco dCloud is moderating the #CustomerExperience #CiscoChat on August 22nd – so we spent some time thinking about the Customer Experience and our role in it.

With the advent of social media marketing, the line between “customer-facing” and “non-customer-facing” becomes increasingly blurred. Visiting a client’s office isn’t the only way to interact anymore – and that’s a great thing. It empowers employees and gives each of us a chance to think about our little circle of control over the customer experience. It keeps the customer top-of-mind and helps us to infuse every action with a client-first mentality, which raises the quality of our product and the level of our participation in the process.

Whose job is it to make sure the Customer has a great experience?

The only right answer to this question is “everyone’s.” Everyone on the dCloud team has a part to play in ensuring that our stakeholders get what they need – quality content that exceeds their expectations and helps them easily demonstrate Cisco products to end users.

Whether you’re hiring the right team members for the right jobs, meeting with the customers to scope the projects, developing the content, writing the scripts, or holding team members accountable for meeting their deadlines, your piece of the puzzle is important and necessary, and it all contributes to the holistic “customer experience.”

How do you put the customer first?

Listening is the most underrated skill in this age of incessant talking. You can’t do anything for customers until you understand them. What do they care about? What problems are they trying to solve? What are all their options? What are you in a position to bring to the table that others may not be?

And if you’re not talking directly to the decision makers, you can affect the customer experience in your own way. How can you elevate the quality of the work? You might not be in a position to talk to the customer directly, but you talk to your teammates every day – seek out ways to add value!

How do you help your team succeed?

There are as many answers to this as there are dCloud team members, but here are a few of my favorites:

“By collaborating and being honest… even when I disagree… actually, especially when I disagree. To be our best we need everyone to speak up. I always try to make sure people speak their mind BEFORE we make decisions.” Jesper Novin, @jespernovin

“I make sure we don’t cut corners and stick to the scope agreed by our stakeholders. I also guide and manage the team through each stage of our project to ensure we reach our goal in a timely manner and that the quality of each demo is the best it can be by ensuring we test everything prior to releasing onto the platform.” Barry Morrison, @baz808

“I share what I know. The more I teach, the more I learn, so why be selfish with my skills and knowledge? I am always available for trainings, in a group setting, or individually. All you have to do is ask. And if I sense that you might be too shy to ask, I will reach out.” Silvia Spiva, @silviakspiva

“Through execution. While I play a part in the generation of ideas and innovative ways to make a difference, I also play a big role in supporting the execution of the vision of our management team. Ensuring that the big ideas that are envisioned, talked about and agreed upon actually come into existence. I am stating I, I, I but quite honestly it’s this awesome kickass team that I have the privilege of leading that should get all the credit. They make things look so easy and are also the engines that make everything execute so successfully and smoothly which in turn allows us to provide more and more to our customers.” Zina Rambo, @zrambo_cisco

I put the customer first by putting myself in the customer’s shoes as I’m writing a demo script. What would I want to know? Where would I be confused? Why are we doing this twice? What feature are we pointing out in this section, and how can we do it in the plainest and easiest way? Why do I, as the customer, even care about this at all?  These questions are on my mind as I’m writing, every day.

Everyone has a part to play – go find yours!

Join us on Twitter – Monday, August 22nd at 8am PT for the #CustomerExperience #CiscoChat, monitored by @ciscodcloud! Be sure to use the #CiscoChat hashtag at the end of each tweet, so that others can find your contributions to the discussion.