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Hiring a Freelance Customer Experience specialist

Transform your company into a Customer Centric Business with the support from a Freelance CX Expert

Position the Customer Experience strategy at the core of your business:

Understanding the CX Strategy and its weight in the overall Business strategy

Business Strategy Development is the key process in planning for the health and the future of a company business. Strategic objectives and the ways/means to achieve them are key questions to be answered during this critical process. Most common key strategic objectives adopted by the companies, like business turnover, predictability, stability, growth, profitability, innovation etc.  have to a high degree a very strong dependency on the company clients and their behavior toward the business.

Therefore, the clients and the way companies deal with them and adapt to their needs should be at the core of the overall business strategy. An articulated CX strategy as part of the overall business strategy nowadays is not an option but rather a must for any successful company.

CX strategy implementation and Customer Journey Mapping process

Customer Journey Mapping is a key process which plays an instrumental role in executing the company’s CX strategy or in developing user centric products and services. It provides the company or its product development teams with a holistic user centric framework to predict, assess and measure the customer experience along the entire customer value lifecycle and across all company/product/service’s touch points. This allows the companies to continuously innovate and develop new products and services or identify user experience related areas of improvement where they can create additional value for the users.

Persona and Customer Journey Maps are parts of the Design Thinking process in the product/service development lifecycle. Persona is the key element in Customer Journey Map (CJM) because it models in great details the key characteristics of your customer/user (e.g. gender, age, education, lifestyle, interests, values, goals, needs, limitations, pain points, desires, attitudes, and patterns of behavior). This will allow for user centric product/services development by simulating/assessing future customer/users experience with the new product/service and identification of key areas that require attention. Persona’s development starts with a comprehensive market research and benchmark through data collection and data analysis that will allow you to identify opportunities for value creation for the target customer/users. Based on the findings a number of Personas are developed for a given product/service and for each persona a CJM will be developed.

As an CX Expert, I am helping companies to develop and implement Customer Experience strategies, CX Frameworks and programs that transform the way customer value is created and delivered to the final client. I am a transformation agent that thinks out-of-the-box, speaks KPIs language and gets things done within the expected quality standards and deadlines.

For every persona, a scenario is developed according to customer journey lifecycle [1.Awareness] >> [2.Evaluation] >> [3.Engagement] >> [4.Purchase/Consume] >> [5.Experience] >> [6.Loyalty]. All persona’s steps, touchpoints, channels, experiences, sentiments are plotted on the CJM. The whole process is supported by ideation/brainstorm meetings/workshops in order to reach full consensus from all stakeholders.

Customer Journey Map development - Key principles and best practices:

  • Do a proper market research and segmentation before defining the personas
  • Develop realistic and complete scenarios for your personas by considering the whole customer journey lifecycle
  • Accurately identify and validate all personas’ expected value, touchpoints, timelines and expectations at every step in the customer journey
  • Properly identify, assess, measure and validate customer feelings and emotions
  • Clearly identify and prioritize each and every step where your product/service have to improve or add additional value to the personas

Case studies with Customer experience specialist

Certified Customer experience in the Network

case study
Customer experience case study for a digital government company

Challenge, Context, Problems to be solved

A Digital Government entity in the UAE is undergoing a large-scale digital transformation program, requesting advisory support in the overall CX program strategy and its execution for consolidating all government entities digital services under one single integrated digital government platform. The program was losing focus and was not satisfied with the customer feedback in regards to their services.

The main cause was the fact that there was no articulated CX strategy at the program level and also because on the ground most of the time business requirements for new digital services were driven by the technical team (with only technical skills) rather than business stakeholders with a holistic view in regards to the Customer Experience strategy.

Mission, tools and methodology

Preliminary assessment: the overall digital transformation strategy was conducted in order to understand its strategic objectives.

Based on the client’s strategic objectives further detailed assessment on key areas was conducted as follows:

  • Assessment of the current situation in regards to all customer’s touch points (Web portal, Mobile App, Customer Support Centers, Call Centers, CRM Platform and all digital communication channels). Identified gaps and areas of improvement and proposed a detailed action plan to address them. Monitored the plan implementation to ensure all initiatives were properly and timely implemented.
  • Assessment of the existing Customer Experience Design process was conducted and gaps and areas of improvement were identified.  A list of recommendations and suggested changes, based on the industry best practices were provided to the client.
  • Assessment of the User Experience Design for the web platform, Mobile Application and all other channels (e.g. Customer Support Center, Call Center and CRM platform) and provided recommendations for improvement according to industry best practices.
  • Assessment of the User Experience across all touchpoints was also conducted and Customer Journey Maps were developed after incorporating key initiatives for CX improvement. New integrated processes were developed in order to fill in the existing gaps in operations in order to ensure that all departments/teams are working in an integrated manner towards the same customer experience-oriented goals.

Achieved results

During the 6 months of the project life span, the client managed to fix all gaps identified in the business operations as per the action plan recommended by the CX consultant.  Under the CX consultant guidance the client implemented on the ground a complete Customer Journey Design Framework that was developed and adopted by all existing and new digital services.

With a complete operational Customer Experience Framework, the client is now able to properly monitor, measure and improve all CX related performance KPIs.

UAE
6 months

case study
The launch of a new Customer Experience and Customer Value Maximization area

Challenge, Context, Problems to be solved

A company had a big increase in market footprint across different countries. It started with 3 main markets and 2 years later was present in 16, with different settings, organization and providers. It went also under a merge process when one of the shareholders bought a significant stake from the other. Besides, due to global market transformations, the sales channel that was successful traditionally and provided the competitive advantage in historical markets, was undergoing serious challenges, that required a digital transformation and the development of a new and robust on-line channel.

The company wanted to launch a new area for Customer experience and customer value maximization.

A global description of the new area has been provided but due to cultural and structural problems there was a delay on providing concrete steps towards the projected goal. The company was divided in silos and the customer information was either missing or scattered between different platforms and systems. No support was being provided from top management and the different areas had no time to provide an aligned solution and the new area was facing many difficulties to start.

Mission, tools and methodology

Besides many urgent problems a global framework was established in three steps: Assess, Plan and Build. A Steering Committee involving top managers was created to provide support to a new defined Project Management Office that worked with different people from the areas in what was defined as the Customer Success team.

The Steering Committee understood that the new area was not only a future source of income, promoting customer acquisition, retention and repetition, but a Transformation Program across the whole company that will last for at least a year and a half and will provide a significant increase in customer value management.

With a Customer Experience methodology Customer Journeys, Voice of the customer and the company´s organization, and technical, human and strategic resources were analyzed. It brought a transversal view of the customer lifecycle and a practical approach of project management for the new created PMO. A set of interviews with the different areas: Communication, Brand, Marketing, Sales, Systems and Human Resources, amongst others, was established during the first weeks. They were convinced and onboarded and initial reluctancy was overcome.

A global roadmap, divided in ten different projects was defined together with the main strategic areas and proposed to the new created Steering Committee. The Committee supported the new vision and the detailed methodology that was brought to provide ways of action and knowledge gathering.

Achieved results

The new area was empowered and felt sustained by the new methodology and its coherence.

They started to recruit some critical missing human resources with data scientist and customer experience profiles.

They were confident in the Outvise team capacity to provide further support to the Project Management Office for maximizing customer knowledge and loyalty and asked for more consultancy support for the next 18 months.

Must have skills for an expert in CX

  • Customer Experience Strategy
  • Customer Experience Transformation
  • Customer Value Management
  • Customer Journey Design
  • Product/Service Development Cycle management
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Business and Data Analytics
  • Design Thinking
  • End-to-End Customer Marketing Operations - Market Intelligence, Product & Solution Marketing, Customer Engagement, Markets Development, Marketing Communication
  • Project Management skills

Responsibilities of a CX specialist

  • Develops Customer Experience Strategy and aligns it to the overall company business strategy
  • Takes a holistic approach of the CX Management by assessing all company’ touchpoints with its clients and ensures that all of them are considered during the Customer Journey Design process
  • Leads the Customer Journey Design process
  • Understands company’ business strategy and its product/services value proposition
  • Conducts comprehensive Market Research and Customer Segmentation in order to model the key client’s profiles
  • Uses business and data analytics in order to provide strong supporting evidences for the assumptions used in the Design Thinking process 
  • Develops all relevant Personas to be considered for the Customer Journey Mapping
  • Develops Customer Journey Maps by covering the entire Customer Journey Cycle (Awareness >> Evaluation >> Engagement >> Purchase/Consume >> Experience >> Loyalty)
  • Assesses the current situations and identify gaps and areas of improvement 
  • Defines key initiatives/actions to be implemented and develops a comprehensive customer Experience Program to be implemented.
  • Develops and manages the CX Framework for CX program execution and ensures KPIs measurements
  • Manages the CX team composed by CX specialists, CX designers, CRM specialists, Marketing professionals, Software Developers and other multidisciplinary team members
  • Provides CX Program onboarding for all relevant stakeholders, secures their support and manages an efficient communication framework for a successful implementation of the program

Challenges and hot topics of the CX specialist

  • Leadership understanding of CX strategic importance and support in implementing the CX transformation initiatives/programs.
  • Clear understanding of the company strategic objectives and the way customer Experience can create measurable contribution in reaching the business objectives.
  • Organization culture and openness towards CX transformational changes.
  • Organization business capabilities, readiness and supporting infrastructure (including information for data analytics) before and during program implementation phase.