Is it time to make changes to your business processes? First, you’ll need to get executives and emIf you’re like most CX professionals, you probably have a list of CX skills you want to improve. How can you prioritize your learning to support both your job and your own goals? Find out in this article.
At its heart, every CX article, convention, course, and book has the same goal. It’s the goal we have in the CX by Design Ideas blog: Help people get better at CX. We talk extensively about this with clients, in speaking engagements, and in articles and newsletters. But let’s ignore company CX growth and focus on the individual. (Don’t worry; we’ll tackle CX growth for organizations in our next article.)
As a CX professional, how can you grow your skills? How can you balance honing the skills you currently need with acquiring the ones you want? And how can you effectively manage your learning path?
We’ve got your answers right here.
Setting Personal CX Priorities
One of the best things about CX is that it’s multi-disciplinary. There’s always something new to try, but this can also make it harder to grow your CX skills. It’s easy to become so distracted (or overwhelmed) by all you want to improve. When that happens, you sacrifice real progress in one area to pick up a surface understanding of several others.
If we were to analyze this as a business process, we’d say that it needs focus and prioritization. So let’s apply those concepts to the process of building CX skills.
Which CX Skills Should You Prioritize?
Most CXers have a list of things they want, need, and have to learn for their jobs. Unfortunately, we don’t always classify our lists so logically; it’s often more of an unorganized stream-of-conscious word soup.
If this sounds like you, you’re in good company; it sounds like most of us! A version of our Now-Next-Later framework will help you determine which skills to focus on first. We’ve developed a two-part process to bring clarity to this process.
Here’s part one:
- First, make a list of the skills you want to learn (or improve).
- Rank each skill by its importance to your customers, your organization, and yourself.
- Find out how much time, money, and effort you’ll need to master each skill.
- Prioritize skills with the highest impact to your customers and company and the lowest amount of money and time.
In part two, we use this info to categorize skills as Now, Next, or Later:
- Now = Skills with the highest impact and lowest cost (i.e. least time and/or money to learn).
- Next = Skills with moderate impact and cost, or higher-impact skills that require more investment.
- Later = Skills that are least important and impactful to your company or your customers, or skills that require more time/money than you can currently give.
Now, you might be thinking there’s a fourth category here: skills that are important to you but not critical to your current role. Don’t skip these skills! Instead, put them on a slow burn, working on them concurrently with your prioritized skills and using self-paced learning methods. This will help your growth feel meaningful and aligned with your personal values.
Who Are Your Customers?
We mentioned ranking skills by their importance to your customers. But who exactly are your customers?
If you’re looking for a job in CX, your customers are the people who are going to hire you: interviewers, hiring managers, etc. In that case, you might want to think about skills that are in demand for both the wider CX industry and for the industries and companies you’re targeting.
If you’re currently in a role, your customers are primarily your company’s customers. However, it’s also worth thinking about your colleagues and leadership as secondary customers. Consider how any CX skills you acquire will help both actual customers and secondary (i.e. internal) customers.
Choosing a Learning Path
Now that you’ve narrowed down your skill list, how do you go about achieving mastery? There are many possibilities open to you, including :
- Getting help from a senior CX person or mentor.
- Taking an online course on that subject.
- Watching a YouTube video.
- Signing up for a college or industry course that teaches what you want.
- Attending a conference or webinar.
- Reading a book, etc.
Which learning method will you choose? Here’s a secret: the only thing that matters about how you get your information is that the source is reputable and accurate. Everything else is down to your learning style, timeline, and budget.
So, instead of agonizing over the merits of reading a book vs. watching a lecture, pick one and do it. If the book’s too boring, put it down and watch the video. If the video doesn’t give you the information you need, sign up for a course or try another book.
Practically, attending a conference or a college course is often time-bound and expensive; that’s why many professionals choose online or self-paced learning. But that doesn’t mean one avenue is better than another. As we often tell our clients: start where you are and iterate as you need to.
Bringing It All Home: Committing to CX Growth
Finally, let’s mention the last (and most crucial) aspect of your personal CX growth: committing to it. This may mean having to start over and over again as things get busy and your good intentions give way to more pressing projects.
Let’s be realistic: this happens all the time. Whether it’s reading a book or starting an exercise routine, life has a way of inserting itself between us and our best efforts towards improvement – and that’s okay! Just acknowledge that this may happen and build some extra time into your long- and medium-range plans. When you find yourself restarting your learning path yet again, give yourself grace for being human. Then give yourself a pat on the back for having the guts and determination to stick with your plan!
We hope this has been helpful as you chart a path to CX growth as an individual. Next week, we’ll talk about fostering CX growth throughout your company. Join us then!
