The CX Leader Podcast: "Back to School": Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

The CX Leader Podcast: "Back to School": this wav audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Troy:
Something that's been mentioned since the beginning of this podcast is that no one went to college to become a customer experience professional. Well, it's looking like that could change.

Tom:
And the more I talk to people, what I learned was CX was fragmented, both in terms of the skill sets of people working within the organization and in terms of how organizations defined it. It became really clear to me that CXM@MSU could help to develop a formal framework and a foundation in which to help educate people and legitimize the field.

Troy:
We're talking to a college professor leading the effort to build a degree program for customer experience, on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.

Announcer:
The CX Leader Podcast with Steve Walker is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Troy:
Hello, everyone, I'm Troy Powell, guest host of The CX Leader Podcast this week, and thank you for listening. It's never been a better time to be a CX leader, and this podcast explores topics and themes to help leaders like you leverage all the benefits of customer experience and help your customers and prospects want to do more business with you. Over the many years this podcast has been in production, there have been countless guests who have described how their careers were steered into the space of customer experience, and it's been a common theme that they never went to college exclusively to study CX because there were no such degree programs. Well, recently there's been a greater effort to try and remedy that problem, proving once again that it's never been a better time to be a customer experience professional. My guest today is Dr. Tom DeWitt, faculty at Michigan State University and director of CXM@MSU, an organization dedicated to advancing the field of customer experience management through a variety of initiatives, including industry engagement and education. He's also spearheading the effort to bring a degree program and CX management to Michigan State. Tom, thank you for being on The CX Leader Podcast.

Tom:
Hey, thanks for having me. It's always nice to be on the other side in a podcast, so I'm really happy to be here today.

Troy:
Well, good. Yeah, I'm actually usually on the other side with you. So it's one of my first hosting gigs. So if I end up, you know, opining a little too much, just let me…

Tom:
No problem.

Troy:
… remind me you're the guest.

Tom:
No, that's all right. That's all right.

Troy:
Well, you know, we generally start this out by asking your CX practitioners and leaders how they got into the CX space because this is such an interdisciplinary profession so interested in kind of your path to coming to this point of trying to establish a CX degree program and working at CXM. Give us the highlights of how you got here.

Tom:
That's a long story. And it all started at age 14 when I got my first job was as a busboy and dishwasher, and I worked my way up to grill cook and and we worked directly with a customer there. So Grill was behind me, customers in front of me. We would take the order and make it. And that's when I fell in love with the hospitality industry and serving the customer. And I think many of us can relate back to that early experience right in life. And I spent most of my career professional career in the hospitality industry, and it was during that career where I really wanted to understand the dynamic between the organization and the customer, particularly frontline employees in the customer want to know what each group was thinking and what you know what, what made employees tick and want to serve and what made you know what made customers tick and why did they come back? And it was that curiosity that led me to get my my MBA, where during the program know I learned about consumer psychology and service quality management and realized there's a framework here. And I had these aha moments based on years of industry experience like, Wow, this just makes all too much sense. So I've kind of backed into it. I did my PhD in marketing and with a focus on services marketing and with the intent, then with my industry experience and my now understanding of the theory behind why people do what they do to help businesses to manage a customer experience. And I did this way before I ever heard of CX. So I was off on this island in Hawaii for 11 years, pretty much on my own, and didn't spend much time on the mainland. But I was practicing customer experience management and my consulting practice. I called it brand experience management there and continued, you know, in academia to work in the field and consumer psychology and strategy. But it's when I got to MSU and I was presented with an opportunity to lead an initiative around customer experience management, and I was basically given the keys to the castle told here, you know, basically here you can run anywhere you want, just run it, you know, we want to see something. We want to see some progress. And that was three years ago when we started, and it started by building a community of CX practitioners and in Michigan and bringing them together twice a year for a day long professional development program. But over the course of that, I was networking on LinkedIn and and I was looking at position profiles of people in leadership positions in CX and notice these very disparate backgrounds that they came from. And then during the course of discussions, the word fragmented came up a lot. CX is fragmented. You know, and the more I talk to people, what I learned was CX was fragmented, both in terms of the skill sets of people working within the organization, and CX was also fragmented in terms of how organizations defined it. There were organizations that simply limited it to their call center, or they limited it to consumer insights. It wasn't a real, holistic or expansive view of CX. So at that point, it became really clear to me that CXM@MSU could serve a really important role if it could help to develop a framework for the field and a foundation, a formal framework and a foundation in which to help educate people and legitimize the field. And we, you know, we were doing that through our conferences in terms of how we structure tracks and whatnot, and we offered workshops. But I knew early on and I actually made the statement at our first conference in the spring of 2019, I said, we're working on creating a master's degree in customer experience management at that point in time. It was an idea. I had a framework in mind. I had no idea what it would take to do it. And and frankly, I think my, you know, being naive was probably a good thing because I had I known then what it would take, maybe I wouldn't have done it. But we're we're now at the point. So at that time, you know, like many of you, I got online, I started Googling looking for degree programs. I came across a couple of master's degrees and in Europe and the curriculum, you know, someone looked fine. But we set about creating our own curriculum based on industry input and feedback into what that degree should look like. And the result is a 15 module, 20 month program designed to be taken part time online. So it's it's a 15 five week modules. Each is two credits with each module will be taken at one time. But targeting people who are working in the field and that want to have a more comprehensive understanding and set of skills to manage CX and their organization. And our initial focus is really been on organizations, those same people that told me it was fragmented. Our goal is been to partner with organizations and helping them to to build and develop their CX function. But the degree program will be not only open to their employees, but also anybody in the field that that's interested, which I think is a pretty long list, right? And and we're the degree has been approved at the university level and we're expected to launch the degree the first intake in May of 2022.

Troy:
Well, yeah, I think everybody listening to this is probably nodding their head saying, OK, like yes, fragmented yes. Not not a good overarching framework. You know, it's been pieced together from all of these past areas of study and interest. And you know, it's interesting to sometimes track that back and try and see, hey, what pieces of different disciplines or are they pulling in to what we think of as CX or what one person thinks of CX? So the idea of holistically bringing that together is definitely a challenge and something that people are looking for.

Tom:
Yeah. And I think frankly, that's maybe why it's been held back to the multidisciplinary nature has made it kind of hard to find a home for it in a university. It fits well on a business school in general. But what? You know which department? Fortunately, I'm in marketing, and it's my opinion that really customer, the customer experience is today's marketing, you know? And I think, frankly, it helps position MSU at the at the forefront of not just customer experience management, but also marketing as well.

Troy:
Yeah. And you you mentioned this idea of kind of the services marketing, you know, hospitality. You know, I think back academically to service dominant logic concepts and that are there, in your opinion, certain industries that where CX is really taken hold stronger. And you know, and what do you think is holding it back, maybe from getting into other areas in the business context?

Tom:
Yeah, that's interesting because in my conversations with hospitality organizations, they don't seem as excited around what we're doing. I kind of get the sense that they feel they've been doing it all along and they don't need a framework to operate in the organizations that it resonates with. And that seemed to have the greatest interest in engaging in this initiative, not just the degree itself, but also in working with other organizations and advancing the field. They come across from a broad array of industries. I've learned it's not industry specific. It tends to be organization and organizational customer centricity specific. You know, I always point to Consumers Energy and the state of Michigan, which in my mind has one of the most well-rounded and established CX functions that I've come across. And it was purely their drive to and creating it was all around reducing energy consumption because consumers energy wanted to focus on the use of alternative energy. So I think, you know, and I'm sure you've had this conversation yourself before with other people in the industry. A lot of it is about the leadership of the organization and alignment and the C-suite around customer centricity and the role of customer experience management and delivering on customer centricity, right? And when you got that buy-in, it's not hard then to match with the employee engagement piece because most people enjoy working for customer centric organizations and they want to know their role in it. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about today a little bit is the development of a corporate collaborative that we've developed with thirty six organizations across a broad range of industries that are all committed to customer experience management and want to partner not just in the degree program, but also in helping each other across the collaborative. So within that collaborative, we've created six action teams around different CX competencies that are led by members of those organizations and involve their employees, not just themselves, because there's plenty of people that have an opinion or advice about a degree or anything else. But their role is to facilitate the engagement of their employees in active discussions with their counterparts at other organizations, as well as opportunities for peer based coaching and for for mentoring. Because I think we can all agree, most of the learning around CX has come by talking to others, right? Whether it's over the phone or Zoom, and we're just working to facilitate that with this collaborative. So all the collaborative members, they have to commit to helping to ensure the enrollment of an employee every year in the master's program as a demonstration of their commitment to the advancing of the function within their organization, but also to getting their employees involved in these action teams across the collaborating. This global community in CX, I think if there's one thing I've learned is everybody is so willing to help and support one another. We're just working to help facilitate that in a more formal way at MSU.

Chris:
Hello, cxleaderpodcast.com fans, Chris Higgins here, producer of The CX Leader Podcast, and I want to take a moment to thank you for listening. Just like any other CX professional, we here at The CX Leader Podcast want to make certain we're offering what you need. Take a minute to go to cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback and complete a short survey to let us know how we're doing. You might even be able to score some CX Leader Podcast swag. Again, that's cxleaderpodcast.com/feedback. We can't wait to hear what you have to say.

Troy:
They definitely had seen mention of this collaborative, you know, the member firms being part of this whole CX management program and CXM. So let's say a company wants to do become more involved in that, wants to join this collaborative. What does that maybe look like for them? For a company that's CX motivated? You know what do they get out of it? What is expected of them, et cetera?

Tom:
It's mainly time. So when I when I talked to somebody who might be interested in. And this usually they're drawn. They're drawn to CXM@MSU because because of the Masters degree, because everybody is so interested and exciting about it. But then we talked to them about, OK, you know, so let's say you have one or two people going through the master's degree. What are you going to feel the impact on your organization from that? And at the same time, what are your most immediate needs and where do they lie in the organization? How would you quantify the size of your CX team, whether it's in one department or expressed support across multiple departments? And then it's what if I told you that I could help you or we could help you in those areas. So I really positioned the relationship between member organizations and CXM@MSU as a partnership and not just between the two of us, but between all the member organizations. So what it looks like, you know, if you imagine a typical CX function in an organization, it's going to involve people that are doing qualitative research, are doing quantitative research. You're going to have members that are working on experience design or experience analytics. You're going to have people on the team that are there for employee experience and engagement or organizational change. So those are all competencies within CX that reflect our degree. So our degree actually operates around five major competencies. But we've also added diversity and equity and inclusion as an additional area and in the collaborative and as an action team. So there's a total of six action teams there. So what you know, what we encourage member organizations to do is to help their employees to find the area that best represents their their passions and their role in the CX function. And they can be on multiple teams. You know, plenty of people are interested in DEI right now, and it's not necessarily directly related to what they do, but it is something that they're concerned about, whether it's DEI in terms of their customer base or their employees. And then on a monthly basis, those people play an active role and facilitating and being involved in roundtable discussions. Mentorship, as well as developing a learning resource repository through conference presentations at our conferences or or monthly webinars, are are going to be produced by CXM@MSU. And that information is then stored in a learning management system so that those action teams can work hand in hand with faculty and the upcoming master's degree program to make sure that everything that's being taught in the course or learned about is current and relevant because it's coming from the latest best practices that are being shared through the action teams. So, you know, it's having those discussions. There's there's a small financial investment that goes directly into a scholarship fund for the the degree program and that that financial investment. To me, it's more reflective of their commitment.

Troy:
Yeah, so very interesting. I mean, every single one of those general topics and competencies you mentioned is like a check. I want to know more about that. It's a very, very good topics, ones that there's a lot talked about. But again, this idea of maybe formalizing some of that and then the interplay between the academic and the practical, I think that's an area that's CX. CX has almost been built from the practical and the practitioner, you know, and lacking some of that overarching where sometimes you get the opposite in academia right, the theory behind it.

Tom:
Oh, hey, trust me, you know, I think the benefit that I have is I spent half of my life in the industry and then the other half and in academia, and I've always worked to bridge those issues. I think, you know, I know when we talk about theory, people kind of cringe or yawn. But you know, the beauty of theory is it helps to explain the whys. Why are we doing what we're doing? You know, and I'm not an active researcher anymore. But when I was, you know, I wanted to understand what you know, what is running through people's minds, what helps to explain for people's behaviors. And that's what academic researchers do. They help they they work to understand the relationships between things and creating frameworks.

Troy:
Yeah, you know, I have a hypothesis that you might have insight into, but that a lot of the reason why there is so much cross pollination and collaboration and CX, you know, in different organizations and help to foster that. I think so much of that has been driven because there isn't an overarching kind of structure to, hey, here's how you do it. And so we've been forced to kind of learn from each other. I mean, like, well, what are you doing? And oh, that sounds better. And so I'll try that. And you know, and that's good. And so it's driven that, but we end up often just chasing our tails of, well, somebody trying this, you know, and oh, it didn't work well. Everybody tried it, you know, found that it didn't work. And then so I think again, having some overarching structure to guide will is definitely important.

Tom:
Yeah. And it's, you know, we're not trying to, you know, we're just trying to add where we think we can. You know, I really appreciate the work that's been done out there by CXPA and Forester and other organizations certificate programs, but I think, you know, our hope is to take it to a, first of all, take it to a next level to help validate the roles of people working in the fields. In fact, one thing that's really been really impressive to me is vice president and head of CX of some major corporations have indicated they want to be in the first class. You know, whether it's to fill out their skill set or to validate their role within the organization. Regardless, there's a need there for it. So, you know, it's our hope that that we can add some breadth and some depth that hasn't been addressed before and through the collaborative and the action teams and the partnership with and structures. So like, for example, the the the action team that oversees understanding the customer and the employee, I think that encapsulates, I want to say, four or five modules within the degree. That means potentially that action team could be working with four or five different instructors so that when when the course comes around, the next time during the next cycle, it'll be taught differently than it was before. Because, you know, new practices have have have been have been been shared through conferences or webinars or white papers, and that information is integrated into the course design.

Troy:
Well, good. Well, and I knew this would happen. We're running out of time and I still have lots of questions that have come up in my mind. So, you know, I'd love to have you back in the future where we can just talk about some additional CX topics. Because sure, a lot of what you're talking about is very interesting. And this topics of, you know, combining the employee and the customer is so important. And you know, how do you identify a customer focused culture and leadership? What does that look like? There's just so many great topics. But to wrap up, we always ask kind of one question here at the end, which is what call the take home value. And I think in this case, you know, the ask may be if you had just one main thing to teach to a CX professional is you got one lecture, not a whole, you know, not a whole degree program, but like one lecture, one topic, what's the one thing you would want to teach CX professionals at this point?

Tom:
Seek out like minded individuals, whether it's in your organization or outside your organization, and collaborate and learn from others. You know, I. You made me boil it down to one, if I had to choose one that that would be it. I have learned so much through my industry engagement, particularly after spending 11 years sequestered in Hawaii. But what I've come to understand is you can accomplish so much more by working with other people and you never stop learning. And as you know, in CX, things change so quickly. So, you know, use the opportunity of working with all these like minded CX individuals globally to seek out and ask for time with people to share perspectives. Because again, there's no right way to doing things. And I think that's a way to, you know, kind of finish up on what I talked about before. There's no one right way to do anything. And understanding different people's perspectives on how they do it and why they do it is going to allow you to succeed. And oftentimes, as you know, a lot of organizations and their organizational structure hold back initiatives and CX. So sometimes the best way to advance your CX goals is finding partners in the organization, not always in leadership that are going to help to support you.

Troy:
Thank you. Well, I've been talking to Dr. Tom DeWitt, faculty at Michigan State University and director of CXM@MSU. So Tom, thank you for being on The CX Leader Podcast.

Tom:
No problem. It was my pleasure. A lot of fun.

Troy:
And if you want to talk about anything you've heard on this podcast or about how Walker can help your business customer experience, feel free to email us at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Be sure to check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show and find all our previous episodes, podcast series and contact information so you can let us know how we're doing. The CX Leader Podcast is the production of Walker. We're an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their XM success. You can read more about us at walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening. And remember, it's a great time to be a CX leader. We'll see you next time.

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