The significance of onboarding a customer experience operations manager is still an ongoing debate in the corporate world. Regardless of the industry you cater to, the market is customer centric. This is precisely why companies incorporate customer loyalty in their growth hacking strategies.

Making customers connect with your company’s purpose and fancy its services involves tons of planning and effort. There is much more to this than how it looks on the surface. It is relatively easy for SMBs to comprehend a customer’s journey but for enormous organizations like SaaS companies, delivering a seamless customer experience is quite a challenge.

Companies brainstorm whether they should hire a specialist for cx operations, the answer to which significantly depends on the workload involved during the preliminary stages of a company seeking to scale its operations.

During such instances, onboarding a customer experience operations manager to manage CX operations will come in handy. Considering this, let us shed some light on what a customer experience operations manager is before discussing their importance and background.

Definition of customer experience operations manager

Customer experience operations is a field incorporating individuals who are well-versed with automation and possess adequate knowledge of systems. These experts focus on enhancing customer experience by implementing a cross-functional customer journey approach.

Every department in SaaS companies has its own standard of measurement, uses its own specialized software, and narrows down its attention on one specific aspect of the customer journey. Therefore, it gets trickier to keep track of the overall customer experience and the larger picture of customers’ fragmented journey.

That is when the CX operations manager comes into the picture. Their role is to unify the different fragmented sections, Silos, across the customer’s journey to create a fiction-free, productive, and delightful user experience.

The ultimate job role of the customer experience operations manager is to refine the customer experience technology vision, which is a mandate to look at the entire customer journey from the customer’s perspective. The manager directs the best method to collect, analyze and implement the voice of customer data at key touchpoints through the customer’s engagement with the company.

Desired background of a CX operations manager

The role of a customer experience operations manager is as cross-functional as it can get. It would be justified to say that the manager’s profile should be multi-dimensional and come from different sales backgrounds. It should also include a range of certain dynamic qualities and skill sets rather than specific career trajectories.

Candidates ranging from SalesForce Administrators to Senior Sales Operators to Customer Success Leaders and Product Marketing Managers have proven their efficiency and success in the role of a customer experience operations manager.

Qualities desired in a CX operations manager

Some of the essential qualities to look for in a customer experience operations manager are listed below.

Interpersonal Skills

The manager responsible for handling a company’s CX operations must have refined diplomacy, negotiation, and interpersonal skills. These skills are essential to strike a balance between all the stakeholders’ needs and their drives with available resources.

A customer experience operations manager should be efficient with leading the team meetings and communicating strategies. They should also be well-versed in directing the project while keeping the timeline intact.

Understanding the Tech Stack System

Various technology platforms specific for each stage of the customer’s journey need to be aligned. Such technologies are mapped together in a well-driven system. Otherwise, your customer journey remains tedious and fragmented.

Managers handling CX operations must have deep knowledge and understanding of these platforms, collectively known as the Tech Stack. The customer experience operations manager should locate vacuums in the company’s current capabilities and identify solutions to occupy them.

Efficient project management

A customer experience operations manager must be sharp with their project management skills and map out timelines with end-to-end budgeting. They should inhabit the ability to get the upper hand over the team. These managers have to get everybody to stick to the mapped timeline and know how to purchase from vendors without an RFP.

Understanding the trade-offs

The customer experience operations manager must have a clear understanding of the trade-offs while evaluating modern technology. They should be familiar with how the existing tech systems are lacking in the delivery. And should be able to deliver an integrated system that is feasible for the company to invest in.

A peek into a day’s life of a CX operations manager

The involvement of the customer experience operations manager is usually at the backend of the company’s engagement process. These managers work with the customers to ensure customer loyalty as well as satisfaction on both online and store spectrums.

The backend involvement requires the manager to deal with CRMs, live chat software, surveys, and video shopping tools. They are constantly keeping track of numbers, sales and figuring the optimization of marketing programs. These are essential to keep the flow intact to eliminate friction from the brand’s experience.

The manager is also responsible for conducting analysis by reviewing the data at hand and anecdotal feedback. They further identify any loopholes in the present technical structure and imply the relevant improvements to the customer journey. CX operations managers must always think ahead of their customers.

They need to anticipate any future problems or queries and work towards their resolution in advance of future interactions.

Here are a few roles the CX operations managers must deal with in a day’s work.

• Technically monitor sentiment at critical touchpoints as to how the data can be used to trigger a request for feedback. This involves finding out which experience management platform to include.
• To close the loop allows stakeholders to respond to customer feedback quickly by integrating feedback into tech systems of everyday use.
• Responsible for creating CX dashboards providing stakeholders with the ability to monitor and research according to their needs.
• Defining a single source of voice of the customer feedback hub.
• Dealing with vendors and cross-functional teams to execute the vision of the manager.

How do you know if your organization needs the services of a CX operations manager?

Companies having cross-functional sales departments face difficulties with consistent customer engagement; hence, they need to onboard a customer experience operations manager. If your company is unable to acquire customer loyalty for a long and stable period, recruiting a manager for CX operations will come in handy.

Customer experience operation managers can build customer loyalty through a transparent sales process. Brands that tend to lose their customers with a lack of feedback require a CX operations manager onboard. Such individuals can chip in their tech upgrade ideas to smoothen the customer’s road map. They can also provide feedback hubs for the customer’s convenience.

At times, organizations are unable to address the customer pain points due to insufficient or ineffective Voice-of-customer data. This comprises relationship data, onboarding data, and customer satisfaction data. It further includes product satisfaction data, support tickets, reviews, and brand or user surveys.

It is human nature to think in boxes, groups and strengthen ourselves with our own box (department). A customer experience operations manager tries to disturb that level of thinking and introduce methods of integration and disintegration simultaneously. This is generally accompanied by seamless functioning of the departments and tech stacks.

Final Thoughts

Managing CX operations can always be challenging when your organization grows into a complex set of structures. And each of these structures uses different tools for data collection and management. With the expertise of a customer operations expert, you can update the technical structure of your organization that can help your team provide proactive customer services.

This can lead to further growth of your organization and enhanced customer loyalty as well as satisfaction.

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