Customer Experience skills & software
Today’s CX specialists rely on an ever-expanding array of software to help them go about their work more effectively and efficiently.
Though there are a broad range of tools and platforms on the market designed specifically for people working in CX, we’ve rounded a handful that many CX professionals use from one day to the next.
Zendesk is one of the most popular CX tools available, offering four products in one cloud-based package: support, guide, chat and talk. Between them, you can do everything from building a customer service portal, to giving your employees a self-service bank of customer service advice. It also offers live chat, a sales CRM function, analytics and reporting, and can be integrated with applications like Salesforce and Google Analytics.
Salesforce is a suite of software products that helps marketing, sales and IT teams connect with their customers. The Salesforce CRM has the capacity to bring together masses of customer data, enabling businesses to closely track customer activity. Insights drawn from Salesforce can be used to build stronger customer relationships, improve customer service, speed up response times, and personalise communications, all of which can optimise the customer experience.
Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support platform that provides a help desk dashboard, an in-built customer chat function and support tools for customer service agents. Powered by AI, Freshdesk’s solutions evolve with the demands of your customers. Freshdesk is a popular choice among businesses aiming to increase customer engagement and maintain positive customer interactions as they scale.
What skills does a CX specialist need?
A successful CX specialist will draw on a variety of hard and soft skills when completing their day-to-day work. The most in-demand skills that anybody aspiring to work in CX should aim to develop include:
Before you can meet your customer’s needs and deliver a satisfying brand experience, first you need to listen to your customers and empathise. Empathy and listening might be the most important skills in CX, determining your ability to really understand your customers wants, needs and potential frustrations. Without this understanding, you’ll never give them a satisfying customer experience.
CX professionals use qualitative and quantitative data to build sound, well-informed CX strategies that are based on hard insights. You might need to interpret customer feedback, which could entail sifting through masses of data, while you’ll also need to carefully listen to customer interviews and pinpoint any critical underlying insights.
Implementing a CX strategy often involves coordinating ideas and input from multiple teams. It’s not humanly possible to do it all alone. A CX specialist relies on project management skills to facilitate collaboration and ensure team members complete tasks within set timelines.
CX specialists often work cross-functionally, collaborating with anybody from software engineers, to marketers and the customer service team. Strong communication skills will enable you to nurture meaningful work relationships and align teammates with your CX strategy.
From identifying a CX opportunity, to implementing a plan and refining it based on customer feedback, CX specialists are all about thinking strategically. People tasked with improving CX rely on their strategic skills to ensure that all teams, infrastructure and resources are focused on a CX vision.
Inevitably, a range of choices have to be made when leading a CX strategy. CX specialists have to be able to weigh-up options, anticipate probable outcomes and make wise decisions that positively impact a brand.