What Does A Consultant for Customer Service Do?
The role of a Customer Experience Consultant goes far beyond ensuring your customers receive prompt and professional service.
Today anyone can launch an online retail store or create an Amazon seller account from the comfort of their couch, making ecommerce increasingly competitive. Investing in dedicated resources to ensure your brand is viewed favorably throughout the relationship is critical.
Enter the Customer Experience Consultant: a professional dedicated to helping organizations design and deliver exceptional customer journeys.
What Does a Customer Experience Consultant Do?
A Customer Experience (CX) Consultant focuses on optimizing every touchpoint a customer has with a business - not just the service interactions. From the first website visit, to product delivery, and filing a claim or return, A CX Consultant’s job is to ensure each step meets or exceeds customer expectations. The result? Happier customers, higher loyalty, and better business outcomes.
This work can involve a range of activities, such as analyzing customer feedback, mapping out customer journeys, increasing organizational customer-centricity, and providing actionable strategies for improvement. It’s a blend of data analysis, creative problem-solving, and a deep understanding not only of consumer behavior, but of humans!
How Customer Experience Consultants Create Actionable CX Strategies
They Learn the Organization
A Customer Experience Consultant’s first step in any partnership is to gain a comprehensive understanding of where the organization has been, and what it’s trying to achieve. They’ll study your brand and its values. They’ll develop relationships with leaders and stakeholders. They’ll learn about your competitors and how your brand fits within the industry. They may interview some of your employees to gain their perspective and understand the brand’s current level of customer-centricity.
They Analyze Customer Feedback
Once a Customer Experience Consultant understands your brand, they’ll look at your customers. They’ll analyze demographic, sentiment, sales, and return data; learn from your service agents; and read through interactions and product reviews. They may conduct surveys and interview customers. Through these actions, A Customer Experience Consultant can identify patterns where customer needs aren’t being met, and areas where improvement will have significant impact.
They Map the Customer Journey
Customer journey mapping is a useful tool for CX consulting, marrying data with story-telling. Using customer journey maps, organizations can experience their brand as a customer rather than an employee. A Customer Experience Consultant will often leverage this tool to help organizations identify and see the impact of pain-points in the customer journey, which are often not what the organization initially assumes them to be!
They Develop CX Strategies
Once feedback is analyzed and journeys are mapped, an action plan can be developed. A CX Consultant will create a business-specific strategy to enhance the customer experience based on the data collected and insights identified. The scope is wide and may touch many, if not all departments within an organization - not just customer service.
It can include anything from policy changes, to web copy modifications, and process improvements.
A great strategy aligns with the company’s goals while addressing customer pain points. The ultimate aim is to build trust with consumers and employees, boost retention and word-of-mouth marketing, therefore increasing sales revenue.
They Train Teams
Your customer experience is only as good as the team delivering it. That’s why training and development are essential parts of a CX Consultant’s role. They design programs to teach employees how to communicate effectively, solve problems empathetically, and embody a customer-first mindset, not just in customer service but across all teams.
Well-trained teams are empowered teams—and empowered teams create memorable customer experiences, whether the role directly works with customers or not.
They Measure Success
How do you know if your efforts are paying off? A CX Consultant establishes metrics to track progress, such as:
Customer Service Ticket Volume: Are you addressing concerns proactively?
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Are customers happy with their experience?
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Would customers recommend your brand?
Customer Retention Rates: Are you keeping loyal customers over time?
Employee Attrition Rate: Are you keeping talent over time?
Why Should You Hire a Customer Experience Consultant?
Sometimes, a fresh perspective is all it takes to transform your business. A CX consultant brings unbiased insights and a wealth of industry expertise to the table. They spot blind spots you may have overlooked and offer innovative solutions tailored to your brand.
Investing in customer experience typically leads to measurable financial gains. Satisfied customers not only spend more but also become vocal advocates for your business.
