New compact elearning course aims to solve practical CX problems

One of the big challenges for customer experience professionals both new and old is how to ensure their CX programmes drive tangible returns.

Having spent years at the coalface of customer experience management, Matt Watkinson, CEO and co-founder of experience design agency Methodical, and author of The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences, is all too familiar with the obstacles facing CX leaders. 

"There's not enough commercial pragmatism (linking initiatives to real growth opportunities), not enough focus (either on building a strong brand with a distinctive experiential signature, or on the most important opportunities) and not enough real world activity (lots of journey mapping, not a lot of real world improvement)," he explains. "There’s also the fundamental problem of who is doing what when it comes to creating value for customers and the operating model for many CX teams is fundamentally broken — all they can do is try to influence from the sidelines which can be very frustrating." 

But the answers are at hand thanks to Watkinson's new compact elearning course, which digs deeper into the reasons why CX programmes struggle to create value and shares practical guidance on how they can deliver real-world results. 

Across 18 short videos that together clock in at under two hours, Watkinson distils everything that he and the Methodical team have learnt over the past 10 years about helping companies with customer experience strategy, and conceiving and executing programmes that deliver real value.  

And it's not just for folks in an executive or leadership role. If you're a practitioner, if you're a designer, if you're in anyway interested in what you can do to improve your CX, and have programmes that deliver commercial results, then this is for you. 

The videos cover topics including:

• Why satisfaction scores don't reflect the success of CX initiatives.
• The super fan myth, and the truth about brand advocates.
• Defining an experiential signature for your brand.
• Win big by thinking affordable loss, not ROI.

Throughout the course, Watkinson surfaces key considerations to place in the context of the viewer's own operations, helping them to unearth solutions and new ideas that they can apply, ultimately driving CX improvements. 

And rather than dishing out cookie-cutter advice, the course focuses on encouraging viewers to ask the right questions about their programmes, and where to find the answers so that they can unlock improvements that are tailormade for their own particular organisation. Watkinson also challenges some conventional thinking around customer experience management - for instance, encouraging leaders to think of CX in terms of affordable loss instead of ROI.

Priced at $150, the course differs from similar learning programmes by swapping conventional thinking for an evidence-based approach, says Watkinson.

"That’s the key thing — what does data, research and practical experience tell us actually works, rather than what we think will work. It's also very focused on pragmatics — getting things done," he notes. "It’s based on 15 years of doing the job, seeing what has succeeded and what has failed. I’m lucky in that I’ve had a front row seat as the discipline has emerged having written The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences in 2012, which is still the only book on the topic to win a major award.

"Another big difference is that more of the focus here is on doing the right thing rather than doing the thing right. What do I mean by that? Well, doing a journey map well is a skill — no doubt. But doing a great journey map of the wrong journey or scenario, or for the wrong customer, or prioritising the wrong outcomes is common because many people aren’t linking that activity to a business goal or brand goal for example. This course helps you get all that stuff right from the beginning so you massively shift your odds of success. Honestly, at the price of a post-inflation oat-milk cappuccino, buying this course is a total no-brainer."

Buy the course here.