Today’s interview is with Clare Muscutt who is recognised as one of the most prominent and valued millennial voices in CX, an international consultant, keynote speaker and soon to be the author of the book ‘How to be Awesome at CX’’. She is also the leader of the Women in the CX community and host of the podcast ‘Inspiring Women in CX.’ She joins me today to talk about her Women in CX community, how it came about, why it is needed and how to get involved.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer success (CS) = Customer experience (CX) + Customer outcomes (CO) – Interview with Nick Mehta of Gainsight – and is number 358 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at Pegasystems for sponsoring my podcast for the coming month.

Join Pega for a series of free online events focused on shaping the future of business and designing today’s tech to solve for tomorrow’s challenges. Whether your focus is one-to-one customer engagement, customer service, or intelligent automation, there’s a virtual event tailored just for you. You’ll watch live demos and hear inspiring stories from world-leading organizations in a time-zone that suits you. Register for a free Pega Discover event today.

Here’s the highlights of my chat with Clare:

• Women in CX is all about creating a safe space for women, to inspire, support and network with each other.
• I went through a pretty terrible time during lockdown but had the opportunity to connect with women all around the world all of whom needed help and support and were facing similar challenges.
• That was the impetus around setting up the Women In CX community or ‘CX sisters’ as Clare likes to call them.
• The podcast is the first step in establishing the community and continuing and stimulating the conversation. This is supported by weekly newsletter.
• Further down the line (shortly) the plan is to build the community on the Kajabi platform.
• One of the biggest limiting factors facing women is confidence….to go for the promotion, to go freelance, to speak in public…..many have impostor syndrome.
• Women do absolutely incredible work in CX but you have never heard of them because they don’t have any platform or profile.
• The community will therefore focus on helping each other to build up knowledge, profile and include mentorship.
• Establishing relationships, being successful and achieving a work-life balance seems to be a lot tougher in the female community.
• Request for all of us and particularly men:
  • Acknowledge that women are experiencing challenges and that patriarchal systems are barriers to their success.
• Customer experience design is going to be increasingly the skillset that organisations and individuals are going to need to build because the world is getting increasingly complicated.
• I’m with you with the punk point of view that customer experience is a discipline that is at risk of disappearing up its own backside.
• Getting a really good grounding in some of the tools of CX design will enable you to cut through a lot of the bullshit and really listen to customers and answer business problems.
• Customer experience for customers in the future is a very exciting place.
• However, if the CX industry doesn’t change course pretty damn soon it’s going to be irrelevant.
• The gap is not about CX technical skills. It’s about leadership. It isn’t about certificates, frameworks or models. It’s about great leadership and making change happen.
• Clare’s Punk CX word: Indecorous.
• Clare’s Punk CX brand: Jacinda Ardern

About Clare

Recognised as one of the most prominent and valued millennial voices in CX, Clare Muscutt is an international consultant, keynote speaker and soon to be the author of the book ‘How to be Awesome at CX’’. She held a number of CX leadership roles in FTSE 100 organisations including Head of CX at Sainsburys, and later founded her own customer experience design agency, CMXperience.

Clare is a leader of the Women in the CX community and host of the podcast ‘Inspiring Women in CX.’

And, has also been recognised as the 2020 UK Top Female Influencer, one of the Global Top 150 CX Experts and has received numerous awards for her impressive commercial results.

Check out Clare’s site, find out more about the Women in the CX community and the podcast here, say Hi to her on Twitter and Instagram @claremuscutt and @thecxnomad and feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn here.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay