Clare Muscutt talks with Michelle Badenhorst about uniting business analysis & customer experience.

Contrary to popular belief, Customer Experience is not the answer to everything. Most people in business have worked it out already, but some CX professionals seem blind to the truth. Is it because many of the traditional frameworks ‘taught’ are out of date and serve to perpetuate the myth? Or, that CX dogma coupled with lack of challenge is leading our profession in ever-decreasing circles of inaction? Either way, the outcome of failing to treat the right problem can only be more failed projects, frustrated practitioners, and disappointed executives who risk losing faith in CX efficacy, full-stop. Undoubtedly we have to be far more focussed on the problem space in order to engineer value for customers, employees, and the business. But to date, true CX Design is the least understood and practiced CX competency. I was interested to talk to fellow  ‘Design Thinking Evangelist’ Michelle Badenhorst because of our shared view on postmodern CX thinking but also because she unusually came from a business analysis background and transitioned into CX. I was curious to understand the level of pragmatism she brought with her from her career in the no-nonsense world of IT. Listen in to this week’s episode to hear more about Michelle’s career journey through troubled times in South Africa and her thoughts on blending the CX and BA approach to drive action and results. Read more and subscribe to our channels: Sign up https://bit.ly/2ZDYCcB Youtube  https://bit.ly/3jdBU2w  LinkedIn https://bit.ly/3a0cDVx Instagram https://bit.ly/30Aq0bM Spotify https://spoti.fi/33AIx9F Podbean https://bit.ly/3h6Cz3T Show notes  https://bit.ly/2ZBcILF Twitter https://bit.ly/3fzxLD2   

Om Podcasten

By way of introduction, my name is Clare Muscutt and I have the pleasure of hosting and producing this new female-focused Customer Experience initiative. I had the idea that we needed a space for women when I appeared in CX Magazine’s Top 50 stars as the UK’s Top Female Influencer last year. It seemed strange to me that in a disproportionately female industry that the rest of the Top 5, were male. My newly found platform meant women started to reach out to me for help on social media and I found it surprising that they found me inspiring. I helped wherever I could, sharing my personal career story and experience of successes and ‘failures’ on the corporate road to starting my own company. I saw my mentees getting braver and felt tremendous pride at seeing them go for bigger opportunities, start their own blogs, try their hand at public speaking and some even make the jump to freelance. The theme that repeated over and over again in these conversations was the shared feeling of a lack of self-confidence to stand up and be noticed. And a lack of accessible female spaces with role models who openly share their experience of getting over similar challenges, to look up to. I found a community of awesome women through Instagram and reached out to them to get the conversation going. We started having ‘real-talk’ conversations on Zoom about our views on CX and experience of being women striving to achieve our goals. I found a collective across the globe who wanted to take part in building something ‘for the girls’ and by sharing our stories, together we found CX sisterhood. We have a dream to shine a light on more women in CX and inspire more of us to stand up and be noticed. We believe the CX world would benefit from a space dedicated to women and that a great place to start is to hear more of our stories… So, to begin with, I have handpicked a selection of the women I got to know, from around the world who have tremendous stories to tell that will be published here. Over time, I hope to get feedback on where you need more inspiration and introduce guests from other areas of interest such as health and wellbeing, business and social media skills to support the personal and professional development of women in our industry. Thank you so much for listening. If you’d like to join the sisterhood, please visit www.womenincx.community to subscribe to our list and be the first to get news and updates as we grow.