Issue link: https://industrialmanagement.epubxp.com/i/656209
'Where are the engineers?' applies to customer experience, too I thought I was ready for anything. Then came a call from a colleague who had just been named the inaugural chief experience officer for a technical solutions and business services company. Researching the field of customer experience yielded an enormous quantity of information but no scientific body of knowledge. Critics say the field suffers from a high "rhetoric to results" ratio. Examining customer experience programs yields mostly anecdotal accounts about a basket of interventions, but rarely can folks explain the scientific foundation of an idea or predict its effect. I wondered, "Where are the engineers?" For customer experience to be a true business discipline, not a fad, it must grow up. We spent more than a year developing a suite of core principles, enabling frameworks, customer data gathering and analysis methods, and communication tools. We founded everything on original customer research. We replaced the age-old practice of insider stakeholders "putting their customer hats on" by insisting on listening to customers, thinking about what they said and then building solutions. Customer events previously accomplished via PowerPoint became open-ended listening and observing events, often with more authentic customer insights acquired in a day than over months and years under the old ways. With a solid conceptual foundation, we are expanding the scope and taking our methods out to the front lines. Associates are learning basic listening and analysis techniques right out of the industrial engineers' playbook and applying them to customer problems. Customer- sourced evidence is becoming a requirement in any conversation, and improvement efforts are becoming more rigorous and based on scientific, body-of-knowledge content. Looking back, the inherent sense of the customer experience vision was clear. However, we arrived at several core conclusions: The industrial engineering perspective was absent, i.e., the design of integrated systems based on customer needs; there was a lack of data-driven engineering processes framed by science and core principles; and there was no body of knowledge to inform the design process, and, therefore, no basis to choose interventions, predict results or describe the ROI. Takeaways: Engineers are vital to any client problem; engineers have unique perspective and tools that make them vital in unchartered waters; solving the client's problem may require a deep dive into the unknown, and engineers have the background for that and should not be shy; and engineers should actively seek new domains. So next time you find yourself in unchartered waters with only a distant star for reference, first ask, "Where are the engineers?" — Jerry Seufert is an independent consultant based near Atlanta. He has an M.S. in management engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Industrial engineers are needed everywhere – from unchartered 8 Industrial Management