Interview
The Gist
- Global insights. Transforming global CX practices to meet local needs in South Africa.
- CX Design strategy. Begin customer journey design with your majority user group.
- Adapting strategies. Constant changes in customer expectations drive CX.
Julia Ahlfeldt is an independent customer experience consultant based in Cape Town, South Africa. With a background in strategy and advisory work, Julia found herself drawn to all aspects of the customer experience, from conducting surveys and research to redesigning experiences. This passion has propelled her to become a leading voice in the customer experience realm, particularly in South Africa, where she helps businesses adapt to the age of empowered customers.
As a CMSWire contributor, she explores topics such as UX and CX design, the evolving customer experience landscape and the importance of data in designing meaningful customer journeys.
We caught up with her on these topics recently.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Dom Nicastro: Hey everybody, Dom Nicastro, CMSWire managing editor, here with our latest contributor interview and this is a new contributor, a new face, so welcome to the CMSWire contributor world, Julia Ahlfeldt. How’re you doing?
Julia Ahlfeldt: Thank you. Thanks, Dom, for the warm welcome. I'm doing really well. How are you doing?
Nicastro: Good. I'm glad we found you all the way down and way over in South Africa. I mean, that's interesting. And you're doing your work as an independent customer experience, you know, consultant down there and it's going well, it seems, you have a pretty — I'm pretty jealous with the setup. You have some good weather I'd imagine.
Ahlfeldt: It's pretty nice. It's pretty nice. We’re sort of the tail end of summer right now. Climate is kind of like California. So it's, you know, it's nice, no place is perfect, but Cape Town is a nice place to be based.
From Strategy to CX in the Age of Empowered Customers
Nicastro: Yeah. And you know, doing your thing and CX that's your passion. That's your, you know, career and just tell our listeners and viewers kind of how you arrived in this role you're in now as you know, a CX leader, your CCXP all good stuff.
Ahlfeldt: Yeah. I mean, I — early on in my career. I was doing strategy, advisory work and just fell in love with all things customer. I loved the surveys, the research, redesigning experiences, all of that. And so I just felt this kind of natural gravitational pull toward, you know, being an advocate for the customer.
And then that sort of coincided with the timing of this age of the customer or the rise of empowered customers when businesses were really needing to respond to, right, how do we deliver better experiences. And so I've, you know, found my niche and have evolved what I do and my knowledge base, you know, to kind of match the needs of this evolving field of work, which has been a lot of fun and very exciting. And you know, when I arrived here in South Africa, it was quite new. So it's been nice to you know, kind of put my stamp on customer experience in South Africa and be a small piece of the change that's happening here.
UX vs. CX: Tailoring Customer Experience in the Digital Age
Nicastro: Yeah, you finding like, you know, organizations there and like groups like meetups, that kind of thing. Is it — other folks in that area taking CX seriously?
Ahlfeldt: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a thriving and growing customer experience community. I'd say it's a couple of years behind, the, you know, the US and Western Europe and the UK.
But, you know, the community is growing hand over fist. Lots of organizations are developing CX functions within their businesses.
And it's an exciting time and it's great I think, you know, the local CX community is able to take some learnings and examples from abroad, but then also the context for business is quite different here. The realities are different in developing countries. So, you know, I think that the community has taken some learnings of best practices but really made them their own, which has been very cool to see and be a part of.
Nicastro: Yeah, that's great. And I love that you joined us to impart your wisdom and CX with our CMSWire readers. And this first article is a huge topic. It gets a lot of engagement on our website UX meets CX, right. It's always a struggle of figuring out who you're designing experiences for, what kind of experience you’re designing. Is it UX or CX? Are they two different disciplines, are they intermingled? So give us the overview of this piece, and particularly with the bell curve design you talk about. You think that's a good approach here?
Ahlfeldt: Yeah, well, you know, this article was born out of a question that a colleague had asked me. She was working on some experience design, and she said that, you know, she was working with UX designers, and they were really pushing to, you know, design for the extreme users. And she popped me an email and said, you know, how should I think about this when I'm designing experiences and journeys? And so it really got me thinking about how as customer experience professionals, we take some of the learnings from other related practices that business areas like user experience, UX, which is I kind of see UX practitioners there as out there as kind of like our cousins.
It's very related work if you break down UX and CX and you look at the broad definitions are actually quite similar but in practice, UX designers are oftentimes operating in the digital space and CX designers or customer experience professionals are working kind of more in a holistic journey space looking at journeys that bob and weave in and out of different channels of interaction; so, you know, when we're thinking about who you're designing experiences for, if you're designing a product or a digital experience, it might make sense to design for the extreme user. I could see a case for that because it's a narrow scope, right?
But when you're thinking about designing a full on, you know, customer journey, something that is, you know, lengthy and complex. If you're designing for the extreme user, you're going to end up with this kind of like, clunky and convoluted experience that isn't, you know, sort of fit for purpose for the majority of users out there.
So the idea with the bell curve that I was talking about in my article is looking at the kind of the peak of your bell curve as the sort of core of your user group. That's the bulk of your users. So that kind of 60 to 80% of your users, so really understanding and within that you can have a whole bunch of different kinds of personas and segments and stuff, but that's your sort of bulk of your users, start there. Don't start at the tails of your bell curve. Start at the big you know, sort of chunky peaks, understand those users understand their wants their needs their drivers, then work your way outwards towards the tails, understanding, you know, what exceptions might push people to the edges.
So maybe somebody has limited connectivity, or, you know, financial constraints or something like that, understand what it is that can push your users towards the edges of your bell curve, and begin building in exceptions to accommodate for those users. But I think you know, rather than starting at the tails, and working your way in which might be appropriate in the case of user experience, in the case of experience design and customer journey design, I suggest start at the peak and work your way outward.
Related Article: CX vs. UX: What’s the Difference, and Why Does It Matter?
Balancing Data and Design in CX
Nicastro: Yeah, yeah, it's well said and you know, it's funny because I work with designers all the time for CMSWire and you said cousins earlier, I liked that comparison. It's almost like it can be the best cousin relationship because you have the CX people who are just data data data driven right and focusing on who are their target audience is. Then you have the designers who are so good with visual stuff. But at the same time, you can't let them run wild with like, hey, we read the Adobe Digital Trends report. And these are the top things in design these days. Great, but my audience is impacted in a different way. So yeah, isn't that true? Like you can have — it needs to be a healthy balance of the data meets design.
Ahlfeldt: Absolutely. You have to have that balance there. And I find often with designers, you know, digital designers, they're used to working in a much, much more narrow world, digital world you know, an app-based experience and they're sort of laser focused on the wireframes and colors, colors and designing the screen flows and stuff, but they're not always thinking about the experience as it pertains to OK, well what happens with your customers life when they're not sitting there holding their phone, looking at the app, what, you know, what else? What other kinds of interactions, are they maybe going to have the brand that fall outside of just the digital realm?
And I think that, you know, the data is really where CX professionals can shine and if you have access to information about what's going on in the journey beyond just digital realm, to use that to build great experiences.
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Meeting Evolving Customer Experience Expectations in 2023
Nicastro: Yeah, makes perfect sense. Well, let's wrap this up with some things you might be looking forward to in your next CMSWire call. Not to put you on the spot. But what can readers expect out of you going forward? Where do you think the rest of 2023 you might kind of dive into when you're not busy helping CX leaders do their jobs?
Ahlfeldt: Um, you know, I'm really interested in how customer experience expectations are changing and evolving. So I'm really interested in how customer experience expectations are changing and evolving. So what's changing in consumers’ lives and how their needs are changing and evolving and then also in how we can help organizations do a better job of delivering on those experiences. So what can they do?
You know, from a data management perspective, a governance perspective, from a culture change perspective to really, you know, give customers the experiences that they want, the kinds of experiences that drive, repeat purchases and loyalty because that's, that's really what this customer experience game is all about.
Nicastro: And I love it.
Ahlfeldt: Earning the love and trust of your repeat business of your customers.
Nicastro: I love how it changes, too, and it surprises you, you know, when you can roll out the best chatbot experience you can throw in ChatGPT into your contact center. And I know a lot of vendors are doing that now. Then, the end of the day your data says your customers want to get on the phone with you. Right? Well, you're just always surprised by what customer preferences are and the changing customer preferences.
Ahlfeldt: Absolutely. It's amazing. I was doing some research for a talk about AI applications for customer experience and a lot of the examples that you know, people had mentioned in articles and stuff. I was researching them and it was like, Oh, well, this actually is no longer the case. So OK, oh, Sephora has actually dropped their color match app thing or the North Face has dropped their you know chatbot that helps you figure out the coat that you're gonna wear and because, you know, maybe it worked really well for a couple of years.
But consumers’ needs change. Maybe the technology that they're interfacing with your brand through or the ways they're interfacing the brand changed and so you've got to you know, keep these things fresh and relevant. And just because something works today, doesn't mean that it's going to work tomorrow and the second that we take our eye off the ball is the second you're in trouble.
Nicastro: Yeah, sometimes you're just in the mood to do work while you chat with a customer service agent, right? Like I had that the other day. It took me like an hour and about five times they said Are you still there? I'm like, Oh, I'm still here.
Ahlfeldt: I'm still here.
Nicastro: I want to get it fixed. I don't care how long it takes, you know, that happens. There's that scenario. So there's just there's just so many scenarios in the key is just watching a data watching what your customers are saying, taking surveys, pulse, feedback, customer advisory boards. Absolutely.
Julia, we can't thank you enough for joining the CMSWire community. We're happy to have you we're looking forward to many more articles down the road. Best of luck with that presentation.
Ahlfeldt: Thank you so much.
Nicastro: All right, have a good one.
Ahlfeldt: You too. Have a great one.
