Often one of the biggest challenges in CX can be breaking down silos within businesses. Ensuring inclusivity for those included in the working groups presents another layer of complexity. I want to discuss the value of inclusive teams, and the need to consider bias in CX and customer journey mapping.
Securing the perspectives of many different people on a project is nothing new. However, when that group of people all share characteristics in terms of ages, genders, or neurodiversity, it is questionable how representative their insight as an evaluation could be.
It is my belief that during the process of developing and measuring the effectiveness of your CX or customer journey mapping, having a narrow field of opinion and experience will inevitably restrict and narrow creativity and innovation.
Research has shown that more diverse teams have a greater degree of creativity, with an ability to integrate different points of view. Through increasing the diversity in your CX team, your CX development, measurement and analysis will naturally take on more variable considerations and opinions.
Creating an inclusive team
As someone with dyslexia, I know my neurodiversity provides me with a very different way of thinking. I have an alternative approach to a number of different elements in the workplace. However, this can still be overlooked if not fully considered.
Many institutes are now publicising the importance of knowing and being able to discuss your strengths. UCL have a report which outlines many of these benefits such as:
- Ability to see the bigger picture.This ensures not losing sight of the role this plays across the whole business and its goals. This can result in not getting lost in the nuances or minute detail.
- Creative thinking in regards to understanding the pain points or opportunities in CX. This can produce innovative and exciting solutions which ultimately create a powerful and leading CX.
- Problem solving. A crucial skill in CX; especially where an initial hypothesis or concept may require further refining or exploration and a lot of determination.
- Attention to detail. Overlooking a small, but crucial data point can really impact your CX process, and ultimately cost money.
- 3D thinking. CX requires an ability to process both quantitative and qualitative data involving emotion with numerical data points when identifying the solution. Evaluating results of a process, unpicking the whys and where’s, and collating both quantitative and qualitative data sets to develop a number of possible solutions for iterative test process is where many dyslexic people thrive.
When considering CX projects, considering how to integrate these skill sets in your team can make a big difference to planning and evaluating CX and customer journey mapping. Creating more balance in a team will bring both different and potentially conflicting opinions and challenging perceptions. Ultimately, this will increase your chances of developing a more balanced approach.
Removing bias from CX
Creating a more inclusive team to develop your CX will naturally start to support the removal of bias to your customer journey. Gender bias can appear within your CX through a variety of routes. This isn’t purely the use of pronouns in text, or choices on title in drop down menus – but can also appear in the styling or formatting or structure being used in CX.
Evaluating your CX or customer journeys through the lens of removing gender bias, for example, will produce some interesting results. It can show how your customers may have been impacted by choices in design based on bias.
You can address gender bias in your customer journeys for example through directly evaluating and signposting gender biases which currently exist in your current CX. Approaches for this can include ensuring a diverse mix of people are involved in the research and evaluation phases of your CX project. Also using gender decoders to review on site content to remove gender biased language which may negatively influence users.
As well as the tone or language presented to the customer, making assumptions about what is important to them leads to challenges in developing and evolving CX. A business will then evaluate if a customer experience has been successful. But as part of that, understanding why that has been a success or not will depend on how the customer has experienced that journey. This will in turn vary depending on who they are as an individual, as well as their personal journey and experience to that point.
Those brands which make the mistake of including bias in their CX development, and who have unbalanced teams with limited diversity, will experience that identifying and understanding those biases can be very difficult.
Opportunities
Ensuring that there is a balanced and equal panel of contribution to CX, its measurement and evaluation is not necessarily an easy task. Steps that businesses need to ensure they follow in the move towards a more inclusive CX team and to ultimately drive success, includes understanding how their teams are structured now.
Businesses need to establish the steps needed to create a balanced and inclusive team working on their CX and customer journey mapping. This includes evaluating the potential for biases in their CX and customer journey mapping and measurement. Defining where the biases can arise in CX and journey mapping will help businesses become aware of where adaptations may be required.