
Holiday Wishes for Great CX: Career Advice Edition
The lights have been lit, the gifts have been opened, and the year is coming to a close. In that spirit, we share with you our holiday wishes and some career advice. Use this holiday time to take a moment to set career goals and come up with a roadmap for success in the coming year.
Before doing so, define what success looks like – whether that is for you, for your organization, or both. And remember the importance of customer-centricity and customer experience when you are thinking about what skills and values you can bring to your organization. In turn, look at all the ways in which those skills and values help to improve customer experience throughout the new year.
Build CX Skills
Every successful customer experience initiative starts with a skilled CX team. Brush up on your CX skills to strengthen the business case for CX; to develop relationships within your organization; and to deliver standout customer experiences in the new year.
Earn Certifications
CX Certification helps to advance your CX career. It also gives you more tools to solve CX problems, and opens you up to a community of industry professionals.
Here, we review the CX Certification process, and provide helpful tips to kick off your new year.
Get Customer-Centric
Customer-centricity is at the core of every effective customer experience strategy. So it is important to keep the customer central to your CX design.
And remember, that even when your overall goal is to advance your career, that advancement is linked to how much you put the customer at the center of everything you do.
From customer experience strategy, to customer experience design, to customer service and hospitality, those who put the customer at the center contribute to the overall success of the organization. As a result, these are the individuals who gain the trust of both the customers and the stakeholders. That means that some of the most powerful individual career advice you can receive, is to focus on someone other than yourself. Namely, the customer.
Build Mentor Relationships
So, you are already thinking beyond yourself to focus on the customer. Now let’s continue thinking bigger and look at how relationships with others benefits your career. What does this mean? This means it is time to think about others within your organization and industry. And to create meaningful relationships with them.
Remember to consider the importance of mentorships. Indeed, you can benefit from mentor relationships at every stage of your CX career. Explore our mentoring program and discover how building relationships helps to advance your career, and advance the CX profession across industries.
Best Career Advice: Give Yourself a Gift This Year
Become a Member of The Petrova Experience.
Taged in:

Am I A Good Candidate For A Customer Experience Role?
People often ask me what experience they need to be a good fit for customer experience roles.

Culture Is King – The Power Of Employee Engagement
In 2017 we introduced our ROI series recognizing the challenges all customer experience professionals have to obtain funding for CX initiatives and to prove their positive returns. Our second ROI…

Holiday Wishes for Great CX: Career Advice Edition
Every successful customer experience initiative starts with a skilled CX team. Brush up on your CX skills to strengthen the business case for CX; to develop relationships within your organization; and to deliver standout customer experiences in the new year.

Coronavirus Travel: What Does Hospitality Mean Now?
I want to tell you about my recent passenger experience. Earlier this week, I traveled to New Orleans from JFK Terminal 5 in New York. I had planned an airport…

How to Extend Your Travel Experience Value Proposition
Last December the Ladders published that discusses business travelers who extend travel beyond the timeline of the business trip. The article says, “[a]ccording to a new study by La Quinta by…

The future travel experience we deserve
This week on the CES 2020 main stage Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian presented a vision about the future of seamless travel experience that “might happen in just a few years.”…

Hospitality and Why We lack Seamless Travel Experiences
Hospitality is taken for granted across government agencies, airlines and hotels. In my line of work, I often hear “I want to have the JetBlue customer experience.” Although many claim…

Why Customer Retention is the True Measure of SaaS Success
Guest Post by Callie Reynolds for The Petrova Experience In SaaS (Software as a Service), like in most businesses, sales is king. Sales gets the glory, and while I’d like…

Customer Experience Audit: FedEx Omnichannel Disaster
In our Strategy, Org Design & Culture series we cover customer-focused companies that are willing to adapt, take risks and discover new ways of staying relevant. Sometimes, we encounter brands…

Healthcare Experience Horror Story
We talk about good vs bad customer experiences. And we give examples of organizations that do things well or poorly. But we rarely are able to shine the light on…

From Pain Points to Magical Moments: Transform the Customer Experience
Argyle Journal interviewed Liliana Petrova about emerging self service technology and meeting and exceeding customer expectations in airports. One such way, as Liliana explains, it to create magical customer experience…

Customer Engagement ROI
We have discussed the power of employee engagement for your brand. And we have explained the true meaning and ROI of a working corporate culture. Now, it’s time to examine…

It’s Time to Meet The Petrova Experience!
Today marks one of the big milestones in my life. This is the day I am officially choosing to live my dream. We are launching The Petrova Experience, a customer…

Customer Experience Best Practices for 2018?
The JetBlue blog features Liliana Petrova in a new four-part series. The series is on Customer Experience and Customer Experience Innovation. 2017 Lessons Liliana gathers insight from 2017 customer experience…

Customer Experience Tips and Best Practices In 2017?
This is Post 2 of Liliana Petrova’s series on customer experience tips, lessons learned, and best practices for the new year. The article appears on the JetBlue Blog. In it,…

What is Big Data and Why Should I Care?
Big data has become part of our daily language. We read about it. We see companies that are “experts in big data.” LinkedIn is filled with engineers and analysts who…

Culture Starts at the Top
Without a leader who believes that today’s business success is about acquiring and retaining customers, you cannot even begin the process of building a culture. Leaders who are passionate about the customer are also passionate about creating culture and employee engagement.

Is Covid19 What We Needed to Build Seamless End-to-End Travel Experience?
On January 10th, we published an article called The Future of Travel We Deserve. In it, we laid out the foundation necessary to implement innovation at scale. Four months later,…

How to Sell the C-Suite on Customer Experience
You finally got your big career break. You are leading a project that requires executive approval. So, now what? Intuitively, you know that this is a chance to make a…

How to Be an Entrepreneur: 5 Things I Learned in 5 Months as an Entrepreneur
The life of an entrepreneur is different every day, but the one thing that remains the same is that we are always learning. These are my lessons in how to…

How Smart Do Humans Want AI To Get?
Earlier, we covered the basics of AI and what it is in theory. Today, we talk more about existing practical applications of AI and more examples of artificial intelligence. And…

A Lot of Data, Not Enough Insight
A month ago I saw a Forrester presentation on Customer Experience measurement that began with a great quote from the Global Bank: “We are drowning in data and starving for…

Do You Know Why The Iconic Brand Toys ‘R’ Us Closed Doors Despite All Our Memories? #RetailBlues
The year is 2016. You are the CEO of Toys ‘R’ Us. Your brand still controls 13.6% of the toy market although the company is highly leveraged, a strategy of…

Human Experience: Do You Really Know Your Customers?
Steve Jobs said: “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need before they realize it themselves.” He did not just say that….

How Facial Recognition Works for Your Customers?
One of the hurdles for Customer Experience Consultants like us is proving the business case for bringing us on board. Leaders often think that if they talk about being customer-centric…

United CEO does not care about #customers happiness. Really?
Lately, I have been thinking about United Airlines. In the beginning I thought about them because someone asked whether it is possible to build a customer-centric culture in a company…

WeWork Does CX Right with a Wow Moment
Used at the right time and place along the customer’s journey, the Wow Moment is an excellent retention technique. When a brand creates personal, relevant experience at exactly the right time, it can build a lifelong, loyal customer relationship.

Customer Experience Survey: Why Customers Are Not Responding
When you solicit customer feedback sometimes matters more than how you ask the questions. In the case of a survey about new biometrics boarding initiatives my team and I created for JetBlue, we had a list of feedback that was most important for us.

Hiring Tips: Who Should I Hire First on My CX Team
The pressure to demonstrate business impact and ROI on your Customer Experience initiatives quickly makes your first hire even more important. As usual, there is no answer that fits all scenarios perfectly. We have some helpful strategies to consider based on the structure of your organization and your goals.

CX Skills Builder: Own the Customer Experience
Often, Customer Experience professionals do not believe that they can improve customer experience by impacting the experience design for their customers. Why? What causes this disconnect? I once got a…

2021 Customer Experience Trends and Tactics
As we begin Q4 of an eventful 2020, it’s time to look out for the 2021 customer experience trends and tactics for creating exceptional experiences in increasingly complex environments. We…

#CXTHUS Exchange Insights – winners and losers?
Attending a customer experience conference is a significant investment of time and money. Even if you are speaker at the conference, like I was last week, the time away from…

How Well Do You Understand AI Applications?
In the last week I spoke about AI at the Argyle Forum webinar and at the ConnectID Conference in Washington, DC. Technology is emerging

Create Your Tribe: How Great CX Makes a Lifestyle Brand
Newcomers to the market realize that their business is only as strong as the growth of their customer base. With that in mind, senior leaders work hard to shorten the distance between them and the customer.

CX Skills Builders: You May Have a CX Job and Not Know It
Last week we talked about the identity crisis of CX professionals and we urged you to fix any small problem or seam on the customer journey in order to build internal brand equity and buy in.

Keep The Customer Focus in 2018
In her latest post for JetBlue’s Into the Blue blog series on customer experience, our own Liliana Petrova talks customer experience innovation. She explores how to combine innovation and knowledge…

Customer Experience Audit: Starbucks Bets On The Physical Experience
Starbucks is opting in for the physical experience in order to become a lifestyle brand while other brands are investing in omni-channel experience.

Customer Experience Audit: Mobile Provider Eliminates Remote Workforce
How to balance the efficiency call center metric FCR (first call resolution) with wait and talk time? JetBlue promotes human interactions as a brand promise.

When Not To Invest In Self-Service Technology?
What is self-service? It is something every progressive brand aspires to have more of. Few implement it successfully. Self-service is a new tool to optimize a company’s workforce by removing…

Would You Pitch In To Save Toys “R” Us For Your Children To Experience? #ToysRUsGoFundMe
Last week we laid out the big moves that the leadership of Toys ‘R’ Us failed to take to evolve with customer needs and thus joins other brands as examples of…

What is Wayfinding?
I did not always know what wayfinding means. But ever since I left Bulgaria to come to America I have been looking to find my way. The first time I…

Telehealth is Here to Stay
Today, we continue our series about 2021 Customer Experience trends and tactics. We take a closer look at patient experience and what telehealth means for the future. Both for patients…

Why you need a defined culture for customer experience?
When designed and built correctly, customer experience expresses an organization’s brand. Your brand and marketing promises serve as a guiding light to your experience team. Similarly, organizational culture serves as a goalpost for the service side of customer experience.

Organizational Culture and Access to Information
By and large, people perceive culture as an HR discipline. The most common perception is that culture covers the soft side of performance. Culture is about how you do things, not so much about what you do. This approach to culture could not be more wrong. In fact, organizational culture is about so much more than a few words in a performance review sheet. It is about leaders expressing values, and the action guidance their cultural behaviors provide.

Customer Loyalty Begins In-House
Ten years ago, creating customer loyalty meant assigning a membership number customers fed back to brands at the time of purchase. Customers went through the trouble of keeping track of loyalty numbers, hoping to collect enough points along the

How Do You Know You Are Making The Right Big Bet?
Liliana and her guests explore how to envision the future in this post for the JetBlue Into the Blue blog series. After all, envisioning the future is the first step…

Are You Ready to Go Exclusive with Jane, Your Digital Concierge?
In 2015 JetBlue introduced bag fees. Seven years after the competition. The media exploded. Many publications were negative. They blamed the airline for “selling out.” One headline read “A New…

Autonomous Customers, Traveler Privacy and More Questions for CX Professionals in a Changing World
“As we move toward a more automated culture, most travelers will adapt to a Jetsonian, automated lifestyle. Every industry we know will be disrupted. For those of us in aviation,…

Do You Know Where Your Inventory Is?
When I worked in the airline business our most embarrassing incident was “losing a minor”. We never lost a child, of course. But we might not have known where a…

Let’s Get You Certified as a Customer Experience Professional!
Like all mature professions, customer experience has a certification that is internationally recognized. Adding it to your resume will signal to the business community that you are serious about customer experience and your aspiration to be part of its leadership ranks…

How to talk to your CFO about customer experience and revenue growth
Last month we introduced the topic of Customer Experience ROI and the complexity of building a good business case for it. The Customer Experience business case is strong, but not easy to prove. Today we will focus on two big wins of a successful customer experience investment – revenue and customer growth of your business.

What is Customer Experience Day?
Although I opened my consulting practice this year, I have been working on customer experience for much longer. The first time I celebrated CXDay officially was only two years ago….

Leadership During the Pandemic: Guest Post by Rachel Dreyfus
This is a guest post by Rachel Dreyfus, President, Dreyfus Advisors, who researched leadership during the pandemic. How has Covid19 influenced leadership over the past three months? Research results show…

United Airlines Culture Problem
I am often asked what organizational culture is. Frequently, I meet with executives who are feeling defeated by the scale and complexity of leading cultural transformations. So, where do you…

Why Bt2B Businesses Must Think Like B2C in the Next Decade
B2B vs B2B thinking makes a real difference when it comes to customer experience. According to Gartner at least 80% of B2B buyers now expect the same buying experience as…

Get Customer Experience Basics Right and You Don’t Need to Invest in Wow Moments
Wow Moments are a Customer Experience hot topic. Customer experience professionals ideate how to build, prioritize, finance, and measure these Wow Moments. Chip and Dan Heath wrote a whole book on the topic: The Power of Moments. No Wow Moment saves you from negative word of mouth if your brand fails to get the customer experience basics right or to deliver the expected brand experience consistently.

What is Customer Experience? What are the Faces of CX?
Each area of CX represents a path for CX professionals to impact business health and build successful careers. One of my favorite CX analogies is that it is like the blood in our bodies. When CX is done well, it touches every aspect of an organization. That’s what makes customer experience so much fun! You will never be bored working in CX.

How to Build Your Customer Experience Roadmap?
This summer, The Petrova Experience conducted a Customer Experience Preparedness Survey. One of our questions assessed brand maturity in terms of customer experience strategy. Only 28% of the respondents had…

3 Call Center Mistakes You Are Making
No matter how often my peers and I say that technology is not the answer, call center managers still ask…

What is Telemedicine? Keeping Medicine at the Heart
Guest Post by Dr. Melynda Barnes for The Petrova Experience. In this post Dr. Barnes answers the question “what is telemedicine,” and reminds us to keep medicine at the heart…

Eliminate Customer Stress with Good CX
Good customer experiences either give back customer time or alleviate customer anxiety. If a brand’s CX isn’t achieving one of those goals, the customer isn’t getting any real or perceived…

3 Ways to Create a Better Employee Experience Strategy
Guest Post by Gabe Smith, CCXP for The Petrova Experience The relationship between employee experience strategy and customer experience has long been discussed. Without engaged employees, we’re told, it’s difficult…

Grateful for Customer Experience Heroes
When we launched The Petrova Experience, we did so with the words “in pursuit of customer happiness.” Pursuit of happiness is part of every interaction we have with our clients,…

Customer Experience Design – How Do You Want Customers To Feel?
Last week, we talked about CX Design in terms of space and function. Today, we continue our CX design journey to talk about the design of emotions and feelings. The new…

Can One Email Build Loyalty? #MYWESTELM
This is exemplary management of the post-purchase journey touch-point. For years, this level of management has been non-existent. At best, it tends to come in the form of an email confirmation that purchased items have been delivered.

JetBlue Leading Customer Experience
Since I used to lead the JetBlue customer experience, people often ask what is behind the JetBlue experience magic. Or, as one of our clients refers to it, the “JetBlue…

Customer Experience Technology View of your Call Center
By 2022 the global cloud based contact center market is growing from USD 6.8Bn in 2017 to 20.93Bn in 2022. This makes for CAGR of 25.2%. If you do not…

4 Career Tips to obtain a Customer Experience Role
In honor of the 4th of July, we are rounding up 4 career tips for CX professionals. Set aside some time during the break from work to take stock in your CX career and evaluate the steps you need to get to the next level.

Where Should CX Sit at the Table?
Before we begin talking about where CX should sit in the organization, I want to clarify one thing. Customer Experience is not a single person.

Customer Experience is Still a Mystery
What customer experience is, and how well brands think they are executing customer experience, and how well they are actually doing it are often at odds. According to Bain, 80%…

When to Cut Your Losses
Doing the right thing when things go wrong is not exactly a good business case. But many do it anyway. Why? Because brands want to protect (and grow) their brand…

Contactless and Self-Service are Here to Stay
Our 5th 2021 customer experience trend highlights contactless and self-service experiences across industries. Before we dive into this topic, let’s take a moment to define what contactless and self-service mean…

Patient Experience Whitepaper: Impact of Patient ‘I Wants’ in Healthcare
Rachel Dreyfus joins The Petrova Experience with a guest blog about patient experience. Background A culture of positive patient experience is increasingly important in Healthcare, affecting patient outcomes and satisfaction….

Customer Experience Audit: Domino’s Making the Right CX Choices
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series of Customer Experience Audit – as series of articles featuring examples of good customer experience and bad customer experience in practice….

NPS Best Practices
Last week I spoke at the Corinium CCO Fall Conference. One of the discussions we had was on the very popular topic of Net Promoter Score best practices and its…

What You Need To Do To Start 2018 Right
It is the end of December and we are all in reflective moods. Did I do enough for my customer experience career this year? Did I build the right team…

How Does Social Media Affect Customer Experience?
Social Media is the only real-time channel for successful brands to manage customer experience and brand management.

Employee Experience Strategy and Customer Experience Depend on Strategy
This week, Andy Newman wrote a great article in The New York Times about the life of a retail sales agent. He used the example of an Old Navy sales…

Customer Experience Audit: Uber Bets On Self-Driving Cars With Big Volvo Purchase
The question that remains unanswered is who will be part of the future of transportation. Uber is going for the vertical integration – the whole pie. The future industry of urban transportation will be made of players in three different categories: cars, self-driving software, and ride-sharing network. In contrast, Lyft approaches the future through partnerships.

Why You Need Culture Not Call Center Training for Customer-Centric CX
If the organization does not understand what customer experience is, you will not get the funding or organizational support you need to build customer-centric experiences.

What is Customer Experience Day?
Although I opened my consulting practice this year, I have been working on customer experience for much longer. The first time I celebrated CXDay officially was only two years ago….

Where Should CX Sit at the Table?
Before we begin talking about where CX should sit in the organization, I want to clarify one thing. Customer Experience is not a single person.
SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ON THIS POST