Creating great customer experiences has long been at the top of the priority list for any business. And as the importance of customer experience (CX) has grown, so too has its influence on other departments of the business.
CX is no longer the exclusive domain of customer-facing teams. Increasingly, CX is becoming everybody’s responsibility.
This brings us to the newest emerging trend: CX DevOps. As the name suggests, CX DevOps is the outcome of integrating CX teams, goals, and practices into the DevOps cycle.
But is this just a series of buzzwords, or does the practice carry weight? Here, we explore CX DevOps and what it brings to the table.
CX DevOps: terminology defined
First things first, what exactly is CX DevOps? Let’s break down the terms involved.
DevOps: A working culture that combines the development team with the operations team.
The idea is that the systems created by the dev function will be as easy as possible for the operations function to maintain. In turn, operations employees better understand (and provide) the needed tools and processes to make development easier.
CX: Everything to do with the customers’ experience with the business/brand.
This includes everything from marketing, to onboarding, to sales, to post-sale service. It includes the experience the customer will have with a product or service, as well as the experiences they have with the brand.
Where DevOps allows a blurring of the lines between developer and operations, CX DevOps puts CX-focused goals and needs into the mix, too.
The focus of CX DevOps rests on digital customer experiences. That is, experiences over online or remote contact channels, experiences with a digital product (i.e. software), and so on.
Integrating CX and DevOps
The core part of integrating CX and DevOps is getting the right people working together. Namely, the CX operations role and the VoC manager role are likely to play a core part. These are the roles that focus on what will make good CX, and how the company achieves it.
From there, CX DevOps will include a CX focus in a variety of DevOps tasks. This includes planning, design/development, testing, deployment and release, and of course, monitoring and feedback.
Essentially, integrating CX and DevOps to get CX DevOps is about working towards and enabling the development practices that help to promote good CX outcomes.
For example, it may include the consideration of an MVE —minimum viable experience — as well as a minimum viable product. Planning will involve the consideration of customer experience data. Design will be guided by customer experience as well as what works best for the development and operations teams. Deployment, maintenance, updates — it will all happen with those involved knowing the impact on CX.
The thought behind the creation of CX DevOps
So, why combine CX and DevOps? What are the benefits of a CX DevOps culture/approach?
It shouldn’t be surprising to know that it’s all about making the creation of a great customer experience as easy as possible. CX DevOps comes from the recognition that customer experience is a driving force behind business success.
CX DevOps means that the voice of the customer gets applied to the development process — including information about the current likes/dislikes/wants of the customer and target market. It means that things like maintenance, updates, and UX changes are informed not just by what works for the dev and ops teams, but what works best for the customer.
You could even think of it as total customer-centricity for tech-based businesses and tech-based customer support.
An emerging term
CX DevOps is a name for a new trend across the customer-centric modern businesses. For those businesses, it’s not a buzzword, it’s a strategy.
So, is CX DevOps more than a buzzword? Yes — but only time will tell if it’s a strategy that will take off.