What Does a Customer Experience Manager Do?

The introduction of digital avenues for customers to interact with businesses has changed how customers make buying decisions and their overall experience. To further improve a customer’s experience while purchasing from or interacting with a business, companies look to customer experience managers. Read more to discover details about the role customer experience managers play, how they work to improve the customer experience through expert customer experience management, and how you can pursue a career in this role. 

What is a customer experience manager?

A customer experience manager is a professional whose responsibilities include managing and improving the customer experience when people interact with a company. They oversee the entirety of the customer journey, making sure that each touchpoint offers the customer the opportunity to experience above-average service and support. Customer experience managers are vital in building brand loyalty and returning customers.

Customer experience is different from customer service. While customer service focuses on providing empathetic and high-quality interactions before, during, and after a customer purchases a product or uses a service, customer experience concentrates on the overall experience of a customer interacting with a business. While customer service focuses on the actual interaction of a customer’s purchasing process, customer experience looks at every possible touchpoint a customer might have with a business. It optimizes their experience to ensure they have a positive impression of the company.

What does a customer experience manager do?

Customer experience managers use their expertise to optimize every touchpoint a customer might have with a business to build brand loyalty and further relationships between the customer and the business. While the specific tasks and responsibilities of a customer experience manager differ depending on the company and industry, you’ll also find duties typical across various sectors.

Customer experience manager tasks and responsibilities

Some of the typical customer experience manager tasks and responsibilities you might encounter in this role include:

Enhance customer experience.

Customer experience managers develop a deep understanding of the company’s customers, which they use to guide everything from marketing to ensuring customers’ needs are met at every stage of the buying journey. This also requires taking feedback into account and working to develop emotional connections between the brand and its customers. Doing this helps to build stronger relationships and create customer loyalty.

Understand the customer decision journey.

Customer experience managers understand that the different points of a customer’s decision journey, such as awareness, consideration, and purchase, are all opportunities for the customer to experience a positive or negative interaction with your business. Customer experience managers recommend new processes or strategies to ensure customers have good experiences and want to return.

Deliver competitive advantage.

Customers who feel valued by your business tend to become return customers, which increases profit and growth. Customer experience managers use their skills to develop brand loyalty and set their businesses apart in a saturated market.

Support and inform marketing strategies.

Customer experience managers work closely with executives and other marketing professionals to create effective, informed strategies for providing exceptional customer experiences. They then communicate these strategies to customer service teams.

Experiment to understand customers better.

Customer experience managers use research to determine their specific customers’ needs and goals. Then, they use different strategies and monitor the outcomes to see which are most effective.

Analyze data to diagnose and build brand relationships.

Customer experience managers use software to track, analyze, and monitor customer relationship data. This data then helps to influence new strategies and recommendations.

Customer experience manager skills

Customer experience managers require many skills to meet the job's expectations successfully. Some of these skills include:

Technical skills

• Experience with customer management software and data analysis

• Program management

• Product knowledge

• Customer journey management

Workplace skills

• Communication skills

• Problem-solving

• Leadership skills

• Adaptability

Customer experience manager salary and job outlook

According to Glassdoor's February 2024 data, customer experience managers make an average annual base salary of $70,881 [1]. The job outlook for this and other customer-focused roles is positive. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) claims that roles requiring customer service skills are in demand and growing faster than many other industries [2].

Customer experience manager career path

The customer experience manager career path typically includes working in various customer service capacities. This relevant professional experience helps customer experience managers successfully meet their role's expectations. Once you’ve developed your skills as a customer experience manager, you might gain a promotion into a role such as a director of customer experience, which might advance into a vice president or president role.

Education and training

Typically, you’ll need a bachelor’s degree in business management or a related field to gain a job as a customer experience manager. Business analytics and even psychology are good choices. You’ll want to pursue a degree that will help you learn about consumer behavior. Certifications such as the Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) from the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) or the CX certification from Forrester can help you stay on top of current trends and keep your skill set sharp.

Customer service experience

Businesses looking to hire a customer experience manager strongly encourage customer service experience. They want to know you have first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to interact with customers on the buyer’s journey. Developing cross-functional experience in other areas, including marketing and sales, can also be valuable.

Consider a master’s degree

Master’s degrees, while not required, can help set you apart from other potential candidates since less than 10 percent of customer experience managers have a master’s, according to data from Zippia [3]. These advanced degrees allow you to learn cutting-edge information and provide insight into the best ways to enhance customer relationships.

Getting started with Coursera

Sharpen your customer service skills and learn more about the foundational knowledge required for a customer experience manager job with courses and certificates offered on Coursera. With options such as Macquarie University’s Marketing Analytics: Know Your Customers or the University of California Davis’s The Strategy of Content Marketing, you’ll learn about the different aspects of working within customer experience and satisfaction and how to take the first steps toward a customer experience manager role.