Launched earlier this year, the XMPN is a free community for XM professionals who want to learn, connect, advance their careers, and shape the future of the XM profession. Members of the XMPN can participate in a variety of interactive offerings, such as the XMPN Online Forum, Expert Q&A sessions, Topic of the Month discussions, Virtual Meetups, and, when safe, local in-person XMPN events.

September brought cooler weather and great conversation for XMPN members, including how COVID has catalyzed change in the employee listening space, what HR can learn from CX, and insights on forecasting customer NPS. New XMPN members joined us from around the globe, representing Greece, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, and Hong Kong to name a few! Our new members bring knowledge from a range of industries such as manufacturing, construction, energy, non-profit software, and healthcare.

XMPN Member Highlights:

Melissa Wurm is the Director of Patient Experience at CHRISTUS Health based in the Dallas, Texas area. Melissa has been passionate about the experience of staff, patients and their families since the start of her career. It had been difficult to find a role that valued the more soft skills in business, but she found healthcare to be an industry that allowed her to use her passion in a way that makes her feel valued and fulfilled.

• What is her current focus? Melissa is working hard to help her leaders understand the importance of root cause analysis to identify actionable insights. With the pandemic, healthcare organizations can tend to lapse into using staffing and resources as the “barrier” to achieving a positive experience for those they serve. This pandemic isn’t going anywhere, and it is important for Melissa’s organization to meet patients’ expectations no matter the barrier.
• What recent success is she proud of? Melissa is proud that her team is in the first phase of their Qualtrics migration and just saw a sneak peek of their new dashboard.  With the amount of work and collaboration that has gone into this, she is thrilled to celebrate the actualization of the hard work with her team.
• What does she enjoy outside of work? Melissa’s spiritual life is a foundation for her journey and she focuses her spare moments there. She also loves staying active, especially through fitness, hiking, and travel. She recently returned from an especially amazing hiking trip in Red River, New Mexico. 
• Why did she join the XMPN? “Speaking with like-minded, yet diverse professionals helps to feed my creativity and also my need for connection that has been stomped on by COVID. Win-win!”

James Scutt is the Head of Customer Experience for the Post Office, LTD based in London, UK. James started his career as a professional chef with his number one focus always on customer satisfaction. As he changed career paths to retail, he saw many departments were not very focused on customers and realized his passion was customer-centric work. After deliberately gaining experience across the main business areas of customer, sales, operations, and IT, he saw CX developing into an industry of its own and decided to bring together all his experiences to help business areas achieve CX focus.

• What is his current focus? James is focusing on analyzing open text to define hundreds of topics to face out to the corporate side of his business. The hope is to provide insights on a weekly basis that would not have otherwise been noticed and help teams take action. He is also in the middle of the rollout of his company’s Customer Experience University, a targeted behavioral training program that aims to help branch team members see their own behaviors through their customer’s eyes.
• What recent success is he proud of? James is very proud to have put CX on the agenda for his organization. He concepted and proved the value of a new CX role (his own) from scratch, and 3 years later his organization is seeing the real benefit. As head of CX for the Post Office, James is especially proud of their customer satisfaction improvements. Three years ago, the Post Office was third in its UKCSI sector (a national measure of customer satisfaction). They’ve since moved up to first in the Public Service, National sector! 
• What does he enjoy doing outside of work? Apart from his family life (he has a 4- and 2-year-old), CX pushes into his personal life too. James founded CXaccredited.com where customer service workers can prove their knowledge and credibility with a foundation accreditation, as well as an industry blog CustomerXM.org. When he can, James likes to cook and keep his chef skills sharp. 
• Why did he join the XMPN? “Networking. It has always been really important and COVID has put a stop to all the physical networking events I used to attend. In these times, being an XMPN member provides a great opportunity to maintain my professional network.”

September Events Recap

September’s Virtual Meetups highlighted ways to keep your XM program action-oriented. XM Institute research shows that companies that successfully applied XM during the pandemic focused on driving action across their organizations. Bruce Temkin, Head of the XM Institute, hosted the meetup, sharing research learnings, and led a group discussion on how to ensure XM programs remain action-oriented. 

The group discussed the major ways XM programs adapted with action, pivoting to priorities rather than maintaining the status quo. Members shared how they took action over the past year, including a hospital network pulsing employees to determine where to provide additional PPE and how to anticipate potential shortages. Another member who works for a government agency shared how they listened for a specific way to take action for citizens who had been in contact with COVID-19, leading them to provide citizens with more information on quarantining and connecting them to social services when necessary.

The September Topic of the Month kicked off with a presentation from XM Catalyst Isabelle Zdatny exploring how organizations can identify and create experiences that will differentiate them from competitors. Log into the XMPN Online Forum here to view the discussion as well as specific XM Institute resources related to creating differentiated experiences. Not a member? Join us today. 

Upcoming Events:

October is a special month for the XMPN. We’re focusing on celebrating our community and the XM Professionals who are at the heart of it. October’s Topic of the Month is “Humans of XMPN,” a collection of short videos from XMPN members sharing their XM journeys, advice, and what drives them. Log into the XMPN Online Forum to watch the videos as we share them throughout the month. Interested in sharing your story? Reach out to the XMPN team at xmpn@qualtrics.com. Stay tuned for more information and events celebrating the XMPN throughout October.

We’re excited to have XM Institute Catalysts Aimee Lucas, CCXP and Benjamin Granger, Ph.D. host our October Virtual Meetup to discuss combining CX and EX in Experience Management. Aimee and Benjamin will share key benefits from a CX + EX approach and highlight specific opportunities to bring together insights to strengthen your XM program. Learn more and register for the Virtual Meetup here.

The bottom line: The foundation of every community is its people, so join the XMPN to connect with and learn from your fellow XM Professionals!

Ashley Elder is the XM Professionals Network Leader with the Qualtrics XM Institute