A Founder’s Story
“Building a great customer experience doesn’t happen by accident, it happens by design.”
- Clare Muscutt
I’m Clare Muscutt, the Founder and CEO of Women in CX.
Community is all about sharing our stories and learning from one another. This is mine.
Where I started
I started at the grassroots of customer service, ‘on the shop floor’ in hospitality, and eventually worked my way up to become the Head of Customer Experience at one of the world’s largest retailers. Beyond doubt, I have been where you are. I’ve navigated all the same challenges. But unlike most. I made my CX initiatives a commercial success. The key to my multiple award-winning results (like generating £4m CX ROI) was developing my own approach to agile customer experience design and delivery and innovating a new way of thinking about CX that businesses could really get behind. A method you’ll read more about below.
Going it alone
When I realised the potential of my method to help others. In 2017 I decided to quit my ‘cushy London job’ and go it alone by starting my own customer experience design agency. From zero in less than 12 months, I created the most incredible lifestyle for myself. One of travel, high profile international clients and influence. My approach won critical acclaim and I became an in high-demand consultant and keynote speaker, who was regularly flown to glamorous locations to speak with leadership teams and audiences of 1000’s.
But one thing always stood out to me. I was usually the only woman on the bill at events, at the table in client leadership meetings, in the top 5 of influencers on ‘lists’ or often the only female invited to speak on a ‘Manel’* (*a panel comprising white, middle-aged, male speakers).
The problem to solve
I started to wonder… If 70% of the workforce in CX are women, why are there only 30% in management, 12% in leadership. And why do so few others have a public platform?
March 2020 afforded me the opportunity to ponder this in great detail. As, like many small business owners, I watched my successful business disappear down the pan of the pandemic. But retrospectively, although it didn’t feel like it at the time, was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. The loss of my livelihood in lockdown and the need for connection, led me to reach out to women in my industry whom I’d met on social media. We ‘Zoomed’ and their stories gave me courage.
We all agreed the ‘Broken Rung’ in CX is significantly more broken that in other sectors, so we decided to do something about it. By starting the (now famous) ‘Inspiring Women in CX’ podcast to build the platform more women needed to be heard. A community sprung up around us as we connected with one another’s vulnerability, learned insights from battle-scarred careers and discovered with so many shared challenges and barriers to overcome in a broken CX industry, we were far from alone.
Audience has since grown to 40,000+ and as we continue to amplify the voices of women in our industry and bring them together through online and in-person events. You can join in too!
An angel (investor) appeared
I knew there was more to do to support women who have big ambitions and needed something more tailored towards achieving career transformation. That’s when serendipity took over. When an investor named Jonathan from Silicon Valley (who’d listened to the podcast) reached out to me to ask what I’d do if I had $10k. I eagerly replied:
“I’d build an online community and create the world’s greatest most diverse network of women in CX and technology!”
Jonathan provided our first sponsorship from Arise, and just like that, I became a Startup Founder, brought together a small group of founding members, did our research, built the MVP of our community app and have since been backed by Richard Branson and his Virgin StartUp initiative.
And, thanks to our headline sponsor Kantar, we continue to grow, innovate and stage ground-breaking feats of product development for our members.
Post-pandemic, we even host Global Gathering Conferences and in-person member meetups in locations including New York, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Dubai, Dublin, London, Toronto, Latvia, Romania, The Caribbean and beyond!
Who we are
Our award-winning community story is one of incredible collaboration and customer experience co-design.
We practice what we preach as our community members participate in the development of every detail of our membership experience, contribute their ideas and enable us to drive our roadmap forward with ultimate member-centricity. Something I could have only dreamed of doing in the corporate world. Our case study is available inside the community, and we share exactly how we do CX innovation in regular updates. If you join the community, you can take part in building our community experience too!
The results speak for themselves
Through the power of this community, we’ve seen our community members getting promotions, pay rises, starting their own podcasts, finally getting budget for CX, sharing job opportunities and projects with one another, and raising their profiles like never before. Now many of our community members feature on panels, podcasts and speak publicly having found the courage to stand up and use their voices as loudly as they like! I couldn’t be prouder of what we have achieved so far and having only launched on International Women’s Day 2021, this is just the beginning.
We’ve built the world’s biggest table and there is a seat for everyone to come together and unite to overcome personal and professional challenges and create. The Women in CX community are building a new blueprint for CX based on diversity of opinion, experience, and global thought leadership.
And if you’re ready to change the game – your seat awaits!
