Experience Design is Product Management

Tricia Houston is the Founder and COO of The ExperienceBuilt Group.

Tricia Houston has experience in experience. As the founder and COO of The ExperienceBuilt Group, it’s her job to help companies improve both customer and employee experiences. Well, actually, she believes it’s your job, too.

“I think experience is everyone’s job,” she says. “It’s really a mindset. You can’t really think of it as a department. I think companies that do that and just have your customer success or customer experience department — that’s not going to get it done. You have to have everyone in the company kind of rowing in the same direction, which of course, is harder.”

So how do you do that? “Start small,” Tricia says. “It’s really about a vision that is around what I call the ‘other business you’re in.’ Your business produces something, right? You produce products, you produce a service, a software, a something, but what other business are you in? For example … Zappos, we don’t just sell shoes, we’re in the customer service business, and they reward on the longest-call customer service for anything. 

“What actions are you doing? What actions are you setting up for your employees, training them to support your other business? That’s really the foundation of getting everybody rowing in the right direction. Values and mission and all that stuff is important, but unless they’re linked to activities, it’s hard for the employees to know what to do.”

Tricia shares her invaluable insights — including how to fill the gaps both between customer and employee experiences and digital and physical experiences — on this episode of This Is Product Management.

Download the transcript:

Here are some highlights:

• Connecting digital and physical experiences
• Where to start customer research
• Being your own customer
• Connecting customer experience and employee experience
• Work is theater