For Your Professional Development: Advice for The Next Generation of Experience Makers

Professional development is something we’re committed to at Adobe. After all, the next generation of experience makers will have an abundance of creative, marketing, analytics, advertising, and commerce solutions at their disposal, which will empower them to create amazing end-to-end digital experiences. However, these resources come with great responsibility.

So, what exactly does it take to be a successful customer experience professional? We asked some of our industry’s thought leaders to provide advice to the next generation of experience makers. Here’s what they had to say:

Kathleen Hessert, founder, WeRGenZ:

The future of work will be nothing like that of your parents or teachers. It’s futile to ask “how did you get where you are today?” Yesterday’s path can’t be duplicated in this hyper-fast and connected world.

Don’t try to mirror past success. Carve a new path, fashioned with the powerful tools that are in your generational DNA. Technologies and an open, collaborative mindset remain an enigma to older generations. Balance learning from the more experienced with teaching them new ways of looking at stubborn problems and recognizing new problems that crop up in a drastically changed workplace.

Stephan Pretorius, CTO, WPP:

Being an “experience maker” has to be one of the most exciting jobs in business today. It requires a massive amount of imagination and tons of creativity to come up with new ideas, but also solid technical and business skills to put those ideas into practice.

But it is also an inherently amorphous and very broad job category, so here are 3 things to consider that might help:

First, being an experience maker means always putting the customer first in everything you do. Having true empathy with customers and being obsessed with great customer experiences are fundamental to success.

You need to have diverse skill sets and wide personal experiences as an experience maker. We look for artists who can code, people who understand different cultures and speak multiple languages, scientists who read novels and poets who love numbers!

[Finally,] you need to be curious and never stop learning. To be and remain relevant as an experience maker you can’t ever stand still or become complacent. Live in culture, read constantly, go to art galleries and museums. It will inspire you and ensure you remain relevant.

Sofiya Deva, VP of marketing, Zen Media:

Marketing is more and more becoming an interdisciplinary practice. Not only are marketers stepping out of their silos within organizations by, for example, sharing customer feedback from digital channels with R&D, or collaborating with HR to simultaneously engage employees and increase reach on LinkedIn, they are also crafting and driving strategic campaigns that bring together brand, consumer and culture to tell a bigger story. To thrive, the next generation of experience marketers must lead with purpose, build community and harness new technologies to do so at scale.

Matt Lindenberg, VP, digital CX strategy, Epsilon:

Don’t boil the ocean. Tomorrow’s marketing experiences will use data and digital tools to be richer and more personal than ever. Transforming business models to achieve that vision is critical. Most organizations need a staged plan to allow them to walk before they run along that journey. Trying to jump immediately to an end goal may result in gaining less traction and missing key learnings.

It may feel frustrating to make what seem like baby steps. However, take enough baby steps down the beach, and then pause and turn around; you’ll see your footsteps leading to the horizon behind you.

John Rampton, founder and CEO, Calendar:

My advice for the next generation of experience makers is to focus on creating experiences that address individual interests and micro segments of the population. Look for those areas where you share values and knowledge and where you believe these traits can make a meaningful difference for your intended audience. Also, find ways to make these experiences as interactive as possible to deepen the engagement and provide new insights and ideas for the next experiences you produce.

At Adobe, we are committed to developing the next generation of experience makers so they can both succeed professionally and help their companies meet customer needs. Our Experience League program gives customers access to in-depth training through in-person and virtual instructor-led courses. Participants build their customer experience management (CXM) chops through personalized learning and can connect with like-minded peers and Adobe experts. Learn more about this active community of customer experience professionals.