How to Obtain Your CCXP Credentials

Providing excellent customer service has changed from being a nice-to-have to becoming a corporate necessity. Investments in customer experience (CX) projects are increasing, as is the responsibility of CX leaders, as more and more firms have come to understand the benefits of a comprehensive CX program.

Some businesses look for official certificates and qualifications that set seasoned CX experts apart from the competition in order to be sure they are recruiting top talent for the position. The CCXP is one such certification. The CCXP was developed to provide top customer experience professionals with a formal certificate demonstrating their knowledge and achievements necessary to be at the top of their field.

Receiving a CCXP certification is no small task—but it’s highly valuable for CX employees. It can lead to additional job opportunities, open up leadership roles down the road, and provide a deeper base of knowledge in the customer experience field.  

This blog will tell you everything you need to know about becoming a CCXP—what it is, how it works, and how to pass your exam and maintain your certification once you’ve received it. Read on for all the details.  

What is CCXP?

The Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) program is a customer experience certification program that lets the industry know you have high levels of knowledge and skills in the customer experience world. The CCXP program tests potential certification candidates on their knowledge of the six-core customer experience (CX) competencies, which will be covered in more depth later in the blog.

Basically, receiving the CCXP designation is a way of showing that you’re serious about customer experience and ready for a role that allows you to contribute to, or lead, improvements in the customer journey. The CCXP program is internationally recognized and puts you in an elite group of CX professionals.  

If you’re working in the CX space, having this certification of your professional skills is very valuable. It can open up job opportunities at a leadership level and ready you to take on more responsibility at a higher level, with a deeper understanding of the customer experience.  

While many organizations offer a certification when you complete their customer experience trainings, none are as unbiased or rigorous as the CCXP. It’s the only certification that not only attests you’ve completed the program, but also independently evaluates the skills and competencies you have in the CX field.  

The CXPA

The Customer Experience Professionals Organization (CXPA) is a non-profit founded in 2011 for the advancement and cultivation of the CX profession and professionals. The customer experience strategy and management field is still relatively young, and the CXPA was founded to help it mature and to organize a system of professional accreditation.  

Roles in the CX field are growing every year, and there are more professionals than ever who are responsible for improving various areas of the customer experience. The CXPA wants to help CX professionals ensure that customer experience management is a vital part of how their organizations operate. They also want to help CX pros develop and expand their customer experience skill set. And they also create networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities so everyone in the CX field can come together and get better at serving customers.  

In creating the CCXP designation, the CXPA has set the standard for professional credentials in the customer experience world. They administer the CCXP exam, manage the recertification and continuing education process, and maintain the official online record of CCXPs worldwide.  

CCXP certification

The CCXP certification process is offered by the CXPA. The certification lasts for two years, and you pay to receive it ($495 for CXPA members and $645 for non-members). You need to apply to receive the CCXP credential, pass a rigorous exam, and maintain your certification by regularly attending CX events and continuing education.  

The CCXP certification process is selective and thorough—it requires much more than just taking a couple easy online courses and printing your certificate. But if you’re wondering if the CCXP certification is worth it—all the studying and fees and time spent preparing—the resulting industry respect and recognition are certainly more than a just reward.  

CCXP application

The CCXP process begins with your application to the program. As the first step of the application process, you’ll learn all about the CCXP program so you can ensure it’s a good fit for you. Next up comes the process of actually submitting the application to the program.  

Determining eligibility

Not everyone is eligible for the CCXP designation. You must meet both education and experience requirements to apply for the program. To be eligible, you’ll need a bachelor’s degree (or postsecondary) and three years full-time CX experience with primary responsibilities that include engagement and experience in each of the following categories:

• Customer-centric culture
• Organizational adoption and accountability  
• VoC, customer insight & understanding
• Experience design & improvement
• Metrics, measurement & ROI
• Customer experience strategy

If you don’t have a bachelor’s degree, you can still apply for the program. You just need a high school diploma and five years of relevant CX experience.  

Preparing for the CCXP exam

With a test as challenging as this one, CCXP exam preparation is absolutely vital. However, finding study materials for the exam can be difficult. Since this isn’t a widely-taken test (there are only about 700 CCXPs worldwide), it can be tough to know exactly how to prepare. First, you should know about the six competencies that the CCXP exam tests for. Each area encompasses job tasks that you should be educated about, and skills, abilities, and knowledge in each area as well.  

Customer-centric culture

This competency is all about creating a culture that centers around customers and their needs, instead of business priorities. You’ll need to know about how to create and nurture a customer-centric culture, as well as behaviors, best practices, and standards that encourage every employee to deliver excellent customer experiences.  

Some of the job tasks include increasing employee engagement, developing communication strategies about the importance of CX for employees, and collecting and sharing stories of CX excellence. And the performance domain for customer-centricity includes competencies such as internal and external communication, reward and recognition strategies, and the ability to align employee behavior with a customer-focused culture.  

Organizational adoption & accountability

Shifting an organization from a focus on business priorities to one centered around the customer requires a big shift. This competency area tests your ability to drive adoption of new culture and standards, as well as how to hold everyone accountable for the results from the executive suite to front-line employees.  

The job tasks you’ll be tested on here include how to align business goals with a customer-focused culture, introducing new processes and tools to improve the customer experience, and reviewing CX metrics and feedback at all organizational levels. Competencies include leadership and change management, collaboration and influencing skills, and the ability to recommend initiatives based on customer data.  

VoC, customer insight & understanding

A critical part of customer centricity is building a strong Voice of the Customer (VoC) program created around understanding and gaining insight from your customers. Capturing and analyzing VOC feedback will help you and your organization understand customers’ desires, needs, perceptions, pain points, and preferences.

Job tasks to be tested here include designing and implementing VoC feedback programs, identifying and mapping customer touchpoints, and gathering feedback from employees about the customer experience and the places where improvement is possible. The competencies to be tested include VoC analytical methods and tools, qualitative and quantitative research methods, and the different approaches to measuring customer experience metrics like Net Promoter Score.  

Experience design & improvement

Knowing about customer experiences and gathering feedback is just where the CX magic begins—you also need to know how to design great customer experiences and improve ones that are lacking. This competency area tests you on implementing practices and approaches to continuously design, improve, and differentiate your customer experiences.  

Job tasks to be tested include using design thinking to engage customers and employees in creating improved or enhanced experiences, using customer journey mapping, and using customer insights to understand and prioritize opportunities for improvements. Competencies include process improvement methods, driving action and execution on key CX improvements, and driving customer-centered design and innovation.  

Metrics, measurement & ROI

Once your customer-centric activities and changes are in place, you’ll need to regularly review how those changes are performing and identify what’s working well and what’s not. This portion of the exam tests creation and reporting of CX measures, including their use in key business cases to provide the ROI and business value of CX.  

Tested job tasks include identifying key CX metrics for tracking CX, developing infrastructure and mechanisms to gather CX data, and analyzing and interpreting results to identify trends and customer insights. Competencies include Net Promoter Score and methodology, CX data mining and analysis, and strategies to communicate metrics and ROI with employees and stakeholders.  

Customer experience strategy

An exceptional customer experience is driven by a strong CX strategy. The final part of the exam tests if you’re ready to develop a strategy that articulates a clear vision of the customer experience you’re seeking to create, and how closely it aligns to brand values and linkage to CX activities.  

Job tasks include defining a CX strategy that accurately describes the intended experience and communicating with and engaging employees at every level of the organization in the elements of CX strategy. Competencies include the development of branded customer experiences, CX best practices across industries, and the ability to engage the executives at your organization in CX design strategy and execution.  

Key takeaways

If you want to prove that you’re a highly experienced, knowledgeable, passionate customer experience expert, getting your CCXP certification is a powerful way to show your organization and the CX industry what you know.