CX Academy, the Dublin-based customer experience company, is aiming to triple its workforce within two years, having grown its operations to the point where it now has customers in more than 80 markets.
The business, which offers online professional certification programmes in customer experience, has enjoyed significant growth since it was founded in 2019 by Michael Killeen and Julian Douglas.
Graduates from the company’s courses work for companies including Sky, Mercedes Benz, Salesforce and others, and it has offices in Dublin, Singapore and Sydney.
CX Academy has also established an industry advisory council. It features experts from companies such as Google, Virgin and Ikea and provides syllabus guidance, expert peer reviews and ensures that all graduates have the necessary skills for their careers.
This summer, the Enterprise Ireland-backed company has launched a new fellowship programme to promote the discipline of customer experience, which it claims is central to the success of major businesses.
“Customer experience (CX) is still kind of a relatively new discipline,” Killeen, the company’s chair and co-founder, told the Business Post.
“A lot of people mix it up with customer service, so we’re attempting to address this misunderstanding. Customer experience is all about the emotional, whereas customer service is functional. Customer experience is how you feel as a consumer and it’s the fastest-growing discipline in the world. It’s not a soft skill. It’s critical to business success.
“My biggest fear for CX is that it would become seen as a fad. We need to turn CX into a proper profession, and that’s what this fellowship programme can do.”
When CX Academy started offering its courses, it sold them on a B2C basis, where an individual would decide to enrol to upskill. Now, though, more than two-thirds of enrolments come from corporate clients who want their staff to gain new insights into customer experience.
“Thirty per cent of people doing our courses are either chief executives, or financial directors,” Killeen said. “That’s amazing. When you think about it, so much money is being invested in customer experience, but primarily in the technology side. And these officers don’t quite understand what CX is, so they’re doing these courses that we offer. It’s phenomenal.”
CX Academy currently employs 11 full-time staff, but it is aiming to grow that to 30 by 2024. “There is the potential for great growth there,” Killeen said. “We see huge growth in that area in terms of content development, and sales and marketing – those are the main areas we’re investing in right now.”
The business is examining the possibility of opening further offices around the world, with Britain, the US and China the likeliest destinations.
Despite its ambitious plans, CX Academy is not seeking external investment, believing it can scale the business organically.
“CX Academy is genuinely the global leader in CX education and training,” Killeen said. “In two years’ time, we should be putting through about 35,000 participants each year, which is really significant growth.
“It’s a bloody good product, and we’re very proud of that.”
This Making it Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland