Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
Summary
Key Insights
-
•
Verizon CX Ops transformed from a design ops team to a global CX operations team powering 300+ roles across the enterprise.
-
•
Super speed represents rapid onboarding and resource planning to match the right designers to priority projects quickly.
-
•
Telepathy is a metaphor for proactive and consistent communication, resource capacity planning, and recruitment process improvements.
-
•
Super gadgets include operational tools like Jira, Airtable, and dynamic reporting, critical for scaling CX operations.
-
•
Flight symbolizes adopting multiple frameworks (predictive, agile, hybrid) and flexible working at global scale.
-
•
Super intelligence is embodied by CX Ops acting as a knowledge hub, oversharing communications to avoid gaps.
-
•
Super strength is demonstrated by strong cross-team partnerships and repeatable scalable processes that enhance customer experience quality.
-
•
Capacity planning in uncertain environments relies heavily on design systems, iterative planning, and quarterly forecasts with business partners.
-
•
Defining and tracking anti-patterns helps identify inefficiencies, such as ineffective meetings or communication breakdowns, enabling quick corrective action.
-
•
Crypto nights like burnout, silos, and too many priorities are actively managed through transparency, communication, and team support.
Notable Quotes
"We are super ops — powering 300 plus designers, researchers, and strategists globally."
"One of our superpowers is super speed: moving at the speed of light almost in onboarding and resource planning."
"Telepathy means mind-reading—proactive solutions through expanded resource capacity planning and recruitment."
"Super gadgets are our operational tools that we get really geeky about, like Jira and Airtable."
"Flight means adopting multiple models—predictive, agile, hybrid—to empower design at global scale."
"As the keepers and gatherers of knowledge, we empower others by sharing and sometimes over-sharing communications."
"Our super strength comes from partnerships and scalable, repeatable processes."
"We have crypto nights like people pleasing, perfectionism, silos, and burnout—which we watch out for carefully."
"Capacity planning is always through ever-changing uncertainty, requiring quarterly resource planning and business partnership."
"Defining anti-patterns helps us quickly identify and remedy issues like ineffective meetings or misaligned priorities."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We started with almost nothing and didn’t really know what goal we were trying to achieve."
Ruzanna RozmanGetting in Flow with Your Team
January 8, 2024
"Language can be vague, imprecise, and even contradictory, but the body can be a bridge to understanding."
Dane DeSutterKeeping the Body in Mind: What Gestures and Embodied Actions Tell You That Users May Not
March 26, 2024
"A prototype is worth a thousand meetings."
Alnie FigueroaTeamwork: Strategies for Effective Collaboration with Other Program Management Teams
September 8, 2022
"If a problem keeps coming up, it’s usually the execution of the idea that’s failing, not the concept."
Erin WeigelUX Lessons from running more than 1,200 A/B Tests
July 10, 2024
"I would rather have a product manager do crappy research than have no research at all."
Tala Tayebi Kelly Goto Jared SpoolVoice and influence in an age of noise
March 10, 2026
"If you don’t have an analyst, find designers passionate about analytics and educate them."
Sarah CoyleDesign and Analytics with Sarah Coyle
July 30, 2020
"Transparency will protect you in your community-centered design work when nothing else can."
Ashley Cortez Devika Menon Nidhi Singh Rathore Danita J. Reese Mari NakanoShifting Toward Community-Led Innovation in Local Government
December 8, 2021
"Quantities can be measured, but qualities need to be mapped — that shift feels core to the designer's role."
Jamie Beck Alexander Nina Gregg Shawn Petersen Bill DeRoucheyHow can you find your role in climate?
January 17, 2024
"High-performing cross-functional teams self-organize around shared goals even with ambiguous roles."
Matt LeMayYou Don’t “Get” Anyone to Do Anything
December 6, 2022
