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 have four themes over two days: systems thinking, information architecture and knowledge management, AI and machine learning, and designing the data."
Louis RosenfeldWelcome / Housekeeping
June 7, 2023
"Start with small groups to get alignment and then bring ideas to larger groups carefully."
Scher Foord Corey Greenltch Sarah RoweTurn the Ship Around: How to Apply Design Thinking Across Your Organization
June 10, 2021
"We’ve now reached the point where only 18% of the public in the UK believe tech companies design with their best interests in mind."
Cennydd BowlesResponsible Design in Reality
June 9, 2021
"Diversity at the bottom without diversity at the top means narrowing perspective from the top down."
Joi FreemanA New Vantage Point: Building a Pipeline for Multifaceted Research(ers)
March 30, 2020
"We cleared three weeks of calendars to detach and look at the big picture — that was our UX reboot."
Vasileios XanthopoulosA Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach to User-Centric Maturity at Scale
January 8, 2024
"We have immature teams where design is still seen as aesthetic rather than strategic experience functionality."
Patrizia Bertini Alexandra Mengoni LeónPushing DesignOps’ Influence into New Global Markets
September 9, 2022
"Trust the user and trust the model are the two lessons I’m getting over time."
Peter Van DijckHands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people
October 22, 2025
"Sherbiney built a well-functioning agile train in one of the oldest organizations."
Lada GorlenkoTheme 1: Intro
January 8, 2024
"Research is evolving. It’s not about ownership, it’s about impact."
Sean McKayCoexisting with non-researchers: Practical strategies for a democratized research future
March 11, 2025