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
"Design automation will reduce armies of workers to maybe just a single operator of the machine."
Erin MaloneUnderstanding the past to prepare for the future
July 19, 2024
"If seeing a diverse participant pool is important to you, it's your responsibility to make sure your recruiters use it as a priority."
Megan CamposWhat Did I Miss? The Hidden Costs of Deprioritizing Diversity in User Research
March 12, 2021
"Everyone can see how much everyone else makes through our transparent pay scale tied to observable criteria."
Chelsea MauldinLet's Talk About Money
November 17, 2022
"Organizational change is less about the what and more about the how, showing the organization how to change."
Alana Washington(Remote) Service Design: A Transformation Case Study
June 8, 2022
"Designing a metric starts with the goals, not the metric itself."
Alberto FerreiraMaking it Count: Developing a custom digital metric framework that works
October 15, 2021
"Managing Slack channels requires continuous gardening and removing excess channels to reduce noise and focus users."
Adel Du ToitGet Your CFO To Say: 'Our Strategic Goal is User Obsession'
June 10, 2022
"We lose fights as cyclists when confronted by cars, and that loss shapes my perspective today."
Steve BatyBreaking Out of Ruts: Tips for Overcoming the Fear of Change
June 9, 2016
"Research is something that should happen throughout the process — early and often."
James Wieselman SchulmanResearch is a team sport: advancing the work when everyone does the research
March 11, 2026
"As a designer and leader in this space, I've had to learn a lot about policy so I can come in and have really deep discussions with policy folks as a peer."
Toby HaugDiscussion
June 9, 2017
