“Never stop learning. Stay curious and be open-minded. Even if something isn't directly exactly what you're already doing, if it interests you, or you see some overlap, try it!” – Paulina Morgan, SCS learner
While Paulina Morgan’s focus in her undergraduate program was economics, she was always interested in the world of marketing. So when she graduated in 2018, that’s the direction she struck off in. Initially diving into a job as a marketing analyst, she quickly moved into the field of marketing automation.
She enjoyed the combination of technology and creativity her work demanded, but she wasn’t content to settle in for the long haul. “My motivation has always been to keep learning,” she says.
When she discovered her company at the time had a budget for employee learning and development Morgan jumped at the opportunity to register for a Customer Experience Management course at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.
She was drawn to the course because while it had some overlap with the marketing automation work she was familiar with, it also offered a new, complementary set of skills and knowledge she knew she could use to propel her career forward.
“I use marketing journeys in my own role for planning campaigns from start to end for the customer, but I realized that that can also be applied to customer experience as a whole within companies to help look at the customer’s journey from becoming aware of a brand to purchasing to becoming a loyal customer,” she explains.
“So I was like this isn't exactly what I do, but I wanted to learn more because I saw a lot of overlap with the marketing that I was doing,”
Even with the overlap between customer experience and her own marketing automation work, Morgan says she was surprised to realize just how pervasive customer experience is.
“It’s mind-blowing how much customer experience is in everything from a streaming platform testing out their content with their audience to a big bank looking at how they can increase loyalty and increase retention among their customer base,” she says.
“This class really did open my eyes to something that I don't think I would have been aware of, even though it was touching all aspects of my life the whole time.”
Morgan also recognized that in a constantly rapidly evolving field like marketing, she would need to keep learning to keep up.
“It is an area that's developing all the time with all these new technologies. We really don't know what it's all going to look like in 10 years,” she says.
“Marketing now is very different than it was before, and it's going to keep changing.”
To that end, she was pleased to be learning from instructor Sandra Pacitti, who not only teaches, but currently works in the field. She also found that her classmates had valuable insight and experience to share. “It’s kind of rare to find yourself sitting in a group of people who think about the same topics, because think about your friend group. You're not likely going to be friends with a bunch of marketing automation people or customer experience professionals,” she says.
“So it was really cool to have that community to bounce ideas off of and learn from. A lot of us worked in different areas and had different experience and I think that kind of diversity of people within the group is definitely a strength.”
After her course ended, Morgan kept in touch with her classmates via LinkedIn and reached out to Pacitti when she was ready to take the next step in her career. She wanted to continue to work in marketing automation, but was also eager to continue exploring the customer experience industry.
Her strategic job search paid off and she now works for Alida, a customer experience management platform, where she was able to apply the knowledge from her SCS course immediately. “The company deals with customer experience, employee, experience, brand experience, and product experience. So it provides what we call Total Experience Management,” she says.
“During our onboarding, they were teaching us about customer experience, and I was so excited to realize this was literally what Sandra taught us! This is one of those moments where what you learn in school actually applies to what you’re doing at work in the real world.”
Aside from the new skills and knowledge she acquired in the classroom, Morgan says her SCS experience reinforced her instinct to make learning a continuous part of her life, and that she would recommend other recent grads take the same approach when thinking about how to advance their career or take it in a new direction.
“I would say, never stop learning. Stay curious and be open-minded. Even if something isn't directly exactly what you're already doing, if it interests you, or you see some overlap, try it!” she says.
“Go ahead and pursue it, because you never know where it's going to lead.”