Objective: This study examines how customer experience roles are defined and represented in job advertisements in the Iranian labor market. It evaluates the alignment of job titles, responsibilities, competencies, and authority levels with customer experience literature and explores overlaps with adjacent roles.
Method: This study used directed qualitative content analysis. All accessible job advertisements meeting the inclusion criteria were analyzed. From 96 retrieved records, 13 duplicates were removed, and 56 advertisements remained after screening. Each advertisement was the unit of analysis, and relevant textual segments were coded. A total of 138 distinct codes were identified and assigned 1,097 times. Coding was conducted using MAXQDA 2024. Reliability was assessed through independent recoding of 12 advertisements by two coders, resulting in 91.7% agreement and a Cohen’s kappa coefficient of 0.806.
Results: The findings indicate that customer experience roles are not consistently represented in Iranian job advertisements. Among 56 advertisements, 49 had titles aligned with customer experience, while seven used general or adjacent-role titles containing customer experience responsibilities. Five main categories were identified: alignment with customer experience literature and professional job design; reduction and dilution of the customer experience role; relabeling adjacent roles as customer experience; imbalance between job titles and responsibilities; and decorative use of customer experience titles.
Conclusions: The main challenge is the gap between professional terminology and actual role design rather than the absence of customer experience concepts. This gap may contribute to unclear expectations, mismatched recruitment, reduced applicant motivation, and higher recruitment and training costs.