Customer Experience and Org Structure

Most companies still struggle to positively differentiate themselves on end-to-end customer experience and the clearest reason is that they aren't structured to do so. Peruse any number of posted Customer Experience positions in a job search and you'll find the role descriptions to be all over the map. It seems there are at least a few different camps as to where the responsibility for customer experience lies and looking at individual user profiles, you'll see that there is a wide range of titles for individuals claiming responsibility for customer experience.

Not long ago, I was at a conference where an upcoming speaker had the title of EVP of Customer Experience (or SVP ... don't quite recall). This person was hailed in her bio as one of the most senior professionals in the retail industry whose responsibility is customer advocacy. This was impressive to me and I took an opportunity to meet her. At some point, I told her we had customer advocacy in common. She responded enthusiastically, "Really? What do you do?" I said, "I run Customer Care." I found the next thing she said to be remarkable, which was, "oh ... well I'm completely on the other side of the business." 

The other side?

In this case, it was Marketing. She went on to tell me that she mostly tends to loyalty programs and customer research and really has little to do with their Customer Care organization (or any other "operational" area) except that she does stay abreast of how failures in operations might negatively impact sales.

This preference for placement of Customer Experience in Marketing over Operations isn't uncommon or completely surprising considering that consumer analytics, a key resource in measuring and driving customer behaviors, tends to be a function of Marketing. For too many companies however, loyalty and direct marketing programs are where the focus on Customer Experience ends. 

On another front, you'll have companies that cite post-sale care to be just as, if not more of an important driver for loyalty and long-term buying behaviors. Zappos and parent company Amazon for instance, do not mince words when touting the importance of Customer Service and Logistics in driving customer loyalty and in the case of Zappos, the importance of human interaction in that equation. On yet another front, companies that are hyper-focused on self service tend to think of the scope of customer experience to be all about the effectiveness of digital interfaces and the roles within those companies will tend to be in Digital Product Management. All of these would be ineffective without a great data capture and management strategy, which is a function of IT Operations. In my own company, the Voice of the Customer program, which is housed in the Customer Care organization has probably the most pronounced impact on overall customer experience, as that program drives analysis and cross-functional partnerships when there are issues to be fixed. That said, it isn't enough by itself to just respond when things break.

I think most of us believe the customer experience is best when all of these areas are equally responsible but without some sort of blanket oversight, accountability falters. While any of these groups in principle may claim customer experience as its domain, it's just as easy for one group to assume the other is taking care of things or may even have differing definitions and targets for "good customer experience". Competing objectives or gaps in information flow between groups also lead to breakdowns.

While it may be pretty easy to propose that a company will benefit by having a single leader overseeing the full end-to-end customer experience, there are a couple big challenges with this. 

The first is finding an individual with the diversity of experience, skill, and capacity to understand what's happening for the customer at all these touch-points then to be tuned into customer psychology enough to transform information ultimately into long term behavior. Also, vernacular tends to differ between corporate areas, requiring a leader who can effectively communicate value and opportunity from a range of angles and perspectives.

The other big challenge is in figuring out which budget should bear the burden of a talent who is truly cross-functional.

I do believe there are people out there who have the experience and skill set necessary to lead others in providing a top-notch end-to-end experience, but the background needed is probably different that what is currently being sought for these roles. I'll try to outline those necessary qualities in a future article.

With regard to budget group, I don't have a definitive answer and I think there could be a good case made for placement within either. What I do know is that whatever the reporting group, he or she needs to be fully empowered to directly influence decisions in other areas and a personal resistance to taking on the modalities of the home team.

That last part is no small feat.

Why 2013 Will Be The Year You Get A Job

This article is in response to +james altucher's article: 10 Reasons Why 2013 Will Be The Year You Quit Your Job

Though I am about to give a (somewhat long) retort to Altucher's article, I would like to point out that the article is excellent - IF - you don't read too much into it.

I like Altucher. I think he is a bold visionary. Honestly, these are the sorts of people you should be reading regularly. Altucher's not as swashbuckling, but I rate him in line with for instance Richard Branson, one of my favorite icons.

There is a fair amount of truth in the article with regard to how globalization and automation are having a huge impact on the corporate 'middle class' job landscape. I agree with him that there are positions/jobs that will go (or already have gone) away and never come back. I agree that there has never been a better time to diversify your interest, cultivate numerous skills, and genuinely consider that a job isn't your life or your sole source of security. I agree fully that it isn't. But I also think that while most people know this in their hearts (or from the experience of being set free), there is another side.

I have a friend who has been unemployed for a couple years now. He's a brilliant guy, and incredibly well educated. He has numerous talents and an entrepreneurial spirit. He's still had a pretty hard ride and he's damned ready to join the ranks of the fruitfully employed. The same pressures that have weighed on corporations also weigh on entrepreneurs. There is a lot of competition in small spaces, with not a lot of demand. With the economic downturn - and I do fault Altucher some for not being more upfront about the significance of the downturn - a lot of previously corporate people are now entrepreneurs not totally by choice. Entrepreneurs are now as much a dime a dozen as were corporate paper-shufflers. This may be a good thing for American ingenuity but for the individual, it can be a Darwinian nightmare. And while we know the best things in life (time with the pets and family for instance) are free, very little else is. Everything is monetized. Want to go to the beach? You'll pay to park.

While there is still plenty of room for growth and innovation in the non-corporate landscape for the right ideas, the right resources, and right work ethic, I'd argue that an equal amount of opportunity exists today in the corporate world. Altucher says your company hates you. Maybe some companies hate their employees, but those companies are not going to succeed with that attitude no matter how much they can automate or offshore. My current experience is that the downturn has been a bit of an awakening for corporations. Jobs are already coming back and some of us were fortunate enough (or unlucky enough if you believe Altucher) to maintain gainful corporate employment throughout the recession. We were either lucky enough to be working for companies that were innovating or we were lucky enough to be one of those individuals who could do the work of three peers. We still almost universally count ourselves lucky.

Altucher is right that corporations can replace people with robots or outsource their jobs. But, they can only do that if the robot or the outsourcer provides more value and that isn't always strictly about unit cost. I am here to tell you that the best way to excel in today's corporate world is to not be a robot. The new successful corporate employee is as entrepreneurial as any business owner. This employee approaches his/her corporate responsibility with the level of ownership and creativity necessary to elevate that corporation above the competition. Many companies are now aggressively in-sourcing what was previously outsourced in order to maintain much tighter controls on quality. This is even more prevalent in my sector - retail customer experience. What for years past were considered by many to be throw-away, mindless, repetitive roles are now anything but. There has been a near renaissance in customer experience during the economic downturn as companies who found it more and more challenging to compete on price had to differentiate themselves through excellent service. Once you had a few lone wolfs providing 40's and 50's style personalized service but with fresh technological twists (and by the way kicking the crap out of much bigger competitors with it), there became a mad dash for nearly every good company to do the same.

I will tell you - a corporate robot employee does not provide great customer experience. A great customer experience today, as much as great design, great marketing strategy, great manufacturing quality or fulfillment throughput - takes strong, creative, insightful, and diverse talent. It takes a an entrepreneurial spirit and approach. There is plenty to do both for well-designed machines and humans alike.

I see a choice. You can be a self-employed entrepreneur and pay your own insurance, allocate your own retirement funding, build your own marketing campaigns, beat down doors scraping the gravel for every potential customer, etc. Go for it. I applaud you but please stop spamming me online, thanks. You can also be all those things that make a great entrepreneur and have in some cases an even better cultural and team experience, with a heightened (if not fail-safe) sense of security as the company you work for grows and thrives due to your valuable contribution. Just make sure real value is what you bring to the party.

The biggest takeaway from Altucher's article for me is that no one can coast and no one can be one-dimensional. You have to bring it and bring it big whether you're a private entrepreneur or an entrepreneurial employee. Quite the opposite of the main point of the article that there has never been a better time than 2013 to quit - there has never been a better time than 2013 to enter the newly redesigned corporate world where creativity, diversity, strong work ethic, and dynamism are rewarded handsomely (and in more ways than just money). Just pick a company that is a cultural fit for you and don't be dead weight.