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.
