This is not a question of vanity. Although I’m sure those working in customer experience are a good looking bunch.
Towards the end of last year, IBM reported that 63% of CMOs believed a richer customer experience was the top marketing priority. Make no mistake, 2017 will mark a shift in focus from the chief marketing officer (CMO) to the customer experience officer (CXO).
Key appointments in 2017 point to the acceleration of its importance and place on the board; Alessandra Bellini has been hired as the new chief customer officer at Tesco and Lisa Harris appointed as a new chief customer director for Avios.
As more companies make similar appointments; with what experience does a CXO assume the role? Where should HR and head-hunters be looking for a CX professional with the kind of experience to fulfil expectations?
Take our own advisory board, which is made up of global experts in customer experience. There’s a general director, global CX execution and planning, whose background is in finance. Brad Smith, who’s president of the board of directors for the Consortium for Service Innovation, and has held numerous CXO roles with Yahoo and Sage – has a background in applied science. Tim Hughes, head of customer excellence at HSBC, came through communications and product management before a career in customer experience.
Put a host of customer experience practitioners in a room and you’ll find a melting pot of backgrounds and training.
So it seems that the appointment of a CXO is anything but formulaic and there is no chartered institute to make the job of recruiters any easier. Instead, you have to look at the soft qualities that a CX practitioner needs.
This was recognised recently by Jo van Riemsdijk and Kate Baird, directors of recruitment agency CX Talent Ltd:
“The most important qualities are open-minded thinkers with vision who are pragmatic in application and lateral thinkers – those in CX will need to be agents of change.”
So, here is how one might want to think about writing a job brief for what is probably the most important hire in customer marketing right now:
Experience of partnership marketing
The CXO must interact with a range of people, seeking partnerships that extend beyond the typical role of the CMO. Forming collaborations with the chief innovation officer, chief technology officer and others is critical to the customer-centric business transformation that is taking place. This changing landscape means that the CXO is progressing into a multi-faceted role.
Experience in HR and internal communications preferred
It is also assumed that the CXO’s role focuses on external relations that ultimately point to the customer, but it is important to reiterate the internal responsibilities of the CXO. Adam Powers, chief experience officer at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, recognises this stating,
“There is an inward-facing aspect to this role – a CXO works with c-suite colleagues to ensure the business practices what it preaches. We must interrogate the customer experience that our clients have with us.”
The candidate must understand the digital landscape
Perhaps the most influential change for the CXO is within the digital and technological landscape. Customer experience is no longer successful through creating what Matthew Candy, European leader at IBM Interactive Experience, calls a “singular inspirational moment”. Instead, customer experience needs to market at the speed of expectation, and this means the CXO needs to find methods of engaging customers outside of the traditional industry boundaries.
Experience in content marketing is a necessity
The relationship between customer and business is more fluid than it used to be. Customers, within B2B or B2C, are now content creators, and as the customer experience journey becomes digitalised, businesses should use content creation to engage with their audience in a way that has not been happening before. The CXO should be approaching customer experience with a more holistic framework, and consider the digital customer experience journey as an interactive and mutual relationship between customer and business, rather than one with set boundaries.
10 years’ experience in data management and CRM
Data can be argued as the foundation for successful customer experience. The complexities of customer experience, in the digital realm in particular, have caused the customer experience journey to become increasingly at risk of being convoluted and miscommunicated. Data is a fantastic insight into millions of devices, interactions, transactions and touchpoints that customers encounter, and thus help us understand customer behaviour on a micro-scale. In a society where customers demand immediacy, it is essential that businesses are able to respond fast and manage expectations. Data is an essential tool for CXOs, as businesses can really target their customer experience in the widening marketing arena. In a year where ‘personalisation’ seems to be a marketing buzzword, it is perhaps of no surprise why data is currently at the forefront of CX.
The role of the CXO is therefore indeed multi-faceted. One can no longer enter the role with a linear approach to customer experience. CXOs need to work with a range of people and platforms, both in the real world and the digital world. Like good customer experience, CXOs also need to adapt and respond effectively to the challenges they face.
