Evolving role of CXOs - Beyond Customer Satisfaction to Total Experience Leadership

Customer experience is the only true competitive differentiator for companies in the landscape of today. A recent Forrester Forrester found that experience-driven businesses grow revenue 5.5x times faster than competitors. However, the definition of experience is no longer just defined by the customer alone it's about employees, partners, investors, and even the larger community in a big way. This has completely changed the game for the CXO: The role is now that of a Chief Experience Officer. More than a keeper of scores for customer satisfaction metrics, today's CXO is emerging as a "total experience leader," one responsible for designing seamless and purposeful experiences around and across all aspects of the business.

The Winds of Change: Forces Driving the Evolution of the CXO Role

Several forces are driving this change in the role of CXO.

Experience Economy: Consumers have shifted from the consumption of mere products and services to experiences. This has driven companies to focus on creating emotional relationships, going an extra mile in every touch point.

Employee Experience as a Competitive Weapon: Companies are waking up to the reality that employee engagement deeply influences satisfaction on the part of the customer and, consequently, business performance. Engaged employees tend to go the extra mile, doing something that will leave the customer delighted and loyal.

Digital Revolution: with digital technologies such as AI, automation, or the analytics of big data, it powers the CXO toward scale in delivering this continuum of experience. It is really from this point that organizations can collect and analyze huge pools of data, helping them understand the behavior of the customer and employee at even a very granular level, shaping experiences of the future.

Stakeholder Capitalism: The new business philosophy of stakeholder capitalism makes CXOs responsible and accountable to, and ultimately should be answerable to, experiences aligned with values and expectations between all stakeholders—investors, partners, the community, and others.

The Total Experience Leader: the CXO

These changes also make the position of a CXO much more influential. While customer satisfaction remains a significant focus, the CXO today has a broader span of control.

Orchestrate Experiences Across the Organization: CXOs need to act like conductors who make sure that all touchpoints a customer comes across, whether it's the product, a call with customer service, or even internal email, make for one harmonious, positive experience.

Customer-Centric Culture Building: The CXO must drive deep, from the boardroom right to the front line, an inside organization customer-centric mindset. This includes inculcating a culture of empathy, continuous improvement, and relentless focus on the customer.

Personalization by Leveraging Technology: CXOs should leverage technology to drive personalized and delightful experiences for both customers and employees. This would involve tapping analytics on data to understand individual preferences and behaviours, along with actually giving out, reinforcing AI-powered tools that can automate routine workflows and be supportive on a real-time basis.

Measuring the ROI of Experiences: Measures have to be put in place that links these experience initiatives to business impact. That would mean tracking key metrics such as customer lifetime value, employee engagement scores, or brand advocacy, and showing the return on experience investments to the C-Suite.

One of my connects whom I have known for several years , their organization went through a transformation from a traditional into an Experience-Led Business. tHEY went into a multi-year journey whereby the entire DNA of the organization was to be infused with customer-centricity, process revamp, employee empowerment, and organizational adaptation in the use of technology to provide personalized financial advice. The result was off-the-charts increases in customer satisfaction, loyalty, and consequently, revenue growth.

One of my customers who are a mid-sized retail organization had infused technology for Omnichannel Experiences. The objective was to deliver frictionless customer experience both on their digital and physical channels that would allow data infusion from varied sources, would deploy chatbots and its own kind of virtual assistants, and personalize product recommendations. The result of this, of course, is more customers become engaged, with higher rates of conversion, and an improvement in the brand reputation.

Navigating the Challenges

As the CXO role continues to redefine itself, so it has not been without the following challenges:

Siloed Organizations: Many organizations have silos operating across different departments with little or no collaboration or communication across them. CXOs have to break down these silos toward a cross-functional approach to experience management.

Analyzing these vast amounts of data on customers and employees is something that can easily cause information overload. In this regard, one recommends that CXOs invest in analytics platforms for data scientist employees in order to extract meaning and stimulate action.

Act of balancing personalization and privacy: The quest for personalization must be balanced with privacy at all costs. CXOs must ensure that data is collected and used transparently and ethically.

But then, these are all challenges; and if surmounted, there are also growth opportunities tucked in there. This could further position the CXO for long-term success in the experience economy.

Role of a CXO in the Future

This will make the role of CXOs more fluid in the upcoming years. Emerging trends, like the appointment of a Chief Purpose Officer, increased focus on ESG, and embedding virtual and augmented reality, will be the future compass for all experience management. CXOs who take these trends seriously and continue to innovate will be the ones who can best position their organization for new heights of success.

A mandate the CXO possesses far beyond what traditional customer satisfaction metrics could have ever have imagined. Today's CXOs have to be Total Experience Leaders who will orchestrate experiences that resonate with all stakeholders. Enabled by customer-centric culture, greatest use of technology, and measuring ROI of experience initiatives, the CXOs now are going to be driving sustainable growth that creates lasting value for the organization. The time for Total Experience Leadership is now.