How can your CMO, CXO, and CCO collaborate to delight customers?

COMPANIES are in a race to provide the best customer experience possible.

Their laser-like focus on delighting customers has resulted in the rise of the Chief Customer Officer (CCO) and Chief Experience Officer (CXO) alongside the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

According to a recent study by Gartner, about 90 percent of organizations reported having a CCO and 89 percent of organizations said they had a CXO — although just 18 percent of CCOs and 21 percent of CXOs reported to the CMO.

In order for them to be able to deliver the desired results and win the race, therefore, they need to work together, coordinating with each other, knowing their responsibilities, and passing on the baton when needed.

Given the fact that CCOs and CXOs don’t always report to the CMO, organizations need to provide a suitable environment and offer plenty of opportunities to collaborate.

“[…] these roles rarely report to CMOs despite marketing taking control of more CX initiatives,” said Gartner VP Analyst Augie Ray.

“As marketing continues to take on a larger role in CX, marketing leadership faces a potential challenge coordinating company-wide CX. CMOs and marketing leaders responsible for aspects of their organization’s CX must ensure that roles are understood, redundancy and conflict are minimized, and collaboration is prioritized.”

Gartner’s advice for CMOs looking take the lead in the CX race

Think of the customer journey and it’s clear that delivering a delightful customer experience (CX) has a lot to do with forming an initial impression on their minds and offering a great purchase and first use experience — and of course, there’s the after-sales support and service too, which completes the cycle.

In the initial phases of that journey, marketing leads the way, while as we move further along the cycle, operations and other divisions play the dominant role.

Since CMOs and their teams are often seen as the ones responsible for a good CX, especially as they’re at the front-end of the experience delivery, Gartner has two pieces of advice for them:

# 1 | Establish clear lines of responsibility and authority for everyone involved in CX

As discussed, delivering a good CX has many moving parts. With different divisions and departments leading CX improvement efforts, it is important that CMOs work with other CX leaders in the organization to draft clear responsibilities for everyone.

Further, in order to ensure that overlaps and confusion about authority are avoided, organizations need to ensure that CX leaders meet often with a view to providing updates about their projects, share ideas, and collaborate.

# 2 | Broaden marketing measures

Gartner recognizes that CMOs sometimes focus on short-term CX metrics such as awareness, inbound traffic, and conversion.

The analyst firm, however, advises marketing leaders to focus their efforts and energies on metrics such as improved customer satisfaction, reduced churn, increased lifetime value, and great referral volume — because those are things that will help CMOs “successfully take and sustain a larger role in enterprisewide CX”.

To win the race to the customer’s heart and wallet, what ultimately matters is a good CX, and businesses need to help CX leaders deliver the best outcomes quickly and effectively.

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