What’s the Most Important CX Role?

Here's a tip that will save your company a ton of money AND vastly improve the customer experience you deliver: Find and empower your most customer-centric technology architects!

Why? The biggest impediments to delivering a great customer experience for most large organizations are:

1. The way your company's own internal IT systems (Single Sign On, security, ERP, CRM, billing, credit check, inventory management, etc.) impact customers

2. The quality of the software (including software that's embedded into products) and digital services (electronic media, updates, content, social media, customization, configuration, collaboration, and design tools) you deliver to customers

3. The design of the application and infrastructure services (notifications, search, booking/rebooking, subscription and license management, activation, entitlements, provisioning, returns handling, credit-checking, refunds) that your customers use

In most companies, all three of these areas typically fall outside the purview of "customer experience." The CIO worries about your IT systems. Your product development group worries about the quality of any software or other digital services that are delivered to customers. Your content team worries about the digital media assets you provide. Some IT infrastructure team—usually reporting to the product development group—worries about the services infrastructure that underpins internal and external applications.

No one oversees ALL of the customer-impacting IT decisions that are made every day.

Yet, within these groups—or perhaps outside of them—probably lurks a fantastically talented and insightful seasoned information technology architect or a handful of them. If you're lucky, he or she is already advocating for customer-adaptive, services-oriented architectural approaches. She's probably in charge of the design and delivery of at least one customer-impacting service, web site, or mobile application. But she's frustrated that she doesn't have the clout or purview to ensure that all of these customer-impacting IT decisions are rationalized to deliver a seamless, flexible, dynamic experience.

Your remit this week: Find that person or people in your company and start the dialog about how to help them increase their purview over the myriad inconsistent and costly decisions that are being made every day that directly or indirectly impact the quality of the experience your customers have in interacting with your firm and with your products!

Senior IT Architect for Cross-Channel Customer Experience and Digital Services
Roles and Responsibilities You’ll Need for Your Customer-Centric Organization
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO & Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group