May 2018 | Point of View
Put CX leaders in the business driver’s seat
Put CX leaders in the business driver’s seat
Today's enterprises have two choices: Evolve their customer experience (CX) or get left behind.
To grasp the depth of the problem, look no further than the retail sector. Last year, roughly 7,000 brick-and-mortar stores closed up shop, according to a report by FGRT, cited by CNBC. And it wasn’t only small businesses taking the hit. Recognizable names like Toys R Us and RadioShack were among the thousands of closures.The problem extends well beyond retail. In an age of broad digital disruption, the adaptive imperatives apply to every industry’s customer experience. Just as digital behemoths like Amazon are successfully outpacing traditional retailers – the company’s stock rose by over 50% last year – emerging digital enterprises in healthcare, banking, law, education and manufacturing are setting new customer experience bars in those verticals.
With digitization reshaping customer behaviors and expectations, the onus is on traditional enterprises to adopt a more agile approach to the customer experience–one that continually adapts to the evolving consumer.
When it comes to driving enterprise adaptability, most professionals see it as a strategic imperative. The problem is that nobody’s leading the charge.
As a recent survey we completed at West Monroe Partners customer experience leaders and practitioners revealed the notable majority of companies – 61% – place adaptability toward the top of their strategic priorities list. But when it comes to who owns adaptability efforts, there’s not a clear answer. Instead, responsibility is all over the map, from the CEO (according to 28 % of those surveyed) to marketing (23%) to IT (20%) to no one at all (also 23%).
This lack of a centralized approach to improving adaptability means that for most organizations, it’s more of a talking point than an action item. Our survey found that a mere 17% of respondents say their company’s agility efforts are deployed company wide with measurable results.
Instead, the single largest percentage of respondents – 48% – says their business agility strategy is still firmly planted in the preliminary phase. For these enterprises and many others, the challenge is how to turn an ad hoc and experimental approach into a concrete strategy that’s embedded in business culture. That’s where customer experience leaders can take charge.
Why customer experience decision-makers should lead the agile push
When it comes to owning the agile push, customer experience professionals are uniquely suited to fill the role.
First, they’re already close to customers, channeling much of their time and focus toward understanding what things look like from the patron’s vantage point. Second, they’re accustomed to working in a mode of rapid experimentation or “fail fast,” which is a central tenet of the Agile methodology (the ability of a business to change quickly due to internal or external threats). Finally, the cross-departmental nature of customer experience leaders’ responsibilities means they’re already primed for the interconnected work that’s central to boosting agility.
With customer experience leaders empowered to lead the agile push, they can focus on building out capabilities that accelerate agility.
Discover these capabilities in Direct Marketing Magazine.
