Editorial
The Gist
- Diverse data fuels better CX. Robust, regularly updated customer insights — both qualitative and quantitative — are the foundation for personalization, loyalty, and advocacy.
- Personas and journey maps are living assets. Dynamic, evolving personas combined with outside-in journey maps help CMOs design experiences that truly meet customer needs.
- Culture turns CX strategy into reality. A customer-centric culture requires removing internal barriers, aligning metrics across teams and embedding CX into every role.
Chief marketing officers widely recognize that CX is a critical lever for brand differentiation and long-term success. Yet, despite this widespread acknowledgment, few organizations have managed to translate their CX ambitions into a true competitive advantage.
Most organizations are stalled at the lower stages of CX maturity, hindered by limited resources, insufficient investment and a lack of actionable insights. This stagnation underscores a pressing need for organizations to move beyond internal assumptions and fragmented efforts, and instead, adopt a holistic, customer-centric approach that drives satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy across the entire customer journey.
There are three foundational capabilities that CMOs must establish for CX success:
Related Articles: How to Build a Customer Data Strategy: Key Trends for 2025
Table of Contents
- 1. Deeper Customer Relationships Require Diverse Customer Data Sources
- 2. Help Your Customers Be Successful Through Journey Maps and Personas
- 3. Enable a Customer-Centric Culture
- Core Questions About CX Foundations
1. Deeper Customer Relationships Require Diverse Customer Data Sources
Gartner data shows that over half of consumers across the U.K., U.S. and Canada don’t feel understood by the brands trying to sell to them, yet CMOs are not aware that they do not understand their customers. According to a Gartner survey on CMO strategy, 19% B2C companies agree that they lack a solid understanding of their target audiences.
Build a Data Ecosystem That Truly Reflects Your Customers
Successful CX initiatives are built on a robust foundation of quantitative and qualitative customer insights. Establishing a regular cadence for updating these insights ensures organizations remain closely aligned with their customers’ evolving needs and behaviors across multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey. Key data foundations for CX include voice of the customer (VoC) programs that aggregate direct, indirect and inferred feedback, targeted customer data that connects behaviors and preferences and a blend of primary and secondary customer research to understand both what customers do and why they do it.
Equally important is the integration of competitive insight, especially in fragmented or highly competitive markets where customer choice abounds. While monitoring competitors can help identify emerging CX trends, the most impactful improvements stem from a deep understanding of your own customers.
Ultimately, the value of these insights lies in their ability to inform business decisions and drive CX initiatives that foster customer loyalty, customer satisfaction and long-term brand advocacy.
Related Articles: Customer Journey Mapping: A How-To Guide
2. Help Your Customers Be Successful Through Journey Maps and Personas
Designing optimal customer experiences hinges on identifying the pivotal moments that matter most: those key touchpoints that have an outsized impact on loyalty, especially among the organization’s highest-value customers. The combination of persona development and journey mapping forms the backbone of a customer experience framework, answering the who, what, when and how of CX design.
This framework empowers CMOs to prioritize investments that deliver utility, convenience, value and delight throughout the customer relationship. Importantly, personas and journey maps should be treated as dynamic assets, regularly updated and activated to guide stakeholders toward more customer-centric actions and outcomes.
Persona development is the first step in this process, requiring a deep understanding of the audience through continuous monitoring of their feedback and actions.
Keep Personas and Journey Maps Current, Not Static
Personas are not static; they reflect evolving customer needs, preferences and behaviors, informed by a blend of data. As customer needs shift over time, so too must the personas that represent them.Once personas are established, journey mapping captures the steps customers take throughout their relationship with the brand: before, during and after acquisition. By adopting an outside-in approach, journey maps reveal the motivations, goals and expectations that drive customer decisions. Journey mapping means CMOs can design content and experiences that foster lasting loyalty and turn satisfied customers into passionate advocates.
Related Articles: Empower Employees, Empower Customers: The CX-EX Connection
3. Enable a Customer-Centric Culture
A customer-centric culture is an outcome of understanding customers, disseminating that knowledge and assisting employees to put it into action. This culture values customer need fulfillment throughout the entire journey, making it a core principle of effective CX programs.
CMOs must invest in removing employee barriers to CX.
Break Down Barriers to a Customer-Centric Culture
Most employees come to work prepared to do the right things for customers. Often, company policies and processes, not employee willingness, stand in the way of delivering exceptional experiences. Leadership investment in identifying and removing these barriers is crucial, with successful CX programs led by managers who actively listen to employees and foster open communication.Driving customer-centricity also relies on a shared vision that is championed from the top and embedded in every role across the organization. To support this transformation, organizations must implement a portfolio of metrics that span the entire customer journey, balancing traditional marketing KPIs with operational and CX-specific measures like CSAT, CES and on-time delivery. Managing a hierarchy of linked metrics helps organizations to analyze how different operational and business metrics positively and negatively influence customer satisfaction among customer segments.
Webinar
Sep
25
CMS Briefing: A Live Look at What’s Next in AI-Driven Platforms
Learn how leading organizations are using AI‑driven tools to publish faster, personalize smarter and stay secure.
Register
Webinar
Sep
25
Call Spoofing Trends Financial Institutions Can't Afford to Ignore
Don't let robocalls sabotage your customer relationships. Learn how to secure your voice channel.
Register
Webinar
Oct
16
Agentic AI Playbook: Real-World Customer Service Use Cases You Can Deploy Now
Boost self-service by 30% and slash call volume by 63% with agentic AI.
Register
Webinar
On demand
Ready or Not: How Data-First Organizations Are Unlocking Agentforce Potential
Learn how to cut through the noise, activate Agentforce and build a Salesforce AI strategy that actually delivers.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
CX Reality Check: What Your Customers Are Really Thinking
Register now and get the insights you need to not just meet rising expectations, but exceed them.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
Content Leaders Collective: What a Good CCMS Actually Looks Like
Discover how content leaders transform clunky systems into growth engines — and why your competitors are ahead.
Watch Now
Finally, cross-functional collaboration is essential. CMOs must establish a CX governance group with stakeholders from across the business to develop CX standards, create alignment on how CX initiatives are prioritized, and to identify metrics to measure and optimized performance across the customer journey, not just digital experiences. This holistic approach empowers organizations to create a culture where customer-centricity is more than a slogan, it’s a lived reality that drives growth and loyalty.
Core Questions About CX Foundations
Editor's note: Key questions CMOs should ask when establishing the foundational capabilities for customer experience success.
Success starts with combining quantitative and qualitative insights, refreshing them regularly and integrating competitive intelligence without losing focus on actual customer needs.
A customer-centric culture ensures insights become action by removing internal barriers, aligning metrics and embedding customer focus into every role.
Static assets fail to reflect changing customer needs and preferences; continuous updates keep them relevant and actionable.
Learn how you can join our contributor community.
