Editorial
The Gist
- What's customer loyalty about? In 2023, customer loyalty is more about the overall customer experience than the product or price.
- CXO the new CMO? Businesses are realizing the need to restructure their operations to put the customer at the center, which means the role of the chief marketing officer (CMO) is evolving into the chief experience officer (CXO).
- Great employees = great CX. Engaged, knowledgeable employees play a crucial role in customer satisfaction.
In 2023, customer experience reigns supreme. Last year, a survey showed that 74% of customers are loyal to brands not solely based on products, but rather their loyalty is a result of feeling “understood and valued.” In other words, their loyalty is based on the "entire kingdom" of customer experience, a trend that has been steadily increasing in significance for years now. Markets are saturated with products; it's rare to find an exclusive provider of any single item.
Now, the differentiator isn’t about whether or not an organization has a special product, or even a better price, it’s about whether or not being a customer of that organization is a pleasant and enjoyable experience.
While this may involve the product, it will ultimately come down to which kingdom offers the greatest overall experience from start to finish. A customer’s experience encompasses every single touchpoint with your organization. Though this could begin with marketing campaigns, it could also involve a customer organically accessing your organization’s website or passing a brick-and-mortar storefront. There are many parts involved here that marketing alone cannot encompass, and to rule an entire kingdom, you need a leader in charge of all its parts.
Ushering Medieval Marketing Into a New Era
As businesses refocus and reorganize to put the customer at the center of operations, and to then build experiences around them, they will soon realize that the more specific role of chief marketing officer (CMO) needs to be elevated and expanded to the role of chief experience officer (CXO); from prince to king. Marketing is too one-dimensional and focuses on the product, not the customer experience. Customer experience is far broader and more holistic, and so repositioning from CMO to CXO more accurately represents the personification and prioritization of the brand.
The idea of traditional marketing has already become blurred, especially as social media has led to consumers being able to interact directly with different forms of advertising. With a billboard or a magazine ad, the worst that could happen was a consumer quietly rolling their eyes.
Now, with ads on social media, people comment and share — and that engagement isn’t always positive. Static marketing is no longer the only way customers perceive your company. In an era where social media reviews are omnipresent, no number of Instagram promotions can mask a history of negative customer experiences. Therefore, organizations need a leader who is controlling not just the narrative, but the journey itself.
Related Article: What Should You Do in the First 3 Months as CXO?
Employee Experience Journeys Are Symbiotic With Customer Experience
A journey through a kingdom isn’t just about the people traveling through; it includes everyone they pass or interact with along the way. After a customer comes to your organization, they’ll likely speak to an employee. This could be a sales rep, a customer service representative — or even a chatbot — and this is where the real experience comes into play. A study by Gallup found that organizations with engaged, knowledgeable employees outperformed their competitors by 147%, making employees — not the product — the truly invaluable part of a customer’s experience.
Because of this, in addition to an excellent customer experience, you should strive for a better employee experience. Think of a court jester who is properly trained to juggle — it’s not a good experience if someone keeps dropping the ball. Employees play a key role in the potential final step in a customer experience journey: righting any wrongs. This could be a package going to the wrong location or a customer receiving a faulty product.
No matter what, employees who are given the proper tools to fix any issues a customer might face results in a happy customer, and the only way they can acquire those tools is through a well thought out employee journey. In this way, employee experience journeys and customer experience journeys are symbiotic, with one not being able to continue to exist without the other.
With so many different experience journeys to manage, that’s where our CXO comes in once again. After all, what is a king’s court without the king to unite everyone?
Related Article: What You Should Do in Your First 3 Months as Chief Marketing Officer
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King of the Customer Experience Castle
Everything about our world is evolving, with digital transformation, rapid and constant fluctuation in work environments, and often unpredictable changes in customer purchasing habits. Organizations need leaders at the helm who know that with those evolutions, they need to review every factor and run at them head on like a champion jouster.
Though building out customer and employee experiences might not be as cut and dried as a static marketing campaign, there’s one thing about them that is simple: Studies across the board conclusively agree on their importance. Transitioning from a CMO to a CXO will put the crown on the head of someone uniquely positioned to lead your organization out of the Dark Ages and into a promising future of growth.
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