Editorial
The Gist
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Understand the pros and cons of shifting roles. Debate around the CMO becoming the CXO calls into question the benefits and shortcomings of this convergence.
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Unify an end goal. It’s important to ensure a unified approach to customer satisfaction and business success.
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Collaboration is key. Putting the customer first means marketing and CX leaders must effectively communicate and work past their differences.
As the masters of brand strategy, chief marketing officers (CMOs) are now swapping their crowns for coaching caps as they venture into customer experience territory. As consumer engagement changes, CMOs are transcending their traditional roles to embrace the responsibilities of chief experience officers (CXOs). Let’s take a look at the CMO and the CXO.
This evolution stems from the fact that brand loyalty is at the crux of both customer experience (CX) and marketing. Nowadays, consumers are demanding more seamless, personalized interactions across all touchpoints in the customer journey, which requires marketing leaders to focus more heavily on making positive brand impressions.
The CMO and the CXO: When Worlds Collide
Maureen Jann, senior content manager for Twilio and former chief marketing officer, believes this is a natural shift because marketing builds trust and awareness.
“Customer experience ensures that what marketing promises comes to bear,” she says. “If marketing leadership is tasked with goals that depend on the customer experience to generate revenue, it's simple to see how the gap between the CMO and the CXO is closing quickly. Marketing leaders will work towards control and influence over as much of the pre-purchase experience as possible to guarantee success.”
The CMO’s primary focus used to be creating demand through promising value, but now they’re extending their reach to ensure that those promises are kept — this is an area traditionally held by CX leaders. As Jann mentioned, these two departments are now vying for control over the same experience, which has led to a significant overlap in their roles.
Can CMOs and CXOs Play Nice?
The merging of these two positions may seem like a natural shift due to a shared goal of satisfying the customer, but there are a fair share of kinks to work out along the way. Debate on whether or not CMOs should become customer experience officers is also a factor at play.
Related Article: Marketing Leadership: Is Chief Marketing Officer the Right Title?
Arguing Against the Merge
“It seems to be an unfortunate reality that experience management is being folded into the realm of marketing,” says Doug Rabold, CX portfolio manager for HCLTech. He firmly believes it worsens the customer journey.
From Rabold’s point of view, CMOs are concerned with drawing attention to a company's products or services; above all else, they want customers to be interested enough to choose said company over a competitor. And for existing customers, CMOs want to deepen their relationship with the company by investing in more products or services.
On the other hand, CX leaders aren’t tied to any specific method — what Rabold calls system agnostic. Instead, their goal is to make sure that from the moment a customer learns about the company to the point of purchase (and beyond) their experience is easy and enjoyable. They want to remove any problems or friction along the customer journey.
Rabold offers a simplistic analogy to further explain what he means:
“I liken the difference to that between a pharmaceutical representative who meets with physicians to promote the use of their medicines — versus the physicians themselves who, based on the Hippocratic Oath, will treat patients only in the patient’s best interest. Marketing falls into the pharmaceutical rep realm, while customer experience falls into the physician category.”
Arguing In Favor of the Merge
As a marketing leader, Jann believes CMOs becoming CXOs is a positive shift — and one that will ultimately benefit the customer at large.
“I do think that the new fusion between the CMO and CXO is improving the customer journey,” she stated. “Marketers are focused on understanding their customers. They have the data, tools and first-hand understanding of what people are doing and why as a driver for accomplishing their slice of revenue goals. If organizations have the foresight to connect these two roles, marketing leadership will be able to apply that understanding beyond pre-sale and cross-selling opportunities to the whole loyalty loop.”
Related Article: Customer-Centric Marketing Strategy: A Leader’s Inside Look
Working Together For Customer Success
As the lines between marketing and customer experience blur, new skills on both fronts will be crucial for success. According to Rabold, customer experience teams must improve their ability to effectively communicate what real business value they can contribute.
“This includes the value-add to the client relationship which includes reduction of churn and reducing the costs associated with replacing lost customers, he said. “It also means learning to better speak the language of the C-suite, namely quantifying and communicating the bottom- and top-line financial contributions that experience brings to their organization.”
As CX continues to overlap with marketing, there is a growing imperative for customer experience leaders to demonstrate their value in business terms. The traditional skill set of CX professionals must expand beyond an understanding of the customer journey — now, they must also have a strong grasp of business analytics and financials.
There must also be a clear understanding between these two departments. According to Jann, the CMO and the CX leader must learn to understand how marketing impacts customer experience and vice versa.
“Getting tunnel vision is easy, but the best-in-class organizations are seeing beyond the blinking neon signs or opportunities and obvious red flags and can start digging into the nuance of how customer experience and marketing together can positively impact the long-term goals of the organization,” she noted.
Facing Future Challenges
Considering the inherent differences between marketing and customer experience, CMOs and CXOs alike have faced challenges in their roles.
“One of the biggest challenges I've run into is finding a way to marry what I know about the customer from my first-hand work with them with the larger corporate initiatives,” Jann explained. “Having an opportunity to educate the C-suite on what is happening with the customers versus what they think the company should be doing has been one of the gaps that has kept me from doing my best work.”
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Although Rabold has not faced any roadblocks directly, he has seen many customer experience management colleagues struggle in this area.
“Most CX practitioners come from roots in either information technology or from customer service — both of which struggle to overcome the perception of being cost centers. It is incumbent on experience practitioners to demonstrate that we can be a profit center.” Rabold points out.
In sum, CMOs increasingly taking on the role of the CXO is driven by the need to create seamless, personalized customer interactions that lead to brand loyalty. While some argue this convergence can enhance the customer journey, others believe that CX's objective approach may be compromised. In order to successfully integrate CMO and CX roles, there must be a mutual understanding of how marketing and CX can work together to satisfy the customer.
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