Who Owns CX?
This brings me to the second research finding, which also has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with how enterprises view CX. While it's important to know what various executives think about what matters to customers, I would contend that it's even more important to know who owns CX, since this will ultimately dictate how an organization formulates and delivers CX. Again, the research reveals some interesting results.
The report correctly homes in on how problematic this finding is for raising the CX bar. Roughly, only one in five enterprises has a dedicated CX team, and to me that implies a customer-centric focus that puts the needs of customers ahead of any one particular operational function. If I was tasked to do the follow-on study, I would gather metrics that reflect operational and business-level performance. My thinking is that enterprises with a dedicated CX team will have superior performance compared to those taking this siloed approach where just one function drives CX.
That day may never come, so if we just focus on what's here, it stands to reason that CX outcomes driven by the contact center may well be different from those driven by marketing. It's not a stretch to say they will have different priorities that could very well conflict or compete with each other. The first table above shows they hold different views of customer priorities, and they could well have different objectives in areas like business performance or technology adoption that would, in turn, impact their CX initiatives.
Conclusion
However that plays out, I concur with the report in terms of the difficulties posed by this siloed approach for delivering a better CX. I could tap other findings in the research to support my conclusion, but I think the underlying message is clear -- and consistent with what Cisco said at its event. Getting CX right requires a holistic focus on the customer, and it's not just about the contact center. In today's digital world, businesses have many more customer touchpoints, and a great CX comes from connecting them all together.
If an enterprise can't even agree on what's most important to the customer, or continues to keep CX in a silo, that outcome simply won't be possible. An omnichannel solution can do great things, and AI holds tremendous promise, but this isn't a technology challenge. Enterprises need to think differently about CX, and that's the inside-out approach I'm advocating here. Until there's closer alignment internally across the board with what matters most to customers, it really doesn't matter from which vendor you buy.
