Chief experience officers, chief customer officers on rise

Gartner takes a narrower view of customer experience than some research organizations, defining it as the discipline of understanding and measuring what customers expect, which can include voice of the customer, journey mapping, user experience and defining customer personas.

The value of marketing efforts can be difficult to translate into bottom-line revenue. The rise of the chief experience officer and chief customer officer roles to manage CX initiatives represents one way to monitor it.

“One of the problems is that a lot of organizations will only focus on sales, but all sorts of things cause sales to increase — a good offer, a low price, convenience, lack of competition,” Ray said. Melding customer perception data, such as from surveys, with operational data that comes from sales transactions, can show which customers are driving sales.

Combining sales data and survey scores can also identify marketing efforts that may drive more revenue “What we want to know is, are the people who are scoring higher driving our business?” Ray said. “Are the people who score lower proving to be a drag on our business, and if so that suggests we need to focus on what’s causing that drag.”