I read a bit about two fairly new C-suite roles this week: the Chief Experience Officer and the Chief Behavioural Officer. The former gets the company more heavily invested in thinking about the whole customer experience process, with a focus on design and development, and the latter does a similar role but with a focus on the psychology of the customer at the time of her experience with the brand.
The one thing I took from both pieces is that though both roles are more or less new to the industry, the best indication of their success will be when the entire leadership of a company is able to see these as crucial to day-to-day and not worthy of a callout. It’s the same thing with innovation today in businesses – I notice that companies that see it as a natural part of what they do are more likely to go through with it versus discuss and debate endlessly.
At the end of the day, a clear focus on the two key audiences for a company – customers and employees – are what will see businesses grow. It’s important to note how linked the entire team (CMO, CIO, CXO, CTO, CFO…) needs to be aligned to execute these well enough. If the people in charge of internal comms, both design & deployment, aren’t in tune with what’s going on in the market, then “if they have a choice, [employees] will go work someplace where the systems are easy, useful and allow them to be productive,” as Greg Petroff, CXO at GE, says. If the team isn’t in tune with with customers’ true feelings and behaviour, then those customers will not “get more of what they want” and, in turn, they will not “reward those companies with their business and trust”.
It’s always, ALWAYS, a team effort. As the Re/code article says, researching insights, scoping projects, engaging clients (and employees – my addition), building technology, designing tests and measuring results is rarely done by one person.
One Size Fits One 