The Benefits, Responsibilities, and Qualities Of A Chief Experience Officer

They are problem solvers, multi-talented, multi-skilled, and ready for a wide range of challenges. They distinguish themselves not just by excelling at a certain few areas but rather by their versatility. They are the Chief Experience Officers (CXO). If you are one of those aiming to hire a CXO, here are some details that should help you.

Customer and employee experience are two of the most powerful factors in business. Each function, on its own, leads to significant relationships – with consumers and employees. But, when we control and combine CX and EX, they generate a distinct and long-term competitive edge.

Denise Lee Yohn, the Keynote business speaker, argues in an HBR article that having a CXO may improve the customer and staff experience. Thus, organizations should consider combining the two disciplines. And the first step towards it is appointing a Chief Experience Officer to oversee the overall effort.

Now, let's understand what a CXO is.

What Is A Chief Experience Officer?

A CXO's primary responsibility is to activate customer experience (CX). They have to offer differentiated brand experiences that foster customer loyalty and advocacy. But, the function now includes employee experience (EX). This includes ensuring that employees represent the brand's promise and meet expectations.

Thus, CXO manages outstanding customer and employee experiences for its brands.This C-suite position generally reports to the chief executive or marketing officer.

CXOs also work closely with the change management, L&D, and HR departments.

They also coordinate with other customer experience officers. UX specialists, marketing colleagues, creative teams, and CXOs all collaborate.

Now let’s talk about the benefits of having a Chief Experience Officer. The top six are explained below:

Benefits Of Having A Chief Experience Officer

1. Ensure consistency in the customer journey

When it comes to driving consumer loyalty, consistency is everything. Customers demand a uniform, frictionless experience across all channels and touchpoints. Despite this, 45% of customers are still trying to remember a recent positive experience.

This is why you want the services of an experienced CXO to optimize the client journey.

Good CXOs prioritize leveraging customer data, which is the key to optimizing a customer's journey. They use data analysis tools to comprehend metrics and data in client interactions and to detect gaps and issues in the customer journey.

3. Motivates and supervises team members

While customer satisfaction is crucial, employee motivation and well-being are as important. Infact, employees become the most effective brand ambassadors when their well-being is taken care of. Furthermore, CXOs communicate with their team members on a regular and authentic basis. It allows for idea exchange, team goals, and informal mentoring and assures employee well-being.

Read our blog on: How Employee Satisfaction can lead to Customer Satisfaction

4. Benefits of their skills of encouragement

Employees are the foundation of any business. A great CXO understands this and does everything possible to encourage and keep them satisfied. To foster camaraderie, they ought to provide topics for conversation, tales, and recollections.

5. Easy relationship building and maintaining

CXOs in leading firms take ownership of all ties people have with their organization.

Furthermore, they create a workplace experience that authentically reflects the company's mission, vision, and values. By forming enduring, meaningful, and valuable connections, they create a team of service-oriented employees that advocate for the company. They always deliver tools and technologies to facilitate frictionless workflow and instill enthusiasm, if not passion, for the activity at hand.

6. Aims for a frictionless environment

Besides a digital consumer interface, a frictionless firm also calls for flawless daily operations. That is, space, technology, process, and people all work together to achieve the target. CXOs strive for a such seamless working environment that appreciates integrated design.

If we move towards the responsibilities of chief experience officers, we see they are diverse. The undermentioned seven responsibilities are crucial components of the CXO job description:

Responsibilities Of A Chief Experience Officer

According to the Harvard Business Review, a Chief Experience Officer may be responsible for the following:

1. Improving consumer awareness across all employees.

2. Improving business leaders' understanding of employees.

3. Creating and executing purposeful, disciplined customer and employee experiences.

4. Championing customers' and employees' opinions in strategic decision-making at the organization.

5. Assessing the impact of the customer experience on employees. The effect of EX on customers. And the influence of both on the company's key performance indicators.

6. Building bridges between CX and EX. Advocating for the integration they demand, whether technical or otherwise.

CXOs are frequently compared to orchestra conductors who direct musicians to create a work of art. It's because a CXO ensures that everyone is working toward the same goal of staging great, unified brand experiences.

But, the role is still relatively new to the boardroom for many organizations. Furthermore, only a few experienced personnel are on the market, making their introduction more complex.

Now, let's discuss the qualities that a good CXO should have or nurture.

Qualities Of A Chief Experience Officer

1. Excellent communicators

Great leaders, such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, have often emphasised the value of communication.

According to these leaders, an individual's management potential is determined by communication skills. The ideal CXO should also have strong persuasion and communication skills. The ability to communicate a vision, plan, idea, or issue is the first step toward execution.

2. Data-driven

Here’s the thing about data. We think we use it to make informed decisions when the reality is we use it to strengthen the decisions we already made.

The CXO must be familiar with the analytics dashboard. They must be capable of converting customer experience data into strategic action. Moreover, to create a data-driven culture, the CXO must consider centralizing data in their operations. They must engage and involve employees in data activities, promote a data-centric approach, ensure employees understand data challenges, and take appropriate action on data analytics outcomes.

3. Active participant on a team

Every organization should have a suitable environment and offer plenty of opportunities for the CXO, Chief Customer Officer (CCO), and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to collaborate.

According to a recent Gartner survey, around 90% of firms reported having a CCO, and 89% reported having a CXO — although just 18% of CCOs and 21% of CXOs reported to the CMO.

However, to achieve the intended results and win the race, they must work together, coordinating with one another, knowing their tasks, and passing the baton when necessary.

Infact, CXOs must be active team members and collaborate with the entire business. It will include front-line employees, IT, executive leaders, marketing, and product teams. They are then entrusted with bringing various aspects of operations together to create a unified, customer-pleasing work framework.

4. Calm under pressure

According to a research, leaders frequently react poorly in high-stress situations. Specifically, 53% become more closed-minded and controlling during crises rather than open and curious. A further 43% grow angrier and more agitated.

CXOs must recognize that things sometimes go differently than planned. And that often means dealing with difficult customers, be it in a complaint call or a Twitter post. CXOs must act quickly and calmly to resolve disputes and restore trust. They must know how to stand up for the needs, wants, and goals of their employees as well, assuring that each person is valued and treated with respect.

5. Strategic thinking

Customers' preferences and expectations are continuously evolving. So is the market and its competitive landscape. And as we can see, leaders are frequently drawn into pressing problems, and the firefighting around them stops them from devoting sufficient time to strategic thinking.

Under such circumstances, leaders should strive to create their own methods to make time for strategic thought. Similarly, a smart CXO should continuously be looking for change indications. They should be eager to implement new techniques, channels, and best practices as soon as available.

Read our blog on: 7 Ways To Improve Your Strategic Planning Skills For Business Growth

6. Growth mindset

It may be about developing a sound business strategy with five and ten-year goals. It could be about brand extension, team growth, or profit. Intelligent CXOs should always think about their expansion strategy: like whether they want to operate as a franchise or build to eventually sell?

6. Engagement catalyst

While the pandemic has triggered numerous fluctuations at work, it has strengthened employees' trust and commitment to organizations that show genuine support and concern.

It has become clear that highly skilled people gravitate toward organizations that display a vision for continuously improving the quality of employee engagement, which has a big and beneficial impact on a company's bottom-line and top-line performance.

This is where CXOs can make a significant difference in their organizations' future by creating supportive workplaces that foster exceptional employee engagement.

7. Technologically expert and innovative

One must be able to foresee client wants - even before they start talking about them. It is where technology and innovation come into play. Investing in futuristic technology is the best way to consistently progress as an organization and stay ahead of your customers. Alongside, they should bring opinions and unique ideas on what's happening in the market and its impact.

A CXO's job becomes critical here. They must urge their team to stay up to date on the latest technological advancements, particularly in the fields of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and so on.

However, simply focusing on technology in the workplace are insufficient. To succeed in the age of innovation, one must grasp the broad picture, think creatively, take risks, learn from setbacks, and become skilled in socializing new ideas. Businesses that foster an innovative culture will be the disruptors rather than the disrupted.

Read our blog on: 8 Ways To Encourage Innovation In The Workplace

Conclusion

The function of CXO is obsolete unless the entire leadership team is on board with the concept of a customer-centric company.

It is also important to understand the CXO's roles and mandates by the entire team. Some departments may not understand their function or value their influence over "their" people and processes. That is likely the most difficult obstacle for a new CXO in your company.

Moreover, there must be a precise job description and process on how you will test CXO’s efficiency.

Qualification-wise, they should be a well-established and accomplished leader with extensive experience in UX, CX, operations, sales, marketing, or customer service. General personality-wise, CXOs should be super approachable. They should listen to and respect their co-workers and acknowledge the contributions of others. They should also know to give a lot of space for their colleagues to work with.