MarketingCharts staff
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of articles from MarketingCharts, which provides up-to-the-minute data and research to marketers
The chief marketing officer has gained more responsibility for the customer experience (CX) in recent years, and brand marketers have made the customer experience their top priority this year. A new SAS-sponsored report conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytics Services, “Real-Time Analytics: The Key to Unlocking Customer Insights & Driving the Customer Experience,” now finds that responsibility for the customer experience is more likely to sit with the CMO than with any other role.
The responsibility for the customer experience sits with the CMO at 36 percent of companies, per the report, ahead of the one-quarter of companies where the responsibility lies at the CEO’s feet. (It should be noted that while CMOs are owning the customer experience, they’re far more likely to be leading traditional areas of brand development and customer engagement.)
Nonetheless, the responsibility for real-time customer experience technology is more likely to rest with the CIO (30 percent) or the CTO (23 percent) rather than the CMO (12 percent).
One of the challenges with these differing responsibilities is lack of organizational alignment: just 29 percent of respondents to the survey say that CX and CX tech stakeholders are well aligned, with most saying their alignment is middle of the road. In fact, CMOs believe that organizational alignment would boost their effectiveness more than increased budgets or resources.
Of the 560 organizations surveyed, nearly two-thirds said real-time customer analytics
is important to their organization’s overall performance today, yet only 17 percent felt they were very effective at delivering real-time customer interactions across touch points and devices and 30 percent claimed they were ineffective.
The SAS and HBR study notes that “creating consensus around initiatives is critical.”
Jeff Jacobs, a partner at McKinsey & Co., said in the report, “No matter whose initiative it is, it has to be an organization-wide commitment. If marketing says they want to do this, they can start providing more personalized digital marketing and advertising, but that’s just a sliver of the overall real-time customer experience.”
- CMOs Own CX, But Not the Tech – MarketingCharts
- Real-Time Analytics: The Key to Unlocking Customer Insights & Driving the Customer Experience – SAS
- CMO Role Evolves to More Strategic Business Leadership – MarketingCharts
- What’s the CMO’s Role in Driving Growth? 5 Insights – MarketingCharts
- Are Marketers Facing Tech Overload? Plus, Where’s the Money Going? – MarketingCharts
- CMOs Identify 4 Areas in Need of Improvement in Marketing – MarketingCharts
- Marketing-IT Relationship Reportedly Improving As Alignment on Business Goals Rises – MarketingCharts