Who Owns Customer Experience? Part 1 of 4: Introduction

Welcome to a four-part blog series on customer experience (CX) ownership. In Part 1, we will explore potential owners and examine whether there can be a single owner. Before we dive into the question of CX ownership, let’s start with a definition of what that actually means, keeping it as simple as possible. Here’s a start:

CX ownership is resources coming together in an organization to provide customers with the best experience possible. Successful ownership has these goals:

1. Win customers
2. Keep those customers happy
3. Transform them into lifetime advocates of the brand, helping to bring in new customers

So, who should own those goals? When you ask people about ownership, you are bound to get different answers depending on perspective. Typical responses will place ownership in one of the following functional areas:

Marketing	A dedicated team within an organization responsible to develop and implement strategies to promote products, services, or the overall brand. Its primary objective is to identify, attract, engage, and retain customers with the goal of achieving the organization’s sales and growth objectives.
Sales	Comprised of a set of business activities and processes that help the department run effectively and efficiently and in support of business strategies and objectives. The main functions include converting sales and acquiring new customers, retaining existing customers, and growing the business.
Customer Service	A customer service department is the backbone of any company’s customer support operations. Its main responsibilities include handling customer concerns, managing customer interactions, and ensuring customer satisfaction. This department serves as a bridge between the company and its customers — striving to retain loyal customers and build lasting relationships.
UX Design	User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) designs focus on creating intuitive, visually appealing, and user-friendly experiences. The main responsibility of this department is to shape the way users interact with digital products.
Product Management	Successful project managers are equally focused on the “what we deliver” as they are in the “how we deliver” part of the operation. The goal is to build a positive experience for the customer who is the recipient of an organization’s products and/or services.

However, placing sole ownership in one functional area is problematic. Each area has its own responsibilities, goals, and objectives. None of these areas independently addresses the full spectrum of the customer’s journey within the organization, leaving the experience in danger of becoming incomplete and siloed.

Another approach to ownership acknowledges that the customer journey does indeed touch several different areas across the organization; thus, the entire organization should own the customer experience. This sounds wonderful in theory, but does it work practically? Let’s ask some important questions that might challenge the efficacy of such an approach. If the entire organization owns the experience:

• Who is devising CX strategy?
• Who is determining success criteria?
• Who is leading the effort to ensure that CX is paramount across the organization?

If there is no driving force in place, the initiative to drive an excellent experience will become inconsistent, and ultimately, will die on the vine. So, if a functional area ownership is not the answer, and organization-wide ownership is not the answer, then WHAT IS THE ANSWER?

It occurs to me that we might be asking the wrong question . . . that there is a better question to ask: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CX IN AN ORGANIZATION? I believe the answer to that question is achievable, and the answer is EVERYONE! No matter where “ownership” lies, the answer of responsibility remains consistent: EVERYONE!

What are some key tenets of this answer? Let me suggest a few:

• CX must be central to the company’s mission and strategy.
• Executive leadership must champion the permeation of this into the entire organization’s mission and strategy.
• The goal of this permeation should be to break down any existing silos and prevent the creation of new ones.
• As silos break down, all functional groups (front office, back office, customer-facing, non-customer facing) must be aligned to support each other to achieve excellent CX.
• Systems (operational, customer relationship management, customer feedback channels, etc.) must also be aligned to enable sharing of information and transparency into the end-to-end customer journey.

The above list does not represent all the necessary tenets, but it is a good starting point.

In Part 2 of this series, I will be changing the question from “Who Owns Customer Experience” to “Who is Responsible for Customer Experience.” To that end, I will begin to examine the challenges that stand in the way of achieving organizational-wide responsibility for CX. Since the Contact Center is often thought of as the liaison between the customer and the company, let’s start our examination there.

Stay tuned!