Three Steps CIOs Can Take to Improve Customer Experience

The importance of customer experience (CX) has grown immensely in recent years, and the pandemic has further accelerated this trend. Therefore, it is critical that CIOs take the necessary steps to train their staff, become agile and spearhead tech initiatives that promise to deliver greater customer experience.

The investment in customer experience has sharply increased over the past year. As per Adobe’s CIO Perspectives Survey 2021, nearly 33% of respondents said investment in CX is surging, while only 8% are witnessing any budget cuts. That being said, it has increased pressure on CIOs to show good ROI. Hence, they need to collaborate with their counterparts to understand roadblocks and take inputs to enhance the customer experience. They should reassess their IT strategies and take initiatives to incorporate customer experience elements seamlessly to scale CX at an enterprise-level.

Also Read: Why Should CIOs and CMOs Work Together to Drive Business Transformation

Have a team dedicated to CX

Today’s customers expect good experience from companies. In fact, according to Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends 2021 report, 65% of customers buy from organizations that offer quick and easy online transactions. Additionally, 75% of them are willing to spend on organizations that provide a good experience. On the flip side, 50% say that they would switch in favor of their competitors even if they just have one bad experience and 80% would switch if they have two or more.

With such high stakes, CIOs can’t afford to treat customer experience as a side venture for their staff. Hence, they should establish a dedicated team responsible for the continuous evolution of customer experience at the company. CIOs should also have a stronghold on the customer experience strategy to maintain leadership position in the market.

Making CX teams interdisciplinary

The IT department should not drive customer experience alone nor should it be left out to other departments. To get the most value out of the CX programs, CIOs should take steps to include multidisciplinary teams. They should opt for agile methodologies such as the DevSecOps framework that will enable them to bring interdisciplinary teams together. Additionally, they should educate other department leaders on such processes to bring everyone together. By allowing other departments to collaborate, CIOs will have more perspective and ideas that will enable them to drive better customer experience.

Also Read: Lessons That CIOs and CMOs can Learn from Each Other

Enable teams to up-close to their customers

Feedback is a vital part of developing the experiences customers desire, yet most organizations only get little or incomplete feedback that prohibits them from gaining a more comprehensive understanding of what customers like and dislike. Moreover, CIOs and their staff are mostly several layers away from direct contact with customers, making it difficult to understand the needs of their customers. Hence, CIOs should collaborate with their C-suite colleagues for more interactions with customers, have their IT staff attend customer-facing functions and develop solutions that gather accurate information about customers’ interactions with applications.