The Challenges Holding Back CX Leaders And How To Overcome Them Results From Our Survey Of More Than 250 CX Executives And CMOs A Joint Research Project by Forrester and Heidrick Q3 2015 Source: Forresters Customer Experience Index Online Survey, US Consumers Q1 2015; Q3 2015For Customer experienCe proFessionals The Challenges Holding Back CX Leaders And How To Overcome Them april 25, 2016 © 2016 Forrester research, inc. unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. Citationsforrester or +1 866-367-7378 6 Results From Our Survey Of More Than 250 CX Executives And CMOs FIGURE 3 The Challenges That Hold Back CX leaders “What are your biggest challenges to success?” Organizational culture CEO support Organizational structure Organizational processes Peer support and alignment Technology capabilities Budget Company strategy Team talent and skill sets Disagreement over who owns the customer Performance evaluation criteria and measurement Personal skill sets 55% 23% 26% 28% 28% 32% 12% 32% 7% 6% 16% 2% Organizational culture CEO support Organizational structure Organizational processes Peer support and alignment Technology capabilities Budget Company strategy Team talent and skill sets Disagreement over who owns the customer Performance evaluation criteria and measurement Personal skill sets 53% 18% 27% 17% 31% 35% 19% 28% 12% 4% 29% 3% Organizational culture CEO support Organizational structure Organizational processes Peer support and alignment Technology capabilities Budget Company strategy Team talent and skill sets Disagreement over who owns the customer Performance evaluation criteria and measurement 54% 45% 41% 38% 34% 23% 14% 13% 9% 7% 5% Personal skill sets 0% CMOs marketing and CX CMOs marketing only CX executives Base: 275 global CX and marketing leaders (multiple responses accepted) Source: Q4 2015 Forrester/Heidrick & Struggles Global Evolved CMO/CCO Online Survey CX Pros Evolution Rests On Their Ability To Expand Their Influence A common thread among the challenges holding back CX leaders is that CX leaders cant address them alone. Thats why they must focus on cultivating influence and collaboration across the organization. To make that happen, CX pros should: Not wait for a reorg and double-down on helping employees be more customer-centric. We get it. You think that your org structure makes it harder for you to focus on customers 45% of CX pros in our survey said as much. But heres the truth: Theres no correlation between org structures and the ability to deliver good or excellent customer experience. 3Instead, regardless of For Customer experienCe proFessionals The Challenges Holding Back CX Leaders And How To Overcome Them april 25, 2016 © 2016 Forrester research, inc. unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. Citationsforrester or +1 866-367-7378 7 Results From Our Survey Of More Than 250 CX Executives And CMOs org structure, smart CX leaders focus on creating a compelling CX vision, integrating and sharing customer data, and collectively making decisions about the intended CX. And the good news is that for 39% of CX pros in our survey, creating a shared CX vision is a top objective. Direct your energy like the CX pros at technology consultant Appirio, who focus on helping employees understand how to deliver the right experience. All employees are trained on “The Appirio Way,” a detailed set of processes and tools that help teams deliver projects that maximize value to customers. For example, carefully managing project milestones ensures that far fewer projects fall behind schedule or go over scope. Strengthen their ties with senior executives and with HR. If you want to transform your organizations culture, you must have senior-executive support. 4We have not yet seen a successful culture transformation that didnt have either the CEO or the COO leading the initiative. It doesnt stop there, though: CX pros must also collaborate with HR. Thats because culture change requires reworking fundamental processes like hiring, training, coaching, and performance evaluation all of which fall under HR. Unfortunately, just 13% of CX pros, and even fewer CMOs, cited the head of HR as a key partner. learn from companies like BMO Financial and Humana that embedded CX experts in HR to foster collaboration and to help integrate CX content into processes like employee training and onboarding. 5 Work more closely with technology management. Almost half of CX pros want a stronger relationship with their CIO only their CMOs garnered more focus. Perhaps this is because just 5% of CX pros cited their tech IQ as a personal success factor, and more than 40% have only some or no involvement in CX technology decisions. Who gets it right? Schneider Electric, where CX, marketing, and tech management partner to get things done. The company has grouped its CX initiatives under a larger transformation effort that also includes major pushes in digital and the Internet of Things. The team leading this transformation includes members from technology management and various other business units, ensuring strong collaboration across the org structure. And the involvement of the CX team (which sits within global marketing) ensures customer-centric implementation of new systems and capabilities. Hone data analysis and storytelling skills to better share customer data. Majorities of both CX pros and CMOs said that departments across their organization lacked a consistent view of the customer (see Figure 4). Especially for CX pros, who see themselves as representing the voice of the customer, this is a major problem. How to fix it? With better data analysis and storytelling skills, which were among the most mentioned competencies that CX leaders want to improve. The CX team at ACS leans on both skills. For example, it has used voice of the customer data to highlight the gap between the value that ACS derives from its volunteers and the tools and communications that it creates for them. More effectively telling that story has helped make the case for developing better self-service tools for volunteers and for funding new roles that lead volunteer care and coordination.