Way back at the beginning of this ’stat of the week’ series, I shared that our research showed that two thirds – or 62% of the 644 leaders surveyed said YES, there is a definition of customer experience that is well understood throughout their organizations. Because these organizations were twice as likely to beat their profit goals, I call them “Haves.”
This week we took a look at the profile of Haves by functional area. Here’s what we found:
63% of IT leaders are Haves.
This was a big jump from our study two years earlier, when only 36 percent of the same group said the same.
This proportionately puts the IT haves/have nots ratio on par with their sales and marketing peers.
Photo by Dean Johnson
As many IT leaders say everyone in their organizations understand customer experience as marketing or service or sales leaders do. Surprised? Too often I hear leaders who don’t think of their IT department has a lot to do with customers or their experience. I suppose it’s too easy to think of them as the people who make sure the Internet is up and help us if we forget our passwords.
Yet if we see the big picture, and imagine what should happen and how customers should feel as they realize a need, learn about options to solve it, try them out, buy, use a product or service to solve the need – and even evolve to another need over time…than it becomes very clear just how important those tech-folk are in improving experiences for customers and performance for our organizations.
I can only venture to guess that the organizations who employ these in tune IT professionals are getting the financial performance payoff for which they hoped.
In your organization, how do IT leaders partner with their peers to strengthen customer experiences and improve performance? What’s working for you?
