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Does customer experience affect the CIO?
From a recent chat with someone researching CIOs and customer experience (very paraphrased, but you get the idea):
Q (them) - Since CIOs spend their days deciding which system to buy, or migrate, or install, do they really need to worry about the customer experience?
A (me) - Of course they do. Look at Google. Look at Amazon. Big technology-driven companies that talk explicitly about doing right by their users, from the CEO on down, and they're doing quite well compared to competitors.
Q - But maybe that's just a factor of their age. Newer companies, born in the Web era, tend to be more customer-focused.
A - Hardly. Don't get fooled by survivorship bias. There were dozens of search engines battling it out in the 1990s, but only one was laser-focused on serving the user, and that was Google, and it won. The rest of them - which reached for short-term gains, or ridiculous advertising, or meaningless "brand building," or other user-hostile investments, died or are close enough to it. Same thing with online bookstores, incidentally. Only one of dozens really listened to its customers, and it won.
Q - Then why don't you see the same thing happening in companies older than the Web?
A - There are some customer-focused older companies out there, but they're rare. The traditional mode of business for the past 100 years has been customer-hostile, and it's really tough for a company to "turn the aircraft carrier around" to work in a different way. It will happen, though, and when it does, you'll see: an older company "gets religion," gradually becomes customer-centric, and then grows to dominate its competitors like never before in its history.
Q - Well, for a CIO who's mainly focused on technology, how are they supposed to help make this change?
A - Just make the choice. All a CIO has to say is, I'm now committing my career - come what may - to being user-centered, rather than technology-centered, or system-centered, or what have you. And to be clear, depending on the organization, this might get the CIO fired. But there are plenty of executives out there who have made this commitment in their career, and when they get to an organization that values a customer-centric way of business, they thrive and have impact way above where they were before.
Q - Maybe CIOs can only make this change if they have the right technology, or experts, available to them.
A - I'll tell you a story. There once was a company founder who stood by the door of his store every day to talk to customers as they walked out. He used the tool I'll call "listening." Did they find what they need? Is there anything they particularly liked or didn't like? He chatted them up and learned how he could serve them better. By imbuing his company with the simple ethic of listening to customers, Joyce Hall built a company that is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary - Hallmark. His tools were available before the Internet. They're still available today. (Read the Hallmark case study.)
Q - But aren't tools important, like whether to use one enterprise platform over another?
A - Of course. For the CIO they're vital, a daily question and constant concern. But that's all secondary to the very low-tech, common-sense, basic task of learning the needs of the people you serve. They could be customers, or prospects, or employees internal to the company - doesn't matter. Listen to the people you serve. Talk to them. Ask them what they need. If you don't do this, you're not user-centered and it's hard to chart any meaningful direction for the enterprise. Too many CIOs get lost in the thicket of what platforms are hot today, what buzzwords are ascendant, what tool got the reviews here, or there, and never take time to sit down with a user and observe, and listen, and talk.
Q - I'll admit, that's pretty radical.
A - Yep.
Thanks Mark, for sharing this interview. It's bucked me up to hear a CIO say its not just the technology that enables customer focus. I'm so tired of reading about the next CRM technology that will be the holy grail of customer knowledge. It takes the human skills of listening and creativity to create really meaningful connections with customers.
It's not the tool that matters; it's how the tool is used to serve customers.
It's still astounding to think there are companies out there who don't realize that if they don't become customer-centric they will vanish. In fact, not only the CIO has to be affected by customer experience, but everyone in the executive office should be.
The best examples are "old" companies who understand this and have created CXO (Customer eXperience Officer) positions.
Ignore the customer experience at your own risk!