I’d like to reference Stuart Elliott’s column in today's NY Times entitled “Wanted: Experience Officer. Some Necessary.”
I have probably held the title of Chief Experience Officer longer than anyone, since the inception of my firm almost two decades ago. It’s my belief that every CEO is the Chief Experience Officer.
This is because they ultimately drive the values, principles and actions of an organization, and the value that is created by the experiences that employees, stakeholders and customers have. The buck stops at the top. Until senior executives take responsibility for the experiential value their organization creates, we are in deep trouble.
Over the years I’ve seen growing popularity of the appointment of Chief Experience Officers. Many companies view the customer experience as a “bolt- on” to their business rather than their central value proposition.
The definition and interpretation of the role and function of a Chief Experience Officer tends to be all over the board, and in far too many instances, both the people appointing the chief experience officer ,and the individual that’s appointed, don’t have the foggiest notion of what that role and function entail. They just feel better creating a position, even though it is often powerless and of no real authority in an organization.
My belief is that you had better identify the value experience can create, and be very clear about aligning your business objectives and strategy to optimize that value, long before you create an Experience Officer position. Only after you’ve done that should you worry about titles.
A title by any other name is still a title. Actions speak louder than titles.
Related Stories: | Topics:Management, customers first 2006, Stuart Elliotta, The New York Times Company |
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Recent Comments | 2 Total
September 15, 2006 at 9:46am by Gretchen
Just a note: in my experience the only people who say that titles don't matter are the ones that have titles with assumed authority. I don't disagree with the main point that senior executives need to take responsibility for "experiential value their organization creates". Regardless of the way it should be or the way it could be we are still stuck in the land of hierarchy until one of two things happen: executives truly cede power to employees and not just talk about "empowerment" or employees choose to disenfranchise the "system" by leaving the corporate world working for themselves. There are lots of enablers that are keeping the old guard in place- even our economic reporting is based on a factory mentality.
December 8, 2007 at 7:38pm by uxdesign.com
To me it makes sense that there is such wide misunderstanding of the Chief Experience Officer - CXO - title and role, as there's no history to give it context and shared meaning, and most of all because it's based mainly on use of the trendy use of "experience," borrowed from "user experience design," and not from any established business function or need. Strange terms get used in strange ways, for a while.
But strangest of all is how a term related primarily to web design has risen in popularity to such an extent as lending itself to business management. So, I think as long as the CXO title and roll are related to some sort of customer interaction design (via web or other interactive media) effort, it serves a purpose. If not, it's foam: large looking but of little real substance.