Digital MarketingCROs: The new leaders of exceptional customer experiences

CROs: The new leaders of exceptional customer experiences

Decibel's chief revenue officer Even Walser, discusses the importance of CROs and how they have become the new leaders of exceptional CX.

30-second summary:

  • Experience plays a key role in decision-making for today’s consumers, who hold the power to be extremely selective given the endless choices available to them at the click of a button.
  • Being a customer-centric brand by today’s standards goes far beyond the remit of the marketing department. The experience needs to be considered, upheld and consistently improved upon across every single department that interacts with a customer, directly or indirectly.
  • To create collaboration and bridge the gap between departments, companies need chief revenue officers (CROs). The role of the CRO has emerged over the past few years to manage revenue, of course, but also to connect each of these different departments.
  • To garner intelligence on the customer experience, CROs should collaborate with CMOs and identify the tools that have helped them successfully quantify digital experiences for marketing purposes. Then, CROs can leverage those same tactics and utilize them for cross-functional success.
  • With a grasp on digital body language, CROs can better comprehend and improve experiences across all customer functions. But, to truly measure experience and its impact on revenue, CROs should invest in technologies that can quantify those interactions.

Throughout the past decade, the digital era has introduced a multitude of new challenges. Brands across all industries have had to adjust their business strategies, from undergoing digital transformation to extending services to be available “at scale.”

One of the most notable changes – unsurprisingly – has been the growing focus on providing exceptional online and mobile customer experiences.

Experience plays a key role in decision-making for today’s consumers, who hold the power to be extremely selective given the endless choices available to them at the click of a button.

If that experience doesn’t live up to their expectations, customers and prospects will search elsewhere. Ninety-five percent of people stated that they will, in fact, leave a website due to digital frustrations, such as links not working or ads blocking the page view, according to a recent survey from Decibel.

Brands ignoring this growing trend risk losing customers, thus putting brand loyalty and revenue on the line.

Some leaders are beginning to pay attention, with Seagate Technology reporting that two-thirds of global CEOs were planning to focus on digital strategies to improve customer experience by the end of 2019.

But simply identifying the importance of experience is not enough to keep up in this customer-first world. Leaders must understand what providing an exceptional experience means, identify who should be in charge of managing it and determine the most effective strategy for execution.

What does customer experience really mean?

The term “customer experience” has become a buzzword, and often only embodies initial touchpoints between prospective customers and the brand – such as when they see an ad or first visit the website.

Those first digital interactions have typically been left up to chief marketing officers (CMOs) and their teams.

Being a customer-centric brand by today’s standards, though, goes far beyond the remit of the marketing department. The experience needs to be considered, upheld and consistently improved upon across every single department that interacts with a customer, directly or indirectly.

Who maintains experience?

Marketing, sales and customer support teams have traditionally worked in siloes, yet each department has a role in interacting with customers.

Whether handling an inbound request from an existing customer or putting in a sales call, it is absolutely critical that each team is equipped with the same information about customer perception and utilizes that data to provide complete and positive end-to-end customer experiences.

To create collaboration and bridge the gap between departments, companies need chief revenue officers (CROs). The role of the CRO has emerged over the past few years to manage revenue, of course, but also to connect each of these different departments.

In fact, the CRO has been defined as the role accountable for driving better integration and alignment between all revenue-related functions, including marketing, sales and customer support.

Being the overseer of these three revenue-generating, customer-focused departments inherently puts the CRO in charge of managing, maintaining and optimizing experience.

With such high stakes for satisfaction, CROs might find it intimidating to manage such a subjective, qualitative topic – especially when revenue-focused roles have traditionally been far more quantitative.

To garner intelligence on the customer experience, CROs should collaborate with CMOs and identify the tools that have helped them successfully quantify digital experiences for marketing purposes. Then, CROs can leverage those same tactics and utilize them for cross-functional success.

How should CROs leverage the martech toolkit for experience success?

Traditionally, marketers sought out tools like A/B testing and survey data to understand how people feel online and on mobile apps. But, over the last few years, these insights have grown outdated.

To keep up in an ever-growing customer-driven landscape, CROs must identify and understand digital body language. This term describes digital interactions, such as how fast someone moves their mouse, the angles they hold their device and where they click, tap, hover and scroll. Each interaction represents a different perception.

For example, multiple device rotations or erratic mouse movements indicate frustration or confusion, typically implying that someone is about to close out of the site or app. Alternatively someone might showcase engagement through behaviors like focus time, scroll depth and velocity.

With a grasp on digital body language, CROs can better comprehend and improve experiences across all customer functions. But, to truly measure experience and its impact on revenue, CROs should invest in technologies that can quantify those interactions.

Some cutting-edge solutions can even score gestures and perceptions to help trigger CROs and their teams to respond to issues. With experience-driven technology and an understanding of customer behavior, businesses have the opportunity to truly become a customer-forward brand.

Even Walser, Chief Revenue Officer at Decibel, carries 23-plus years of experience in business development, commercial leadership, demand generation and more. Even graduated with a B.A. in Economics from San Francisco State University, and began his career in enterprise sales management. Since then, he has stepped into strategic leadership roles where he owned sales and revenue at the corporate level for various martech companies, like Topsy and Brandwatch, who work with some of the most globally well-known brands today.

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