Dive Brief:
- CX as a practice can reside in any number of departments, with no one department owning the function across businesses, according to a Forrester survey of CX leaders at B2C companies.
- The top department homes for CX teams are customer support/service and IT. Only 7% of CX decision-makers said their team reports to marketing, and 8% said customer success.
- The top CX leader at an organization most commonly reports to the CEO, followed by chief customer or chief executive officer and CTO.
Dive Insight:
When asked the ideal place to put the CX function, Judy Weader, principal analyst at Forrester, says her answer is always the same: “It depends.”
“There is no one answer for every single organization,” she said. “There are so many different factors and variables, and some of them are very dependent on the kind of company it is or the kind of industry it is, personalities that are at work, the politics at play.”
When deciding where CX should reside, leaders should consider the CX function’s capabilities and responsibilities, CX leadership, the CEO, and the organization, Weader said.
“The question about where they should naturally sit is a very complex, almost loaded question, because it relates so heavily to how CX can be an enabler of business success,” Weader said. “Where should it be so that it can make that happen?”
It’s also important to take into account how an organization views CX and its value to understand the firm’s center of gravity and how much pull the CX team will have.
“If it's a very sales-led culture, then the challenge of trying to put CX in marketing, for example, is that it may not have sufficient political sway in marketing, but it would if it were in sales,” Weader said.
The other major consideration is the CEO. While it may seem like the higher the CX leader reports, the better, that’s not always the case, Forrester found.
“Even if the CEO is very into customer experience and thinks this is critical for us to be successful, they may not have the bandwidth to take on another direct report,” Weader said. “Several interviewees talked about, ‘My CEO just doesn't have time for me, so I've had to report to someone else just so that I don't end up missing out on requesting funding and getting support.’”
