My experience in building systems has been that if the Executives as a whole don’t accept ownership, it will ultimately fail. I don’t believe Marketing’s role is small, they should be the experts in customer experience and be the guides along the road, but it needs someone with authority to step in and be able to commit the company. There are some companies where Marketing has been that organization, but in most companies I’ve worked with in many industries (government, financial, insurance, telephony, etc etc etc) whether marketing steps up or not, the executives MUST take ownership or very little happens.

Addendum: I completely agree that systems should NOT lead the effort. Part of the problem with Customer Facing Systems is that there are too many techies deciding how things work. It’s important to get someone who sees the interface, whether it’s a telephone, a computer, or a person, from the customer’s perspective.

I always used an exercise in warming up teams at the start of a Customer Facing project where I would send people out at lunch or after the end of the day with an assignment to go somewhere to buy something. Whether it was a lunch, dinner, a toy for their kid, or whatever, they were to make a detailed report to the group the next day on their own customer experience. It was amazing how few of these people had ever thought about their own experiences and translated them into the experience of the customers they were serving.

Terry

Colin Shaw
Blog: http://www.ExperienceClinic.com