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Mobile devices are dominating the technological landscape, and busy consumers are leading increasingly connected lives that allow them to interact with companies and brands both online and offline. As a result, more businesses are placing focus on the customer experience (or CX) to ensure shoppers and clients are satisfied and keep coming back. This trend has led to the development of one of today’s most in-demand executive roles — the chief experience officer (CXO).

In practical terms, CX is the overall feeling or opinion a consumer has based on the total of their interactions with all facets of a brand or organization, from marketing strategies and mobile apps to support services and brick-and-mortar stores. The customer experience starts at the time advertising is first encountered and continues until a product or service is purchased or engaged and — in some cases — is no longer needed. It is the responsibility of the chief experience officer to ensure each step of the buyer’s journey and customer life cycle is positive, user friendly and productive.

The role of the chief experience officer is new to the C-suite, having only begun to emerge in recent years. That newness can mean dynamic responsibilities, making for an exciting career that’s both challenging and rewarding. 

Are you interested in someday becoming a CXO? Read on to learn what you need to know, from the requirements of the job to earning potential.

Duties and expectations

Chief experience officers must continually evaluate business practices, methods and strategies to improve customer interactions. They must boost the overall impression of and trust in a company, business or brand.

Specific duties in a typical chief experience officer job description include:

  • Overseeing a team of designers, developers and researchers dedicated to improving user experience
  • Emphasizing to employees and internal teams the importance of understanding consumers and their motivations, the ease of their encounters and their takeaways 
  • Fostering an understanding throughout the organization of the buyer’s journey and customer life cycle
  • Working across marketing channels to develop and launch campaigns that help improve customer satisfaction, loyalty and brand image
  • Advocating for consumer needs in the development and deployment of projects and strategies throughout the organization
  • Measuring and tracking acquisition, retention and overall customer sentiment

Fostering positive CX through employee experiences

Factors such as advertising and online interactions are not the only touchpoints that influence consumers. There is also the experience they have when working directly with a company’s employees — either in person, over the phone or in online chats handled by humans. Since CXOs want these encounters to be positive for the consumer, they try to enrich the employee experience at their firms. The CXO does this by ensuring employees are engaged, satisfied and hopefully even passionate about the company’s products and services so that this spirit comes across when working with customers.

There’s another, perhaps roundabout, way the CXO can enhance the employee experience. As they advise other departments in the customer experience aspects of digital transformation, they play a role in technology taking over routine jobs and freeing up employees to focus on more complex initiatives. This can boost employee satisfaction as staff are increasingly allowed to apply their own unique set of skills, knowledge and talents to their work.

Experience and skills

Unsurprisingly, a strong marketing background is a must in order to thrive as a CXO. Most employers will require a master’s degree in marketing, public relations, business administration or a similar field, along with at least 10 years of relevant work experience. 

Additionally, CXO candidates must possess a complete understanding of the buyer’s journey and customer life cycle, as well as a proven record of being able to optimize and enhance the consumer experience. 

Many chief experience officers will play a role in the management of digital assets — like e-commerce sites and apps — and should have solid working knowledge of web development best practices. CXOs must be comfortable conceptualizing improvements and translating their ideas to design and development teams. 

Experience across various digital marketing channels — including email, social media and display advertising — is often required. Depending on the industry, a background in more traditional marketing and advertising methods, such as direct mail, television and radio may be a plus.

Along with these technical competencies, chief experience officers should possess common soft skills, including exemplary written and verbal communication abilities, leadership prowess, an aptitude for problem solving and expertise in multitasking to keep up with project demands.

Chief experience officer salary

While the chief experience officer job is a relatively new position, the growing demand for this role has resulted in significant earning potential. So, what can you expect to make as a CXO? The midpoint base salary for a chief experience officer is around $165,000, though this can vary depending on experience, location and company size. In some cases, these executives may earn up to $198,000 per year.

High demand now, higher demand later

The management of the consumer experience — and by extension, employee experience — may be relatively new to the executive table, but the CXO position is likely to last. As the emphasis on customer satisfaction rises, companies will continue to rely on talented professionals who understand consumer needs and motivations and can develop business strategies that retain customers, increase sales and grow the bottom line. 

Watch this video to find out more about how digital transformation is impacting creative teams and professionals.

[Music] I'm Dian Domeier I'm the executive director for the creative group in collaboration with the AIGA TCG conducted a survey of over a thousand marketing and creative professionals specifically on how digital transformation has impacted creative professionals one trend that I'm sure you're very aware of is that the pace of technological change today is rapid when you look back over the last several decades has affected creative professionals profoundly there's no doubt that creative professionals are concerned about how to keep pace when we asked which of the following best describes the pace at which your department adopts new technology the vast majority said that they felt their companies were either middle-of-the-pack or slow and steady seven out of ten felt that their company's efforts to prepare them for this rapid change was either poor to fair the majority as a matter of fact almost nine out of ten felt that it will be challenging to keep their skills up to date in today's environment and so when we asked these creative professionals what skills they wanted to learn they were web and user experience design content creation and content marketing data visualization video production and user interface design and web development we are seeing that teams are being structured in a much more collaborative way as there is a convergence of creative and Technology collaboration is at a premium but it doesn't come without challenges we asked what the biggest barrier to cross departmental collaboration was and the highest ranking was conflicting goals and priorities with the cream 'i'm being placed on collaboration soft skills like communication and collaboration empathy for the customer the ability to think out of the box for problem solving and innovation and the ability to have influence on multiple different groups are all at a premium the creative team of the future is ever-changing especially as organizations are tapping into diverse groups of talent to solve their strategic initiatives most organizations will have a core set of on-site employees but they are supplementing with remote employees that might work in other markets or off-site additionally adding freelancers or gig workers and specialized consultants to meet the needs of their business additionally they may be partnering with external resources such as agencies consulting firms or vendors as we look at how digital transformation has affected our lives and the way that we work individuals that stay abreast of technology changes that can work in cross-functional teams and truly understand how to work with resources across the globe are at a premium organizations need to be fast to adopt and prepare their employees for the future should they want to attract and retain top talent but at the end of the day there's never been a better time to be in the creative industry