itSMFA 2017 August Bulletin Bulletin - August - 2017 | Page 5

2017 is ultimately about “customer experience”
and ensuring that every customer touchpoint and
engagement is maximized for both the customer
and the business. working together (or not). Plus with the ability
to see beyond the business functions to
understand how well the business as a whole is
engaging with customers at every customer
touchpoint.
Customer Experience as a Differentiator “The customer’s perceptions and related feelings
caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of
interactions with a supplier’s employees, systems,
channels or products.” It’s ultimately the only way for a modern CIO to
truly understand the role that IT needs to play in
a business-to-consumer (B2C) marketplace, and
for some companies a business-to-business
(B2B) marketplace. Marketplaces that need an
increased focus on customer experience.
Whereas continuing to take an insular view,
focusing on IT performance and outcomes, and
playing Chinese Whispers with different
business functions and their potentially siloed
needs, will be unlikely to deliver what the
business, and customers, really need.
Source: http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/
customer-experience So, What Does This Mean at a More
Granular Level?
I
could assume that everyone knows what
customer experience is in 2017; that it’s not the
same as customer satisfaction. But, thanks to the
Internet, a definition is only ever a click and cut-and
-paste away, so here’s what Gartner describes
customer experience as:
It’s ultimately something focused on and
employed by businesses as a proven strategy for
winning, retaining, and growing customers. And
importantly, it’s something that applies to far more
than the business’ customer service/support
capability and the people who deal with customer
requests for help, information, and services.
This is an IT service management (ITSM) blogroll
in the main, so ITSM is a good example to use –
which I’ll do in a moment.
IT Versus Business Views of Needs,
Performance, and Outcomes
In some ways, one could argue that CIOs can no
longer take a visibility “vantage point” that only
allows them to see how well their people,
processes, and technology are working in IT terms
(even if there are frequent interactions with other
business functions to assess their needs and
satisfaction). That they instead need to view the IT
department from a higher vantage point – and
hopefully you can visualize this as the CIO sitting
atop a hill to view all business operations, not just
IT, and how well these different “villages” are
5 itSMF Bulletin—August 2017
However, we shouldn’t forget the enormity of
the CIO’s, and their team’s, task in ensuring that
technology is sufficiently enabling customer