CIOs: Step Up And Support Your Company's Customers

In today's technology-fueled marketplace, CIOs must provide the underlying systems, processes, and communications channels for interacting and engaging with the company's customers. CIOs that successfully do this will become crucial to continuing and growing the company's revenue stream and customer engagement. Forrester surveyed its CIO panel and found that not many CIOs have any significant contribution to customer experience planning and delivery for their organization. IT departments remain relatively minor players in decisions about how this money is spent and how that spending is justified. Interestingly, many IT organizations are responsible for operating the underlying technology supporting such customer experience initiatives. However, unless CIOs step up and contribute to the strategic elements of customer experience, there is bound to be poor communications, disconnected planning, and finger-pointing — ultimately leading to dissatisfied business executives and a short CIO tenure.