I had the opportunity to present to a technology company’s advisory board, a table full of eight or nine different retailers, representing the full breadth of retail verticals and sizes. I ran through the current state of omni-channel, expecting to breeze through the first few and delve deeper into topics like the future of the store. That was not to be.

My first topic was “Who owns the customer experience in retail? ” and I fully expected it to be a well-worn argument. My intention was to show that marketing is winning the battle for ownership of the customer experience, but that it’s by no means certain.

Well. I never got past that first statement without a lot of controversy and discussion. So I thought I should lay my argument out here, and see what you think.

Marketing should own the customer experience in retail.

Go ahead. React. But now let me explain why I think, right or wrong, this outcome is inevitable.

Marketing historically has been in charge of advertising the promotions and deals that merchandisers secured from vendors, and not much else. But today, marketing in retail has become much more important, driven by the rise of omni-channel retailing. One of the first things that retailers said they wanted out of omni-channel was to be able to “present one face to the customer “. Great. But what does that face look like? More and more retailers have started focusing on coming up with a brand promise – the basic answer to that question. What am I promising my customers, at the most basic level, and how is that different from what everyone else is out there is promising?

And then, also because of omni-channel, marketing became important in its own right as the de facto owner of customer data. Whether because of loyalty programs or voice of the customer, or a catalog history, or even just third party-sourced customer segments, marketing kind of had the most customer data on hand. And when the company’s professed goal is to put the customer at the center of the enterprise, that kind of has a galvanizing effect on the holder of that data – making their capabilities more important by default.

Now add in the fact that digital channels generate a heck of a lot more data than stores ever did, and you’ve just applied an accelerator to the marketing organization’s growing importance.

So marketing is becoming much more important than it has been in the past. In part because it is the organization that is responsible for defining and communicating the retailer’s brand promise, and in part because as it becomes the owner of customer data, it stands the greatest chance of becoming the owner of customer insights. And from there comes the strategy required to act on those insights.

But, you may ask, what about the CEO? Isn’t the CEO the ultimate owner of the customer experience? Theoretically, yes. But the CEO isn’t the right person to manage how the organization executes that customer experience. I mean, isn’t the CEO also the ultimate owner of the financial health of the organization? So why is there a CFO on the executive team, then? Isn’t the CEO the ultimate owner of the products the retailer sells? So why is there a GMM? By extension, who will then be responsible for the customer? Sure, the CEO is the shepherd of the customer experience, but as for the individual ultimately responsible for making sure that said customer experience is realized? Well, who knows the most about the customer?

Marketing

What about the channels, you ask. It wasn’t that long ago that stores actually knew the most about customers. And marketing isn’t always that consolidated across digital and physical – often, it is still eCommerce that owns digital marketing, and by extension actually knows the most about customer behavior. And eCommerce often is the owner of the customer call center, another area critical to delivering the customer experience.

I would argue that while all of these players are important in delivering the customer experience, no single one of these owns the customer experience end to end. Focusing on the transaction – which is what channels are designed to do – leaves out an awful lot of the customer experience that happens long before the consumer steps foot in a store or navigates to the retailer’s eCommerce site. So while each of these pieces is important to the customer experience, once again we’re back to – among groups focused on the customer experience, which group has the largest view?

Marketing

What about all these retailers that are appointing new “CXO’s ” – chief customer experience officers? Some of them, I fear, are muddying the waters with these titles. Because when you look at the actual job description – and I find this to be true of “VP’s of Omni-Channel ” as well – they tend to be glorified integrators. They’re not focused on defining and enabling the customer experience. They are focused on aligning channels and technology so that whatever brand promise is made, the retailer will someday be positioned to execute on it.

To be fair, there are a few retailers out there where the CXO or VP of Omni-channel is truly focused on customer experience – defining it, and eliminating cross-channel conflicts or misalignments that get in the way of it. But I find them to be a pretty rare breed. And most times, they are an itinerant VP – one without much staff, and operating half by executive decree ( “You will do what she says “) and half by persuasion. It’s a very tenuous position, limited by the skills of the individual who holds the job, rather than the organizational capabilities of the retailer.

And at the end of the day, which resources will this individual rely on the most, both in understanding where to focus first, and in checking to make sure their efforts are paying off in terms of actually improving the customer experience? Who is best positioned to answer those questions?

Marketing