The CIO And The Customer Experience: Playing The Tech Matchmaker

By Brent Kohler, SAP

In late 2023, Tinder introduced its Matchmaker feature, allowing friends to suggest potential matches for their single peers. The success of this feature taps into something fundamental: people love playing matchmaker. Whether it’s living vicariously through a friend’s excitement or selfishly wanting them to be with someone enjoyable, the role of a matchmaker is about understanding deeper needs and making reliable, long-term connections.

As CIOs take on a more proactive role in delivering superior customer experiences, they can benefit from playing matchmaker. While business peers might be attracted to flashy, short-term solutions, the CIO’s job is to set them up with reliable options that satisfy current and future needs.

The CIO and customer experience

According to Foundry’s State of the CIO 2024 survey, improving customer experience is among the top five business priorities driving IT investments.

Thirty-two percent of IT leaders surveyed said advancing CX is a top priority for their business.

The study showed that CIOs are becoming increasingly involved in customer experience, especially in EMEA, where 58% said they expect to be more involved in CX this year.

Sixty-three percent of IT leaders surveyed said they plan to work with their business counterparts to determine enterprise needs and 52% will evaluate products and services.

As CIOs work to find the best CX matches for their business, what are the key qualities to consider for success? Here are the top five:

Stability
Scalability
Composability
Connected
Intelligent

The perfect digital match starts with stability

Like a seasoned matchmaker, the CIO sifts through countless options to find the sales, service, or commerce platform that perfectly complements their business needs and aspirations.

In some cases, it may require helping their business peers consider qualities they may not have yet considered, but that are essential for long-term success.

With so many CX solutions on the market, there are lots of shiny new toys to choose from, but CIOs should stress the importance of stability.

New players can be attractive, but will the be around next year, let alone in the next decade? Businesses can count on established ones to stick around for the long term, no matter what external market forces put pressure on the relationship.

CIOs: CX solutions must be scalable

Ah, but what good is reliability without scalability? As they evaluate customer experience solutions for their business peers, CIOs should look for ones that will be steadfast, but also nimble and poised to grow and evolve with the enterprise.

Across CX functions, the solution must be able to accommodate business growth, whether that’s expanding the brand family or venturing into new markets.

On the commerce front, composability provides this scalability by enabling enterprises to adapt quickly to changing customer demands and market conditions.

Composability pays off in more ways than one

Beyond scalability, composable commerce platforms offer many other benefits, making them a top consideration for CIOs looking to improve customer experience.

They offer a stable platform with core foundational capabilities and scalability but can seamlessly integrate with other complementary solutions. Their modular architecture allows companies to add unique, innovative features and rapidly adapt to whatever changes come down the road.

With composability, companies can tailor their e-commerce platforms to individual customer preferences to deliver the personalized experiences customer expect. Integration of best-in-class tools ensures high-quality, omnichannel experience CX.

CIOs and connected customer experience solutions

Let’s not overlook the importance of being organized and connected. Without that quality, a company is at risk of providing disjointed experiences that put off customers.

The best CX solutions orchestrate a symphony of data, synchronizing seamlessly with backend ERP systems to ensure information flows freely and insights abound.

This orchestration brings an organization together around a single source of truth, giving employees the information and visibility they need to be truly effective. Without this connectivity, companies risk not being able to fill customer orders as well as uniformed sales and support teams.

Intelligent customer experience

Nearly half of the CIOs surveyed in the Foundry study said AI and machine learning are the most strategically important initiatives for their companies this year.

AI offers a huge opportunity to improve customer experience. AI helps a business analyze all its data faster to better understand their customers and optimize decision making.

Intelligent CX transforms connected data into actionable intelligence that allow teams to create value, deliver personalized experiences, and drive innovation. This helps a business adapt to market changes and turn unexpected challenges into opportunities.

As CIOs guide an organization’s digital transformation, their role as technical matchmaker puts them in a position to help propel the business to new heights of success. They can find the best partners to support their business counterparts’ long-term interests for driving customer satisfaction, loyalty, and the best outcomes.