A recent KMPG survey of 1,000 technology executives finds a growing emphasis on customer experience in their planning. Close to 46% of respondents indicate CX as the primary goal for investing in enterprise technology. This means a growing emphasis on direct involvement with CX for technology teams.
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This growing role of tech professionals in CX is in full swing at Chase Bank, which has structured its organization to boost collaboration between its product, data and analytics, design, and technology teams.
“Technologists have an equal seat at the table with their colleagues in product, design and data, and analytics,” says Gill Haus, chief information officer at Chase: “This structure fosters collaboration and the exchange of diverse experiences and perspectives, accelerates decision making, and fuels innovation.”
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As of the second quarter of 2022, Chase has 60.7 million digitally active customers — a 7% increase over the past year — and 47.4 million mobile active customers — an 11% jump over the past year. “We spend a lot of time on user research throughout the development cycle of new products and features,” says Rohan Amin, chief product officer at Chase. “How our customers use our app and website informs the look and feel of these experiences. On average, our customers log in to our app 20 times a month. We are laser-focused on helping them make the most of those visits, whether it’s to pay a bill, set up automatic savings deposits, invest, or book travel.”
Each of one Chase’s roughly 100 product teams has its “own product, data and analytics, design, and technology leader to accelerate innovation and decision-making,” Amin continues. “These teams work together daily and are focused on creating beautifully designed customer-centric experiences in our mobile app and website. By working together in a unified way, we look at what customer experiences we want to create or enhance and build the technology behind the scenes to support what is needed.”
What kind of skills or training should technology professionals pursue or be provided to better deliver superior CX? “Always be curious and open to learning new things throughout your career,” Haus says. “There’s been a noticeable shift toward leveraging the latest technologies, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing, to create tools that best address customer demand. But technologists should also be open to learning about heritage technologies, too.”
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Bringing tech professionals closer to where the action is with customers also helps attract talent, Amin adds. “This new structure also drives our recruitment and career development efforts. People want to work in this structure — so it’s one of the many factors that attract talent, including our purpose-driven culture and scale.”
Workplace culture plays a key role in enabling CX experience, Haus says: “What many technologists on my team love, including myself, is the ability to have a direct impact on the more than 66 million households we serve in the US … It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to help our customers make the most of their money, while building the technology that powers the digital experiences in our app and website.”
Haus says, “I’d encourage technologists looking to make an impact on consumers’ lives to find a company that both aligns to their values and that will give them the opportunity to build a career and make an impact at scale. I’ll add that we are hiring.”