Research by IBM into CEO decision-making suggests that customer experiences are no longer such a top priority.
Productivity and profitability, alongside tech modernization, have pushed customer experience from the most pressing priority down to third place.
According to IBM, the global economic environment explains why companies are looking more toward their bottom lines than customer satisfaction concerns.
The research was carried out across 24 industries in over 30 countries, with more than 3,000 CEOs taking part.
Nicholas de Kouchkovsky, CCaaS & CX Expert at BCStrategies, provided another explanation for CX’s drop in priority. "It comes as no surprise that productivity & profitability are now at the forefront of CEOs' concerns, given our turbulent times." he wrote on LinkedIn.
"What baffles me is the fact that CX has fallen to the third position, trailing behind technology modernization.
Anecdotal discussions suggest one possible explanation. CX has become too many things claimed by too many initiatives.
"This dilution might have prompted its transition from a specific priority to an overall strategic imperative."
Customer experiences scooped 44 percent of the vote to determine priority business areas, dropping a hefty 14 percentage points from last year.
Meanwhile, tech modernization received 45 percent of the vote, and "productivity or profitability" grew to 48 percent, making it the biggest priority for CEOs.
Although productivity and profitability are the top priorities, the biggest challenges were listed as cybersecurity and sustainability.
Dom Black, Director of Research at Cavell Group, compared IBM research to insights from his own company’s research: "I think it’s a sign of the times where a lot of CEOs and large corps are still struggling with the transition to hybrid working and how they measure productivity. Profitability [is] a big concern for obvious reasons!
"From a CX point of view, we did a similar survey last year on communications priorities, interestingly enhancing CX came highest in the sub-50 employee segment, whereas larger businesses were focusing on enabling better collaboration internally."