Hybrid CX: Why It’s Important, Challenging, and Needs You To Rethink
- By Winston Thomas
- October 31, 2022

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) have always known about the strong correlation between customer experience (CX) and revenues.
It’s why CMOs constantly fuss about the Voice of the Customer, pore through feedback from customer service centers and surveys, and pour money and resources into architecting complex customer journeys over physical and digital channels.
Data analytics added a different dimension. It generated a multi-dimensional view of the customer and helped CMOs focus on the right blend for their multi-channel journeys. But still, marketing was done in silos across different channels, and the feedback loop between marketing and those in charge of developing the experience was unclear.
The era of hybrid CX
“All these changed with the pandemic,” observes Clifford Patrao, senior partner and leader for IBM iX in APAC at IBM Consulting.
During the worldwide lockdowns, customers gathered around digital channels regardless of whether they liked it. Suddenly, digital channels became the sole provider of revenues — companies that were prepared reaped dividends; those that weren’t had to pivot.
With the pandemic receding into the background, people are exploring other channels again. But there is a distinct difference.
“Customer journeys are becoming more hybrid, and organizations are reimagining the experience,” Patrao says, adding that CMOs are quickly moving from multi-channel to omnichannel marketing.
At the same time, customers, having gone through the digital experience, expect the new hybrid experience to offer the same level of convenience and flexibility. They also want it seamless and are willing to walk away if it is not.
Getting hybrid CX right is already delivering results. IBM Consulting’s “Taking a design-led, data-driven approach to experience transformation” noted that it increases revenues, improves marketing APIs, raises customer satisfaction, and drives more innovation.
“The challenge is that you can no longer look at things in silos or isolation. You need to look at it holistically and challenge some of the assumptions that we've made in the past,” Patrao explains.
The new demands are also making hybrid CX complex. “What is adding to the complexity is the need to marry the physical and digital worlds,” he says. He adds that today’s hybrid CX strategies demand humans — who may have multi-layered personalities, are constantly busy, and want services and products that add value to their lives — at the center.
Data: the great hybrid CX orchestrator
Before the pandemic, few companies looked at the digital experience as the sole pillar of their customer experience strategy.
In a multi-channel approach, it gave one way of reaching and nurturing customer conversion. Investing in a digital experience platform (DXP) must be carefully thought out and balanced with lead generation, and brand equity CMOs can derive from other channels.
After the pandemic, the idea of digital experience became more nuanced. “It can be a few things; it can also mean the experience your customer gets from a third-party platform or app. So essentially, the job of the CMO has gotten a lot more complex,” says Patrao.
Data can help to glue the diverse experiences from your systems and third-party ones to uncover insights that can give companies a unique edge. Consolidating it can provide better insights; artificial intelligence can unearth new ones or ones that CMOs missed.
Investing in the right customer data platform (CDP) to consolidate zero-, first- and third-party data can allow CMOs to fine-tune and modernize their marketing processes. “For example, we have a bank where they created the entire process of digital account opening. They found the process so good that they are now applying it to their physical branch processes as well,” says Patrao.
This makes a design-led, data-driven CX vital for companies looking to engage customers where they are. It also becomes more urgent as customers veer from sharing personal data, being monitored, or agreeing to cookies sharing their digital behaviors.
“CMOs realize that somewhere down the line, there needs to be one similar experience irrespective of where the client is coming from,” says Patrao.
To create such an experience, CMOs need to get closer to their data. It also means working closely with chief data officers (CDOs). One primary reason, Patrao points out, is the critical data may not be sitting with the CMO team.
“The data that impacts the entire experience could lie with someone who's doing customer service or looking at the supply chain. And all of this needs to come together to ensure that you know, you have all data in one place,” he explains.
This data needs to be made available, usable, and trusted. This falls under the realm of the CDO, who has to put proper data governance in place and actively manage the various data sources.
The partnership can help address other issues creating major CMO headaches, like data privacy and regulatory data. And it also helps to create a framework for CMOs to start using third-party data that add volume, velocity, and variety.
It takes an ecosystem
CMOs and CDOs can’t do this alone. A strong partner, like IBM, can help CMOs and CDOs align their needs, so they speak the same language. They can also share key lessons from similar projects from other use cases or industries.
This is vital when CMOs start making artificial intelligence and machine learning a core part of the marketing processes. While these technologies have the power to bring together various structured and unstructured data for deep insights in real time, they assume that the data is accurate, unbiased, and trusted.
“So the starting point is finding out whether you have the right design (for CX) and customer journey in mind? Then, you need to know where exactly you're going to use the data, which can change as time goes by and you get more data,” Patrao advises.
A good partner can work with the CMO to bring these various elements together, adds Patrao. For example, IBM’s strong track record for data governance and creating the right frameworks can help CMOs and CDOs to build a robust platform that meets their diverse objectives. It can also support data teams to explore new paradigms, like data fabric and data meshes, to see what fits best.
“We also bring the best of capabilities in the market to the requirements of our clients. This means an organization can take an approach of co-creating along with IBM and then go about to co-execute and co-operate with us,” Patrao explains.
The future is metaverse (maybe)
This alignment and organizational collaboration between marketers, data leaders, and solution providers become critical in the metaverse — what many see as the next frontier for CMOs. Moreover, it gives all stakeholders new ways to work as they figure out this nascent digital space.
While it’s still early days, the metaverse is already uncovering new ways to engage customers. It makes data-driven and design-led CX and finding the right partner paramount.
“This is where IBM comes in. We hold the clients’ hands through the transformation journey; we don't just consult with clients.”
Winston Thomas is the editor-in-chief of CDOTrends and DigitalWorkforceTrends. He’s a singularity believer, a blockchain enthusiast, and believes we already live in a metaverse. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/phuttaphat tipsana
Winston Thomas
Winston Thomas is the editor-in-chief of CDOTrends. He likes to piece together the weird and wondering tech puzzle for readers and identify groundbreaking business models led by tech while waiting for the singularity.