Lessons learned from APQC's 2005 "Managing the Total Customer Experience" benchmarking study concerning the organizational structure and visionary leadership required to foster a positive total customer experience at best-practice organizations include the following.

• Customer experience is how you deliver your brand. It is your main competitive differentiator.
• Employee empowerment, partner empowerment, and customer empowerment are fundamental values in a customer-centric culture.
• Best practice organizations understand and streamline business processes and policies that impact customers.
• Visionary leadership and top-down support are critical.
• Having a holistic operational framework around the customer experience is important (e.g., the customer experience is monitored and acted upon at every level of the organization)--this comes from receiving customer input at all levels and frequencies and acting upon it at all levels and time intervals, as well as from making customer metrics part of organizational key performance indicators.
• Titles are not so important. Most best-practice partners do not seem to need formal customer experience roles and titles because the customer experience has been operationalized within the company and its culture.

*Source: Managing the Total Customer Experience. APQC, 2005.