As organizations continue their journey in the Age of the Customer, business technology leaders have a challenge ahead of them. As my colleague Harley Manning wrote in his blog earlier this week, "The quality of customer interactions with your brand results from a complex system of interdependent people, processes, policies, and technology that we call the ‘customer experience ecosystem.’"

Technology leaders have the responsibility to work with marketing and business colleagues to ensure that technology enables the business, and to align technology priorities with customer experience-related business goals. They need to understand the right organizational structures, the right blend of technologies (forget about a single “customer Experience Management” suite – it just doesn’t exist), and when to bring in outside help.

I sat down with Harley, a Vice President and Research Director on our Customer Experience team, to discuss the role of business technology professionals in a company’s customer experience strategy. You can hear our podcast in its entirety below (Episode 1), or choose a topic-sized cuts (Episodes 2, 3, and 4).

You can also download the podcasts through iTunes and subscribe to Forrester's podcast series. 

And to learn more about how to strategize around digital technologies, take a look at our Digital Experience Delivery playbook, where we feature in-depth research in areas such as technology landscape, organization, and roadmap. 

Episode 1 (Note: This is the full episode; the other three are shorter cuts of the same conversation.)

Title: Building A Better Customer Experience

Description: You can’t improve the customer experience simply with a slogan. It requires systematically breaking down the different ways customers interact with your brand, fixing what’s broken, measuring the results, and making a compelling business case for customer experience enhancements.  

Running time: 28:07

Title: Balancing Business Demands With IT Capability To Deliver Great Customer Experience

Description: You can’t “buy a box of customer experience.” Business executives need to understand the specific areas where so-called customer experience management vendors can help move the needle on performance.

Running time: 11:46

Title: Outside In Thinking About Customer Experience

Description: Great customer experience is the result of an orchestrated customer experience ecosystem that includes many functions that customers will never see.

Running time: 10:42

Title: Do You Need A Chief Customer Officer?

Description: Many firms are putting a single executive in charge of the customer experience. But that’s not necessarily the right model for every organization.  

Running time: 7:32