What Marriott wants from its next CX leader
Although it was tempting, I decided not to ask Olivia about the best way to beat other candidates who will be applying to become Marriott’s vice-president of customer design + innovation.
Olivia is a chatbot who describes herself as the hospitality giant’s “recruiting assistant.”
She has probably been trained on all kinds of company data, but what could she really tell me beyond what’s outlined in the job description?
(I’ve been thinking about doing an ongoing series where I analyze open CX jobs, and this looked like a perfect place to start.)
Salary and scope
With an annual salary of between $182,100-$325,300, Marriott’s CX leadership mandate was articulated as follows:
As a senior advisor and champion across the organization, this role is responsible for identifying future opportunity spaces that fuel growth, loyalty, and brand differentiation and solving big challenges by designing innovative solutions to test and learn against based on customer needs.
Marriott is looking for more than 12 years’ experience, an MBA or equivalent degree and a readiness to work with an ecosystem of startups and tech partners.
Nowhere, however, does the term “AI” appear in the job description. This was surprising but also encouraging for a company that is in the business of making people feel welcome and well-treated.
Starting from scratch?
More eyebrow raising was a bullet point saying that this person will not only lead but “establish” customer research and foresight analysis. So was the notion that this role will be the “primary advocate” for CX, rather than that being a value expressed throughout the entire organization.
Unlike many CX leadership jobs, this one has “innovation” in the title, and it’s worth looking at what that means.
The job description says the VP will “orchestrate Marriott’s product innovation agenda, ensuring innovation efforts across functions are aligned, prioritized, and focused on the highest‑value opportunities.”
It sounds more like what a CIO or CTO typically does, though perhaps innovation in this case means more than simply selecting and or developing technology.
What’s nice is the sense that CX at Marriott is not only seen as an ongoing work in process, but one where experimentation and constant search for new opportunities will be the norm.
If there’s a red flag, is that this job is designated as falling within Marriott’s sales and marketing department. Not customer service, nor a dedicated CX department.
In the same way that this is described as an “advisory” position, whoever gets this job will have to be highly persuasive to see their ideas put into action.
While this is a highly tantalizing job opportunity, in other words, the question is whether Marriott’s next VP will be treated like a guest, or someone arriving for an extended stay. I doubt even Olivia could answer that one.
