As companies continue to focus greater attention on delivering on heightened customer expectations and better customer experiences, the CIO and the IT organization are increasingly tasked with enabling business units to achieve these goals.

To date, most CIOs and their teams have focused on applying IT to strengthen front-office and back-office processes and to help business leaders achieve targeted objectives. But a greater focus on strengthening customer relationships “will stretch CIOs beyond IT’s traditional role,” according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers.