Chief Customer Officer
Encyclopedia
A chief customer officer (CCO) is the executive responsible in customer-centric companies for the total relationship with an organization’s customers. This position is relatively new addition in the CxO hallway, and was developed to provide a single vision across all methods of customer contact. The CCO is often responsible for influencing corporate activities of customer relations in the call centre
, sales
, marketing
, user interface
, finance
(billing), fulfillment and post-sale support. The CCO typically reports to the chief executive officer
, and is potentially a member of the board of directors.
Chief Customer Officers may be known by many titles, however, according to the Customer Officer Council, the CCO is properly defined as “an executive who provides the comprehensive and authoritative view of the customer and creates corporate and customer strategy at the highest levels of the company to maximize customer acquisition, retention, and profitability.” The Chief Customer Officer Council is the only member-led peer-advisory network offering unparalleled insight and assistance into the critical issues facing CCOs.
Today's customer requires access in many forms of media to meet their preferences and lifestyle, such as traditional voice agent, outsourced/offshored voice agent, automated voice (interactive voice response or IVR), Email
, traditional mail, web chat, web collaboration, web co-browse, text, point of presence (PoP) such as sales register or kiosk
, faxes, etc.
A consistent customer experience across all methods of access is required by customers, who often choose to change vendors if they do not get the support they require to meet their expectations. Consistency and accessibility of the customer experience have become an essential component to winning competition for customers as companies realize the financial benefit of customer satisfaction as its proportionate relationship to loyalty and profitability.
The Chief Customer Officer Council has documented that there are approximately 450 executives worldwide with the CCO title or having comparable authority and responsibilities under a different title. While growing steadily from fewer than 30 in 2003, CCOs are the newest, and by far the smallest, component of the C-suite. With an average tenure of just 29 months, the chief customer officer has the shortest lifespan among all C-suite executives, according to research conducted in 2010 by the Chief Customer Officer Council.
Because the CCO role is still so new, there is not an Executive MBA program nor a Harvard Business Review treatiseto being a CCO. However, Jeanne Bliss, who was the Chief Customer Officer for Lands' End, Microsoft, Mazda, Coldwell Banker and Allstate Corporations has written a book called "Chief Customer Officer" that she wrote as a field guide, based on her twenty five years experience in the role. Over 50% of all new CCO's read this book.
The role however requires more education, understanding and awareness of its benefits and challenges among the C-suite, throughout the business and with customers. The CCO Council find that a number of CCOs still have to explain what their role is when they hand over their business card to customers.
While not a requirement that the CCO be a board-level position, to be effective, the Chief Customer Officer Council advises that the CCO must be one of the senior-most executives of the company. Chief Customer Officers typically report directly to the CEO, although there are some exceptions.
A 2009 study of over 860 corporate executives revealed that companies that had increased their investment in customer experience management over the previous three years reported higher customer referral rates and customer satisfaction (Strativity Group, 2009).
Call centre
A call centre or call center is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing,...
, sales
Sales
A sale is the act of selling a product or service in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity....
, marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
, user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
, finance
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
(billing), fulfillment and post-sale support. The CCO typically reports to the chief executive officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
, and is potentially a member of the board of directors.
Chief Customer Officers may be known by many titles, however, according to the Customer Officer Council, the CCO is properly defined as “an executive who provides the comprehensive and authoritative view of the customer and creates corporate and customer strategy at the highest levels of the company to maximize customer acquisition, retention, and profitability.” The Chief Customer Officer Council is the only member-led peer-advisory network offering unparalleled insight and assistance into the critical issues facing CCOs.
Today's customer requires access in many forms of media to meet their preferences and lifestyle, such as traditional voice agent, outsourced/offshored voice agent, automated voice (interactive voice response or IVR), Email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, traditional mail, web chat, web collaboration, web co-browse, text, point of presence (PoP) such as sales register or kiosk
Kiosk
Kiosk is a small, separated garden pavilion open on some or all sides. Kiosks were common in Persia, India, Pakistan, and in the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century onward...
, faxes, etc.
A consistent customer experience across all methods of access is required by customers, who often choose to change vendors if they do not get the support they require to meet their expectations. Consistency and accessibility of the customer experience have become an essential component to winning competition for customers as companies realize the financial benefit of customer satisfaction as its proportionate relationship to loyalty and profitability.
The Chief Customer Officer Council has documented that there are approximately 450 executives worldwide with the CCO title or having comparable authority and responsibilities under a different title. While growing steadily from fewer than 30 in 2003, CCOs are the newest, and by far the smallest, component of the C-suite. With an average tenure of just 29 months, the chief customer officer has the shortest lifespan among all C-suite executives, according to research conducted in 2010 by the Chief Customer Officer Council.
Because the CCO role is still so new, there is not an Executive MBA program nor a Harvard Business Review treatiseto being a CCO. However, Jeanne Bliss, who was the Chief Customer Officer for Lands' End, Microsoft, Mazda, Coldwell Banker and Allstate Corporations has written a book called "Chief Customer Officer" that she wrote as a field guide, based on her twenty five years experience in the role. Over 50% of all new CCO's read this book.
The role however requires more education, understanding and awareness of its benefits and challenges among the C-suite, throughout the business and with customers. The CCO Council find that a number of CCOs still have to explain what their role is when they hand over their business card to customers.
While not a requirement that the CCO be a board-level position, to be effective, the Chief Customer Officer Council advises that the CCO must be one of the senior-most executives of the company. Chief Customer Officers typically report directly to the CEO, although there are some exceptions.
A 2009 study of over 860 corporate executives revealed that companies that had increased their investment in customer experience management over the previous three years reported higher customer referral rates and customer satisfaction (Strativity Group, 2009).
Further reading
- Bingham, Curtis, founder and executive director of the Chief Customer Officer Council. Chief Customer Officers
- Bliss, Jeanne. Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action.