We’re all familiar with a wide variety of CXO positions, but how many of you have run into a CCO lately?  Well it’s becoming more and more likely that you WILL run into one in organizations worldwide as the creation of Chief Customer Officer roles become a strategic move for organizations according to a recent Inc. Magazine article.

What IS a CCO?  The Chief Customer Officer is the executive responsible in customer-centric companies for the total relationship with an organization’s customers.  This position is intended to provide a single vision across all methods of customer contact.  The strategic importance of CCOs has gradually grown since the 1990’s when the role was created and in some cases was just a symbolic way for organizations to say that they were customer-focused.  Today, the CCO typically reports to the chief executive officer, and is potentially a member of the board of directors.

According to Curtis Bingham of the CCO Council, there are now over 500 CCO’s worldwide and the role is rapidly evolving.

CCOs are often responsible for influencing corporate activities of customer relations in the call center, sales, marketing, user interface, finance/billing. fulfillment and post-sale support.  Sometimes they even may head up one of these functional areas, but still maintain a cross-functional focus.

One interesting example of this is a client of mine, Vendavo, where their new Sr. VP of Global Sales, Jennifer Maul, previously held the CCO role in the organization.   Jennifer’s new role is “responsible for lifetime customer relationships, customer success, and growing the customer base”.   As a result of the close relationship between those goals and the sales team, she now has a different title, but is still responsible for customer relationships as well as the sales function.  This would indicate that customer retention and satisfaction is fundamental to Vendavo’s sales/growth strategy…that’s a good thing!

I’m encouraged by the increasing number of CCOs and the increased focus of organizations on how important customer relationships are to the bottom line.  If you aren’t delivering/supporting your product or communicating with your customers in a way that meets their needs/expectations, it doesn’t matter how cool your product is…they will find someone else who is willing to make their experience easier and less painful.

To learn more about this evolving role, explore the CCO Council site.  There are many tools there to help determine whether the time is right for your organization to create a CCO role and the success factors for doing so.

If you consult with organizations, you should understand more about this role and realize the important message your clients are sending if they have a CCO…it is a huge clue about their strategic focus and will give you insights about what is most important to them.

Please share any insights you have about this role and the challenges that companies may be having in implementing such a position.

From guest blogger, Lynn Hunsaker, of Clear Action – Customer Experience Optimization Consulting

Connect your customer experience management efforts across the company, and enjoy exponential benefits, according to the 2011 Business-to-Business Customer Experience Management Benchmarking Study.

Companies with managers (of their top five methods to achieve CEM goals) who meet together quarterly or more often for coordination purposes, or have dotted-line reporting to a single executive or committee tend to enjoy advantages* in the following areas:

Top 5 Methods to Achieve CEM Goals: Study participants named the following customer experience management efforts among their top 5 ways to improve customer experience:

Recommendations: Recommendations for stronger customer experience strategy, cross-organizational cooperation, and business results are provided in the study, which can be accessed at www.ClearAction.biz/benchmarking.

NOTE: 25% discount code = B2B25; save an additional 20% by downloading the 2010 and 2011 reports together, with discount code = 2studies.

*Companies with managers (of their top five methods to achieve CEM goals) who meet together quarterly or more often for coordination purposes, or have dotted-line reporting to a single executive or committee reported at least 20 percentage points advantage in the performance of holistic customer experience management, as well as strong business results.

Footnotes of coordination graph:
¹ or more often for coordination purposes
² to a single executive or committee

Footnotes of top 5 CEM efforts graph:
¹ including user experience
² including CRM, ERP, data mining
³ not customer-facing
⁴ dissatisfied to delighted
⁵ including forums, user groups
⁶ to increase purchase volume or duration

I came across an interesting blog post in Forbes today about the importance of using social media to help not only get involved in, but manage, your customers’ journey. 

Customers begin their buying process way before they contact vendors that they are interested in.  Think about the amount of research you personally have done before deciding which vendor to contact about any product or service you purchased recently.  Personally, I’ve sent inquiries out to email lists for groups I belong to as well as put out inquiries on Facebook to get recommendations from like-minded people in my community who can recommend solutions to my problems. 

Customers are also using web search to become more educated before deciding who to contact.  Web search provides access not only to vendor websites and product/service information, but also community board, blog posts, and rating sites.

Being armed with all of the above information can help short circuit the qualification process as a buyer and your buyers know that.

By understanding what your customers are looking for at each step of their research process, and providing it, you can ensure that you are included in their short list of providers they will contact. 

And the best way to get a deep understanding of how your customers are navigating their buying process is to talk to both customers you have won as well as those you lost.  By conducting ongoing win-loss analysis, you can ensure that you understand the various points in their research and purchase process, what information that were looking for and what criteria they used to qualify vendors. All of this information is vitally important to making sure that your marketing efforts are hitting the target.

What do you know about the information your customers is looking for, and where?  You may be surprised…

It’s that time of year for giving thanks…but I suggest that this should only serve as a simple reminder of a mindset we should have all year long, especially when it comes to our customers.

Keeping customers happy and preventing them from being lured away by your competitors is a key strategy to having a stable customer base and healthy revenues. Part of a successful customer retention strategy is ensuring that customers know that they are valued and not viewed as a commodity that you can replenish as needed.

And when it comes to making your customers feel valued, a simple message of ‘Thanks for your business!’ does the job perfectly. Have you ever been on an American Airlines flight when they say “We know you have other choices and we appreciate that you chose to fly with us…”. I know it’s a script that the flight attendants are given, but obviously, it had an impact on THIS customer. It’s a great message…for all of us!

But words alone can only have so much of an impact. I just looked back at the July 2011 email I received from Netflix which was their first announcement of the debacle that led to a plummet in customer numbers and their stock price. “We realize you have many choices for home entertainment, and we thank you for your business.” And now we are going to raise prices on you and ‘encourage’ you to stop ordering DVD’s…what?! I felt ANYthing but valued after reading that email. And will never feel the same about Netflix, a company that I had been a raving fan of up until then.

An example of how ‘actions speak louder than words’: Yesterday a San Francisco gas station owner lowered gas prices by 50 cents per gallon for 8 hours as a way of thanking his customers and helping make their holiday travel a bit less expensive. WOW! No advertising of this offer ahead of time to get MORE business, just a concrete (and unexpected) thank you to his customers. And, how cool that his actions made the local news, but that wasn’t his objective. It was a pure token of thanks. Side benefits: extremely loyal customers who hopefully won’t be tempted by saving a few cents per gallon at a competing station and who will spread the word about this station to others.

Here are a few ideas for how you can say thank you to your customers, not only during the holiday season, but ANY time during the year (or ALL year!):

• Send an insert with all orders (or orders over a certain amount) that provide a discount on future orders…with a message saying “Thanks for your business!’
• Create a culture in your organization for anyone who interfaces with your customers (sales reps, support staff, cashiers, customer service reps, etc.) to make sure they say a sincere “Thank you for your business” after each interaction.
• Have executives proactively call key customers for the express purpose of saying “Thank you”…no selling involved.

Those are just a few deas to get your juices flowing…let us know what you have done, or are thinking of doing, to let your customers know how much you appreciate their continued business!

And thank YOU for taking the time to read our blog! We’d love to hear your comments…