Okay, "Debate Rages" is a bit strong to describe the polite conversation inspired by my previous blog post on the topic of the Chief Customer Officer (CCO).
It's tough - and probably unnecessary - to move the dialogue from the Twitterverse to the comments section of this blog, so I decided to bring some of the most salient comments, thoughtful experts, and apropos links here instead.
1. Contributors worth following include (among others): @GrahamHill, @Agotthelf, @mopartnersceo, @wimrampen. My "handle" is @tedcoine.
2. Graham Tweets: I am not against CCOs, just appointing them at the wrong part of an organisation's development - http://tinyurl.com/qx4gqe
3. Also from Graham: And the evidence for the success of peripheral CXO's, like CMO's, is actually quite weak - http://tinyurl.com/nlgeb9
By CXO, Graham means there are too many Chief ___ Officers in some companies. The M in CMO stands for Marketing. I'd say there is more than a little overlap between a CCO's and a CMO's job description, though they also differ.
In any event, I'm not conceding his point (at all), just sharing it with you.
I'll actually take his point one further: I think titles are silly. Any titles. W.L. Gore & Associates (makers of GORE-TEX: www.gore.com) doesn't use titles, and that's a company that we can learn a lot from.
4. I think - but am not sure - that this is Wim's comment: CEO should balance better between shareholder & customer value-creation
I agree with that completely. Here's the trick, though: by spoiling your customers, you are increasing their loyalty, which will increase your shareholder value. There is not one thing you can do directly for your shareholders that will affect the customer positively.
In other words,
Take care of your customers, and your customers will take care of you.
This is the Zen of business. Not to get too deep, but I've noticed that all of life works this way.
I invite you to join the fray on Twitter. It's a priceless tool for improving your expertise, making connections world-wide... and it's just fun!
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Hey Ted,
ReplyDeleteSo here's the deal on the CCO role, or any other one that is created for the sake of customers:
Tenant #1: IT'S BECAUSE THE SILOS DON'T WORK TOGETHER NATURALLY
Tenant #2: IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE "TEMPORARY" - about 2-5 years, depending on the company
Tenant #3: PURPOSEFUL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE won't happen unless the company commits to a collaborative approach
Tenant #4: COLLABORATION = Building an experience together, agreeing on the stages, handoffs, metrics, voc listening and accountability.
Anybody who has received the "customer satisfaction survey" results in their company knows what the typical drill is. And that is, the feedback comes in, the issues are identified and then passed out to different operating areas. The operating areas look at the problem (try) to make some tweaks and then report back..."we fixed it" or "we worked on it." This incremental type of "fix" doesn't completely solve the issue because it's likely that multiple parts of the organization need to work together to solve the issues (especially the gnarly ones like billing). And these issues are simply incremental...no one is looking across the experience and knitting the organization together to deliver a unified experience.
So the real deal is that someone or a group of "someones" need to stand in the middle of the organization for a period of time being the duct tape connecting everyone and building a) the collaboration muscle, b) the competencies for experience development and c) driving a regular process for accountability for really resolving systemic customer issues.
Let's talk about this more! No one wants or needs another "chief" just for the sake of it - this is real work that will make a fundamental difference in the long term profitability of the company - if it is established and run with those tenants in mind.
Jeanne