Curtis on...CEOs Acting as CCOs
Curtis discusses CEOs who take on the additional responsibilities of CCOs and how they can optimize their relationship to the CCO function.
Transcript for Curtis on...CEOs Acting as CCOs
There are a number of CEOs over the last few years that have assumed the role of the chief customer officer and are portraying themselves as the chief customer officer of their organization. And while it’s certainly admirable that the CEO is advocating so heavily for customers and is assuming the responsibility and the accountability to customers, the problem with that is that the role of the CEO and the role of the CCO, the chief customer officer, are very, very demanding roles; perhaps two of the most demanding roles in the c-suite. And when a person has a dual role, one of the roles ends up getting short shrift.
So a chief customer officer is certainly all about understanding customer needs, but it’s also figuring out how to better engage customers; how to involve customers in our marketing, in our strategy, in our innovation processes; how to better retain customers.
And so, the chief executive officer would best be served by hiring or appointing a chief customer officer and giving them all of the authority and the support that they need in order to be hugely successful and, in tandem, can certainly achieve the CEO goals of drawing in more profitable customers, making our existing customers more profitable.