Curtis on...Key Challenges for CCOs: Obtaining Resources
Founder and Executive Director of the Chief Customer Officer Council, Curtis N. Bingham, makes the case to CCOs, CEOs, and Boards to ensure that CCOs have the necessary resources to be successful.
Transcript for Curtis on...Key Challenges for CCOs: Obtaining Resources
One of the challenges that chief customer officers share with me quite frequently is the challenge of obtaining resources within their organization. Oftentimes, in many companies, especially in smaller companies, the chief customer officer is an army of one. They are underfunded. They are understaffed. And, sometimes, they're doing their chief customer officer role in addition to their full time job because they're the executive vice president of marketing and chief customer officer; and it's very difficult for them to take care of all of their line responsibilities and their basic operational responsibilities that they're measured on as well as performing as a chief customer officer.
Not surprisingly, because the role is immature and relatively poorly defined, many executives don't really understand what it takes to be a chief customer officer or what resources need to be allocated to ensure that the chief customer officer can be truly successful.
If you're a CEO or a board member, if customers are truly as important as you say they are, you need to fund the function that's going to keep, nurture, and make your customers even more profitable.
If you're the chief customer officer, don't try to do everything yourself. You need to spend the time and energy to find the resources. You need to focus on figuring out where you can align so that you can leverage allies and so that you don't have to do it all yourself.