Curtis on...Key Challenges for CCOs: Creating a Strategic Imperative
Curtis N. Bingham, Founder and Executive Director of the Chief Customer Officer Council, discusses the necessity for CCOs to create a strategic imperative in order to be successful and demonstrate value.
Transcript for Curtis on...Key Challenges for CCOs: Creating a Strategic Imperative
There are a number of challenges that CCOs face in the marketplace today. One of the most important ones here is that of creating a strategic imperative and clearly defining the CCO’s contribution to that strategic imperative.
A successful strategy needs three things: a compelling reason or a burning platform, strong leadership, and powerful organizational buy-in. The problem arises when customer centricity is viewed as something that's nice to have and not necessarily as a strategic imperative.
It's especially damaging when the notion of customer centricity is given lip service but nothing is ever really done about it; nothing is ever changing in the organization. And, pretty soon, even though somebody may be saying that customer centricity is valuable, nobody’s doing [anything] about it and the organization begins to view it as a flavor of the month. One of the challenges that many CCOs find is that their contribution to this notion of customer centricity is really very poorly defined.
As a result, CCOs end up spending a huge amount of time explaining, justifying, and trying to defend the value that they're offering the organization.
As a CEO or a board member, you need to pay attention to the growing body of evidence that proves that customer centricity provides the most compelling and sustainable competitive advantage that is possible in business today and that customer centricity can provide demonstrable business results. You need to make sure that the CCO is a part of the strategic imperative, that somebody in your organization is uniquely accountable for customers.
As the chief customer officer, you need to make sure that you clearly define your contributions. You need to socialize these across the organization. You need to show how customer centricity is the new black and how it is imperative to the business success. And you need to show results.