THE CCO-A PROBLEM SOLVER OR GROWTH ACCELERATOR?

Is Customer Service more about fixing problems or accelerating growth?

A new trend is sweeping big business which has given birth to the latest edition to the C-Suite, the Chief Customer Officer. While many companies are investing in call centers to handle customer enquiries, complaints and issues, the world’s largest companies are investing in customer service as the holy grail of competitive advantage. To date this comprises about 25% of the Fortune 100 companies who have hired a Chief Customer Officer as per a study conducted by Curtis Bingham at the CCO Council. The question really becomes is amazing customer service better aimed at retaining existing customers or in the new ultra connected global economy is amazing customer service the spearhead to acquiring new market share and driving top line growth?

About The Gurus

SHEP HYKEN is a customer experience expert and the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations. He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and has been inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement in the speaking profession. Shep works with companies and organizations who want to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees. His articles have been read in hundreds of publications, and he is the author of Moments of Magic®, The Loyal Customer, The Cult of the Customer, The Amazement Revolution and Amaze Every Customer Every Time. He is also the creator of The Customer Focus™ program, which helps clients develop a customer service culture and loyalty mindset.

JEANNE BLISS, Founder of CustomerBliss and the Co-Founder of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. She is a Consultant and Thought Leader as she is one of the pioneers of the Chief Customer Officer role. She is also the author of the new book called Chief Customer Officer 2.0. Jeanne is a global leader in her field.

Jeanne Bliss pioneered the role of the Chief Customer Officer, holding the first ever CCO role at Lands’ End, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker and Allstate Corporations. Reporting to each company’s CEO, she moved the customer to the strategic agenda, redirecting priorities to create transformational changes to each brands’ customer experience. She has driven achievement of 95 percent loyalty rates, improving customer experiences across 50,000-person organizations.

JOHN PATTERSON is a sought after speaker and consultant on the topics of creating consistently great customer experiences that drive customer loyalty and growing business by creating, leading and sustaining extraordinary service.

He is the co-author of three books with Chip Bell including the award winning international best seller “Wired and Dangerous; How Your Customers Have Changed and What To Do About It”. John has appeared live on ABC and Fox Business. He speaks regularly on the “The Small Business Advocate Show” with Jim Blasingame. His articles have appeared in numerous publications including Leadership Excellence and Customer Relationship Management magazine. John holds a graduate degree in business from the Darden School at the University of Virginia as well as a B.S. in Business Administration from The Citadel.

His consulting practice specializes in helping organizations effectively implement and manage the complex culture change required for service innovation and effectively delivering great customer experiences that drive loyalty, advocacy and growth.

I asked the Gurus “is the CCO more about fixing problems of unhappy customers or is it about accelerating growth in an ever changing competitive environment?” and this is what they had to say:

SHEP HYKEN

The CCO is about creating a competitive advantage. Some companies think the CCO is in charge of the call center. That is servicing existing customers and their head of customer service oversees this group. Then there is another group who don’t see the CCO role as leading a department or as fixing customer problems but rather as a philosophy. A philosophy that needs to permeate every corner of the organization. These companies who take the philosophy approach have customer service as an integral part of their corporate strategy.

I would like to say that this is a new idea but it is not. IBM used this strategy when they faced billions of losses in the early 1980s. So did Jan Carlzon when he turned around Scandinavian Airlines System which was losing $17 million in 1981, within 12 months by 1982 they made $54 million in profits.

When Carlzon was asked how he did it he said “turn the organization chart upside down and focus on the customer”. We created a program called “Putting People First” and front line employees were empowered to make decisions and resolve issues on the spot.

So winning companies have used this approach to win for decades and those companies who are hiring a Chief Customer Officer view the executive as a growth accelerator, a clear competitive advantage and the way to earn the right to win in the market.

Additionally, hiring a CCO will ensure that companies do not stay in silos. The CCO must drive information flow across departments. Technology can be a great tool for this. Today we can use the cloud and we can be completely connected across departments and divisions.

JEANNE BLISS

A. The Chief Customer Officer is not the “fix it” person. The focus of the role is to guide the organization to embed competencies into the organization. I call these Customer Leadership Competencies because they define the leadership behavior of world-class organizations focused on customers and employees. They impact how these organizations decide to grow, how they lead in unison, how they identify and resolve issues, and how they collectively build a ‘one company’ experience.

The 5 Customer Leadership Competencies connect to growth, they deliver a connected story constantly refreshing to galvanize leaders to focus on the few important moments vs. all the silos picking out the many things that they think will give them ‘lift’ on the survey score that applies to them, and they shift attitudes from chasing the score to caring about and improving customer lives to earn the right to growth.

Here’s what the engine built from these five competencies provide a business:

JOHN R PATTERSON

The CCO has responsibility in both of these areas. Perhaps more important is their role in building a process to anticipate areas that will create customer unhappiness and/ or dissatisfaction and implementing positive change in these areas before they negatively impact the customer’s experience.

We know from research that at any time about 25% of an organization’s customers have an issue or concern with the organization. About 6% of these customers have a serious issue yet very few of them will complain to the organization. When they do complain it is critical that the organization listen carefully to their complaints, treat the information they provide like the gift it is and be prepared to effectively respond to the complaint.

The CCO has a clear role in leading the cross functional planning, preparation and execution for effective “service recovery”. Organizations that urgently and effectively fix the customer’s issue and repair the organization’s relationship with the customer can actually increase the customer’s loyalty by approximately 8%.

Customers have changed! Their expectations have increased over 33% in the last 12 months! They have raised the bar on how they view customer experience. They are looking for service providers who consistently deliver service experiences that drive loyalty! Service providers focused on delivering GREAT service! The kind of service that takes the customers’ breath away! If we can consistently deliver this kind of experience the payback is huge!

Xerox found that customer loyalists were 6 times more likely to repurchase than satisfied customers! Verizon found that the top 15% of customers who responded to their satisfaction survey were worth 10 times as much in lifetime profits as the bottom 15!

For today’s customer CONSISTENCY, RELIABILITY and MAKING A STRONG EMOTIONAL CONNEC-TION brings value and is the key to building LOYALTY which drives ADVOCACY and GROWTH! Under-standing the customer’s journey through their entire experience with an organization from the customers’ point of view is absolutely critical to success in today’s incredibly competitive environment.

Examining the key moments of truth that occur at important touch points in that journey to ensure the customer experience is exceeding expectations provides us with an opportunity to design and deliver the kind of customer experiences that drive advocacy and spur repeat purchases! The effective CCO plays a vital role in accelerating growth in today’s ultra-competitive environment by ensuring that every touchpoint in the customer’s journey across the organization delivers an experience that creates and retains loyal customers.

5 Competencies

Here are the five competencies that define the Chief Customer Officer role and require engagement of the Executive Team and organization to make them a success:

In Competency One, Honor and Manage Customers as Assets, the work is to align leaders to make a defining performance metric – the growth or loss of your customer base. The purpose is to shift to a simple understanding of the overall success achieved when a company earns customer driven growth. Customer Asset Measurement is about knowing what customers actually did to impact business growth or loss versus what they say they might do via survey results. The role of the Chief Customer Officer is to unite leaders in establishing their version of Customer Asset Metrics and customer growth behaviors that they will stand behind as a united leadership team. And it is to work to build the engine with them to enable the data so that this information is recurring and refreshed to drive business decisions.

1. HONOR AND MANAGE CUSTOMERS AS ASSETS

Know the Growth and Loss of Customers and Care About “WHY?”

“Experience” Accountability =

Customers as Assets:

Align leaders to made a defining performance metric – the growth or loss of your customer base. Shift to a simple understanding of customer-driven growth success.

New Customers, Volume and Value/Lost Customers, Volume and Value? Why?

Competency Two gives leaders a framework for guiding the work of the organization: requiring cross-silo accountability to deliver deliberate customer experiences. It unites the organization in building a framework for “Earning the Right” to Customer Asset Growth.

2. ALIGN AROUND EXPERIENCE

Give Leaders a Framework for Guiding the Work of the Organization. Unite Accountability as Customers Experience You. Not Down Your Silos.

(Illustration here where below is included)

“Experience” Accountability =

Align Around Experience

Align the Operation Around Customer Experience Delivery & Innovation. “Earn the Right” to Customer Asset Growth.

Competency Three unites your organization to build a ‘one company’ listening system constantly refreshing to tell the story of your customers’ experience, guided by the customer journey framework. Feedback volunteered from customers as they interact with you, survey and social feedback, ethnography and other sources of gathered input are assembled into one complete picture, presenting customer perception and value, stage by stage of your experience.

The role of the Chief Customer Officer is to engage leaders and the organization to want to be a part of ‘one company’ storytelling to unite decision-making and drive cross-company focus and action.

3. BUILD A CUSTOMER LISTENING PATH

Seek Input and Customer Understanding, Aligned to the Customer Journey

(Illustration here where below is included)

“Experience” Accountability =

Build a Customer Listening Path:

Seek Input and Understanding at Critical Points Along the Customer Journey

Competency Four builds out your “Revenue Erosion Early Warning System.” We need leaders to care about how we are performing in the processes that impact the priority moments in your customers’ journey with you. These are the intersection points which impact customer decisions to stay, leave, buy more and recommend you to others.

This is where you build your discipline to know before customers tell you – if your operation is reliable or unreliable in experience delivery in the moments that matter most. The role of the Chief Customer Officer is to drive executive appetite for wanting to know about these interruptions in customers’ lives, simplifying how they are delivered, and facilitating a one-company response to these key operational performance areas.

4. PROACTIVE EXPERIENCE RELIABILITY & INNOVATION

Know Before Customers Tell You, Where Experiences Are Unreliable. Deliver Consistent and Desired Experiences.

(Illustration here where below is included)

“Experience” Accountability =

Proactive Experience Reliability & Innovation:

Build the ability to predict performance, rebuild and innovate at key touchpoints. Make customer experience development as important as product development.

Competency Five is your “prove it to me “competency. For this work to be transformative and stick, it must be more than a customer manifesto. Commitment to customer-driven growth is proven with actions and choices. To emulate culture, people need examples. They need proof.

United leadership behaviors and decisions are required to enable and earn sustainable customer asset growth. The role of the Chief Customer Officer is to work with the leadership team in building the consistent behaviors, decision-making and company engagement that will prove to the organization that leaders are united in their commitment beyond words.

5. LEADERSHIP, ACCOUNTABILITY & CULTURE

Leadership Behaviors Required for Embedding the Five Competencies.

Enabling Employees to Deliver Value.

(Illustration here where below is included)

 “Experience” Accountability =

One Company Leadership, Accountability, Culture:

Decisions and Operational Actions That Steer the Company toward Customer-Driven Growth. United Leadership Behavior to Connect the Silos and Enable Peact to Act.

© 2015 CustomerBliss. All Rights Reserved

Summary

The customer is the lifeblood of any company and a businesses’ ability to grow and thrive rests in its ability to win and retain new customers. The Chief Customer Officer is focused on helping companies increase their customer experience and as a result drive top and bottom line results. By adding a Customer Officer to the C-Suite of your company ensure that you will stay competitive in an ever changing and dynamic global market.

“Your Customer Service can only be as good as the people you hire. Set up a meeting with us today to ensure you have the best people in the right seats.” — SHANE PHILLIPS, CEO, The Phillips Group

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