Is Customer Service more about fixing problems or accelerating growth?
As companies jostle for competitive advantage in the global market place, many CEOs are viewing customer experience as an area they can leverage to deliver their alpha over the market. In response, companies have begun hiring Chief Customer Officers, Chief Experience Officers and overall are creating new roles and entire departments to ensure their customers are receiving the best experience in the market. The role of Chief Customer Officer virtually did not exist in 2000, and today as much as a quarter of Fortune 100 companies have a CCO as per a study conducted by the Chief Customer Officer Council1. We reached out to three global Customer Service Gurus to find out why this new trend is gripping the world’s largest and most profitable companies.
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 3 Gurus “Why are we seeing this new role called the Chief Customer Officer in the C-Suite and why is it growing so fast?” and this is what they had to say:
SHEP HYKEN
We are seeing the global economy stride toward customer service. To be successful a company can’t just create a customer service department, because this is not about hiring a team to look after you customers, this is about changing the philosophy that runs your company. The customer is getting smarter, they are more educated than ever before, they are more diversified than ever before, and they value a good customer experience. Customers may still be price sensitive but they are also migrating to companies that provide them with an outstanding customer experience. CEOs and entrepreneurs need to realize that satisfying the customer is not enough as 40% to 80% of satisfied customers depending on the industry will not return to be repeat customers. In today’s market you have to be amazing and to do that you need to know where you are going as a business and you need to know who your customer is.
Your CCO will help you identify who your audience is, which customer segment you are going after, which geography, what type of buyer you are targeting and what they value you most from your company. Getting the customer value equation correct is a clear competitive advantage and the Chief Customer Officer is at the spearhead of this movement. So we are bullish on the current trends and expect it to accelerate as we move towards 2020.
JEANNE BLISS
There are three key impacts that have contributed to the expansion and adoption of the customer leadership executive role (not in any particular order):
Firstly, many CEOs recognize that behaviors and operational changes required to earn customer-driven growth cannot occur naturally inside silo-based organizations. For many years now, customer-centricity has been at the top of many CEO’s strategic initiatives, yet real changes and customer growth is incremental or stagnant. This is because of the manner in which leaders with good intentions focus and prioritize their energy and resources on activities within the scope of their control.
Organizations still rely primarily on areas of expertise or ‘silos’ to run the business. Annual planning is still done (mostly) silo by silo. The cherry-picked silo-based projects that emerge from these results are not solving the problems causing customers to depart or grow. The monthly CEO report out still goes silo VP by silo VP. But there is more and more angst that this dissected view is not the right view required to make the most focused and impactful customer growth investments.
JOHN R PATTERSON
Today we have a much different environment than we did even ten years ago. The customer base is becoming more diversified with most major cities attracting denizens from all over the world. These customers are more educated than ever before and they can access the global economy online, giving them more choice and product information than any other generation of consumer. So this has created a very complex environment and to succeed you need a C-Level person thinking of how to navigate it.
Customer service has to cross all organizational boundaries as it belongs to marketing, production, IT, HR, R&D, Sales and every other department in the company. To be successful you need a corner office executive who will rally a change across all these functions. The world has realized the customer has changed and the consumer of the 21st Century places tremendous significance on the relationship they have with your company and brand. So understanding the type of experience that drives loyalty is critical to being successful as we move forward.
Businesses are no longer conducting exit interviews to find out why customers or even employees are leaving them, they are conducting “what will make you stay” interviews and adjusting the entire organization to develop a sustainable long term response to this question and that requires a Chief Customer Officer or a senior person with the autonomy to drive organizational change.
JEANNE BLISS
Secondly, the power of social media has given customers the ability to speak out about their experiences. I am supremely enthused about this forcing function! In the past a customer had to rely on what a company articulated as their promises to make their buying decisions. Now over 90 percent of consumers worldwide trust recommendations from friends and family over any form of advertising from an organization. This includes going on social media and getting the assessment and review of how the organization delivered an experience and treated their customer. This behavior in driving buying decisions is up seventy-four percent since reported in 2007. For leaders and organizations, this means that they must find a manner in which they will grow through customer word-of-mouth. In a world of social media, companies need to earn the right to growth through delivering an experience that customers want to tell others about. This is driving extreme focus by leaders to commit their organization and resources on this work, including the consideration of a leader to embed behavior and a manner of doing business that earns the right to growth with customers in the drivers’ seat.
Importantly, there is widespread understanding worldwide of the damage that an unreliable or difficult or disappointing experience can have on growth and the bottom line. The power of customers with the worlds’ largest megaphone in their hand is leading leaders to see customer experience and business transformation as a new competency that goes well beyond the complaint handling department. They now recognize that this permeates to how the company goes to market, delivers products, supports the field and supports employees. It all shows up in social media.
The third key impact stems from the recent economic downturn, where an increasing number of leaders
focused their organizations’ energy on nurturing existing customer relationships. Customer acquisition remained a priority. For the first time we did not see a widespread cut of the investments made in customer experience or in nurturing existing customer relationships.
The widespread acceptance of the economics of the cost to acquire a new customer versus the cost to retain and nurture an existing customer compelled Chief Financial Officers, CMOs and CEOs to continue actions to improve customer experiences. Especially in the shadow of social media, customer experience and improvement efforts are starting to move from the “nice to have” category to the “critical for our growth” category as leaders are evaluating crucial and non-crucial investments.
And with that, more companies are trying to figure out how to organize and unite to tackle experiences end to end. It’s a noble commitment…but still misunderstood. Now more than ever with the rise of social media, big data and the surge of focus on customer experience, Chief Customer Officers are at risk of chasing the ‘shiny object’ of the moment than at embedding a set of behaviors that will transform their organizations.
92% of consumers worldwide trust recommendations from friends and family more than any form of advertising. (Up from 74% in 2007)
Sources: Keller Fay Talk-Track Report & Word of Mouth Marketing Association © 2015 CustomerBliss. All Rights Reserved.
300% Revenue gained by reducing negative word-of-mouth versus improving positive ‘buzz’
Sources: London School of Economics Advocacy Drives Growth Study Association © 2015 CustomerBliss. All Rights Reserved.
Summary
Companies are dealing with a litany of issues from a diversified customer base, the impact of social media, the interconnectivity of a global economy to servicing the most sophisticated consumer since the dawn of civilization. Customer Service is a science in the 21st Century and those companies who invest now will reap the benefits as the narrative of this decade unravels. The world’s largest and most successful companies have been the first to embrace this trend, but the question they are trying to answer is as old as business itself; “What do your customers truly value and how will you deliver this value?”. Those companies who answer this question correctly will thrive, those who do not will become a relic of the past.
“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
Are You Hiring a CCO or CXO?
Are you interested in drastically increasing your customer service experience? THE PHILLIPS GROUP are your talent specialists and would be delighted to help you. Please contact us at ceo@tpgleadership.com <mailto:ceo@tpgleadership.com > or call us directly at +971 50 940 7537 if you are thinking of making any changes to your leadership team.
If you would like to hire one of the gurus you can reach them at the contact details below:
- JEANNE BLISS is the Founder and President of CustomerBliss, and the Co-Founder of The Customer Experience Professionals Association. More information about Jeanne can be found at www.customerbliss.com<http://www. customerbliss.com> and she can be contacted by email: jeanne@customerbliss. com
- SHEP HYKEN is a celebrated author and customer service expert. More information about Shep can be found at www.hyken.com<http://www.hyken. com> and he can be contacted by phone at 001 314 692 2200 or by email.
- JOHN R. PATTERSON is the founder and President of Progressive Insights, Inc. More information about John can be found at www.johnrpatterson.com<http:// www.johnrpatterson.com> and he can be contacted by email: john@ johnrpatterson.com or by phone at 001 770 329 1459.
“Your
1-The CCO Council can be found here – http://www.ccocouncil.org/site/default.aspx
It was founded by Curtis Bingham and you can contact the CCO Council at Curtis@ccocouncil.org.