In the end, it’s all about the customer.
At least it is if you’re the company’s Chief Customer Officer, better known as the CCO.
In an article entitled, The Rise of the Chief Customer Officer, written by April Joyner for the April 2012 edition of Inc. Magazine, the evolution of the CCO’s role since its emergence in the early 1990s is examined.
According to Joyner, originally the role was intended to provide a voice or advocacy for the customer, but recently the role has become more strategic, enveloping all departments within a given company that would provide service or interaction with the customer.
The role, however, is seemingly not for the faint of heart as the average tenure of a CCO is only 26 months according to the Chief Customer Officer Council.
Pausing for a brief reflection on that reality, it all makes sense.
After all, it couldn’t be easy daily walking that fine line between the people that make your company money and the people at your company who pay you money. Must take a special kind of executive indeed to fulfill such a role.
The key to both hiring and retaining this “special kind of executive” is touched on in a post discovered on Forbes.com, also (coincidentally?!) entitled, The Rise of the Chief Customer Officer, written by Paul Hagan - a principal analyst at Forrester Research.
Hagan provides the following insights into making the role of the CCO a success for both the executive who accepts the portfolio and the company itself:
The most thought-provoking quote from Hagan’s post is offered by a CCO from a major software company, saying:
"I worry about this as a role ... it's in vogue and many companies will hire one because they think they need one. In three to five years, I'm afraid we may see lots of flameout because they weren't given the seniority or authority to make a difference."
The concept of investing actual, rather than perceived, authority in the role of the CCO seems to be the common message uniting all of the aforementioned authors and professionals, along with the need to establish ways to quantify the results of the CCO.
It’s good advice that stretches far beyond the immediate topic of conversation concerning the role of the CCO.
Unfortunately, the challenges facing the role of CCO reflect a common mistake made by many companies who often create and fill an executive role too quickly without first having developed the proper job profile as well as having assessed the personality and culture of the existing C-suite executives.
At Social Hire, we don't just do social.
Is it important to you to increase the digital footprint of your business by utilising online promotion, but can't work out how to begin?With the professional understanding of our digital experts working in your business, you can begin to see interaction, brand loyalty and enquiries get better without having to take your team out to spend time on ineffective marketing strategies, or spend money on a internal marketing manager with a view to get results that may not deliver!
Our specialists are a team that assists our partners improve their presence online by giving online marketing on a regular basis.
You might like these blog posts 3 Easy Ways to Improve Your Business with AI Personal Assistants, 5 Lessons Every Business Can Learn From Amazon, 74% of Your Employees Are Thinking About Quitting. Are You Ready to Stop Them?, and 6 Tools That Will Make Your Social Media Campaigns a Breeze.