Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2015 | Page 30

CONSUMER MARKETING

Customer
service
Who’s Your CXO?

Ensuring your customers are treated right
BY JOHN DIJULIUS

O

ver the past several years, one of
the most often-discussed topics
continues to be: Who is in charge
of your brand’s customer?
I am not talking about your call center, customer service reps, or customer
support. Regardless of your company’s
size or business model, someone in your
organization has to be in charge of the
customer experience and all that goes
with it. That someone should not be the
president, CEO, or owner, but someone
who reports directly to them. We have
heads of operations, marketing, accounting, sales, and human resources, but our
second biggest asset (after our employees)
is our customer. How happy they are is determined by the customer experience we
deliver. Until recently, the vast majority of
companies did not have anyone in charge
of the entire brand’s customer experience. If
you are a mid-sized to large company, you
may want to consider creating a position
such as chief experience officer (CXO) or
chief customer officer (CCO).
• CXO/CCO: the fastest-growing
C-Suite position. “More and more companies are reconfiguring their C-suites
to accommodate a new kind of chief: the
chief of customers.” That statement, from
a 2012 article in Inc. magazine, highlighted the growing importance of customer
relationships in maintaining a business’s
competitive advantage. “Ownership of the
customer has become just as important as,
if not more important than, operations,”
said John Abele, a global managing partner at executive search firm Heidrick &
Struggles, in that article.
• What should a CXO/CCO be responsible for? This person should be an
executive who provides a comprehensive
and authoritative view of the customer
and creates corporate and customer strategy at the highest levels of the company
to maximize customer acquisition, retention, and profitability. They should influ-

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ence strategies of all areas of the business
that affect the customer, and ensure the
service strategies are built around—and
for—the customer. This person needs to
hold all other executives accountable for
how their decisions will ultimately affect
the customer. For instance, if a brand is
considering a reduction in staff or their
hours to help the bottom line in the short
term, the CXO or CCO will need to
ensure that the long-term ramifications
on the overall customer experience are

This person
has to live
and breathe
hospitality—in all
areas of their life.
worth it. That isn’t easy unless the CEO
and other top execs invest the person in
that position with the proper authority.
To maintain that type of authority, there
must be key metrics—such as retention
rates, average ticket, cost of turnover,
and customer referrals that demonstrate
the investment, decisions, and, ultimately
ROI, are warranted.
• What does a CXO/CCO look like?
One of the biggest mistakes I have seen
companies make is hiring, promoting, or
delegating the CXO/CCO position to
people who have no genuine hospitality
characteristics. This person has to live and
breathe hospitality—internally, externally,
and in all areas of their life. They must be
passionate about the customer experience
and the customer, have an extremely high
service aptitude, and live world-class hospitality personally and professionally. It is
much better to leave the position vacant
than to fill it with a mismatched person.
• CXO/CCO job description. In my
book What’s the Secret? I focus on what a

CXO’s or CCO