CCO Council Blog

By Curtis Bingham

Tammy McLeod, Arizona Public Service Company's Vice President and Chief Customer Officer and the Chief Customer Officer Council's 2010 CCO of the Year, shares her heartfelt vision of how much good CCOs can achieve  and the real purpose they can pursue in improving people's lives through good service.

Video Transcript

As I started thinking about what I would say today, i started thinking about this job as a craft and one that extends not only in our work lives but in our personal lives as well. The stories that some of us shared at the dinner table last night about our kids, pointing out great customer service when they go into a store, and how did they learn that?

The fact that we can go back to our churches and talk to them about segmentation or some of the other things that were really valuable things that we bring to this craft extend way beyond our work lives. 

My real goal as we continue, as a group, to elevate that craft and to acknowledge it; and that when one person in here breaks through that CEO role, they have that CCO right next to them, and they really show the world what a difference it can truly make. 

As I flew here, I was reading a book called The Millionaire Messenger. I don't know if anyone has read that book. I bought it through Amazon's 1-Click which, I believe, is one o the finest service delivery mechanisms ever achieved.

That book really surprised me. I wasn't sure what it was about. It's been recommended to me; that's why the 1-Click comes in. I used to make note of the books that I should read. Now, I just order them with just one click.

But it talked about how we really need to know our customers. We need to have compassion and to create a map for them to improve their situations.

And it struck me this morning, Devin, as you were talking how much that's very similar to some of the things that you've done here. 

But, yesterday, Rudy was speaking a little bit, in a side conversation, and he was talking about the fact that the average person has fourteen service interactions on a daily basis--just average Joe on the street.

And I started to think about this. What if you take these fourteen and what if that became the goal, to improve those fourteen and that those service interactions are improved for that person on a consistently daily basis? Think about how that improves their lives and improves their attitudes. 

And then, what Sheila told us was that we become what we think. So, that person has already improved their own situation. I just think that there's real power in that, more powerful than the Warren Buffet email that's going around right now that we all shared at dinner last night. We can really empower each other to improve these fourteen.

When Shaun was up here yesterday, I got a chuckle out of the back that he referenced the book called Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. I don't know if any of you have read that.

But the quote I wanted to share, he referenced it. I really wanted you to hear this because it says, "If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then, you fore it into the realm of magic."

And that's what he talked about yesterday. I think the value of service is woking from a place of service; and if we really care about helping others and we don't do it because we want to become a CCO although that's a great benefit or we're not necessarily, in doing it, about the profitability although, clearly, that's why we're getting paid to do, but that it improves lives, then, I think our work together has real purpose; and I think if we think about it in that way, we will move into that realm of magic; and I know that we can do that together.

So, this has been a fabulous year for me in having this award, and I look forward to another year with all of you. Thank you. 

By Curtis Bingham

Some years ago, Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson wrote a booklet of 33 short leadership observations called Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management. I could go on and on about the knowledge packed in this small booklet, but one of my favorite "rules" is number 32. - A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person. (This rule never fails).  There is a great deal of wisdom in that rule and I've always thought that you can tell a lot about someone's character by how they treat subordinates and especially children. And sometimes you meet truly great people who are an inspiration to all.

Council member Jeb Dasteel forwarded to me this video showing Sean Tucker's interaction with a youth with cerebral palsy and you can clearly tell the caliber of man he is by watching the video.  We're pleased to welcome Sean Tucker as our special guest speaker to our 2011 CCO Summit.

Sean is a National Aviation Hall of Fame inductee and aerobatic pilot for Team Oracle, he is the only civilian performer ever to be allowed to fly close formation with the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds. Tucker has flown more than 1,000 performances at more than 425 airshows, in front of more than 80 million spectators. At the Summit, he will share his view of leadership, passion, and thrill.

In addition to Sean's inspiration, we've got other great speakers from JetBlue, Nationwide, Oracle, and more. There are a huge number of best practices waiting for you! Can you afford to miss it? We look forward to having you join the conversation!

By Curtis Bingham

Chief Customer Officer: is this a job title you have at your organization? No? Well, it might be time to consider one.  More and more companies are, or need to be thinking about their customers’ experience and how to manage it.  Adding a Chief Customer Officer is certainly a big step forward in making that a reality.  Curtis Bingham, executive director of the Chief Customer Officer Council, recently hosted a podcast covering this topic with Kelly Hushin, Online Content Manager for WBR.  

The CCO role has evolved over the years from a Chief Customer Service Officer to a Chief Customer Strategy Officer. There are two basic definitions of the role today. First, they must be viewed as the ultimate customer authority for not just their division, but also throughout the entire company. The second is that they must drive customer strategy at the highest levels of their company. They must have the credibility and authority to make changes for and on behalf of the customer, no matter where that customer may be interacting with the company. The Chief Customer Officer should have three main goals: to drive profitable customer behavior, to create a customer-centric culture, and to drive customer and corporate strategy into the C-suite and then throughout the company. 

One might ask why a CCO is needed when a company is theoretically dedicated to its customers already. But according to my experience, it’s a position that companies have always needed, but may not have realized until now. One of the Chief Customer Officer’s most important roles is to put a human and personal touch on an often cold and impersonal entity that is the company.

The Chief Customer Officer Council recently did some research that looked at the CCO effectiveness, pulling from a pool of about 200 enterprise companies with CCOs in their role for at least two years. They found that, overall, 67% of the companies that had hired a CCO saw positive fiscal results during the tenure of the CCO. From this data it’s very clear that the Chief Customer Officer generates quantifiable business results, and is an incredible asset to the company. 

Is the Chief Customer Officer just a passing fad? The answer is no. In the same way that a company that is doing very well financially wouldn’t dream of getting rid of their Chief Financial Officer, the CCO is a needed aspect of the company. The CFO is there to help the company stay focused on fiscally responsible strategies. The same thing applies to CCOs. Just because a company has a handful of customers that are happy and satisfied, doesn’t mean that the company doesn’t need a CCO. The Chief Customer Officer is there to help everyone in the organization maintain a singular focus on the customer.

Don’t just take my word for it.  Listen to the podcast and decide for yourself!

By Curtis Bingham

Authority is the currency of the C-Suite. I’m not talking about the chest-beating, testosterone-laden, “hear me roar” type of authority. Instead I’m speaking of the “Our customer has a problem, let’s everyone work together to resolve it and make more money in doing so” type of authority. Most chief customer officers or similarly titled loyalty executives do not own all customer-facing personnel and therefore must lead by influence to effectively resolve customer issues or enhance the end-to-end customer experience and ultimately, increase revenue and profits.

Even as a direct CEO report, the chief customer officer or other loyalty executive may be challenged to obtain the authority needed to get the job done. There are three types of authority for the CCO: borrowed authority, positional authority and earned authority.

Every CCO or loyalty executive has some Positional authority derived from the position and title they hold within the organizational hierarchy. CCOs relying upon positional authority may own many if not all customer-facing personnel such as service, support, consulting, and sometimes marketing and sales. Using positional authority the CCO can point to his or her direct reports and say, “make it so” in order to address customer issues. Beyond the initial bump in influence when the CCO catches people’s attention as something new and unexpected in the organization, this form of authority tends to be static and may not carry the weight of either borrowed or earned authority. Borrowed authority is gained through the strong, vocal, and very visible support of the CEO. The more prominently the CEO advocates for the CCO and reinforces customer-centric imperatives, the stronger the halo-effect and the greater the influence the CCO has over the organization. Borrowed authority is strong in the early days of a CCO’s appointment but tends to wane as the attention of the CEO turns to other initiatives. Earned authority occurs when CCO led initiatives are seen to be successful both internally and externally. Authority is earned as the CCO leads peers, executives, and employees to recognize how customer insight and centricity can be valuable aids in achieving their own business, department, and personal goals.

Many CCOs begin with positional authority and borrow heavily additional authority from the CEO. The most effective CCOs with the longest tenure are those who quickly earn their own authority. Ultimately, such earned authority can eclipse both positional and borrowed authority in power and value. Earned authority is the strongest and most sustainable type of authority, enhancing both positional and borrowed authority as it increases.

How can a CCO effectively earn greater authority within the organization? There are three ways to do so:

1. Own actionable customer insight
2. Develop strong relationships with management, peers, employees, and customers
3. Demonstrate quantifiable results tied to revenue and profitability

The 2011 CCO Council Summit to be held on October 18-19 in NYC is entirely focused on accelerating the development of this earned authority. Regardless of whether you are new to the role or very experienced, you owe it to yourself to attend! It isn’t too late—click here to register.

Note: This article is excerpted from the Bingham Advisory, a ground breaking publication designed to define and clarify the role of the chief customer officer in today's global business fabric. Authored by Curtis Bingham, the worldwide expert on CCOs, The Bingham Advisory is scheduled to launch at the 2011 CCO Annual Summit and will enlighten, instruct and drive important conversations for the valuable role of the CCO.

By Curtis Bingham

Do you remember the old “Whac-a-Mole” game?  During my childhood we’d go to the arcade, pick up the oversized, soft, rubber mallet and whack plastic moles that would pop up at random from five holes in a waist-level cabinet.  Every mole successfully whacked was worth 10 points, and we’d work ourselves into frenzy, whacking moles as fast as we could before time ran out.  The app is available for the iPhone and Android devices, and there is even a $28,000 executive Whac-a-Mole cabinet complete with moles made in the likeness of friends, family, or co-workers and liquor and glass storage.

How many moles have you whacked today? As executives, we want to keep our organizations humming along smoothly and efficiently, correcting and preventing mistakes wherever they pop up.  We pride ourselves on being able to identify and resolve problems or quickly root out inefficiencies. We sometimes are frustrated at employees that don’t take initiative, for whom it seems we have to spell out everything.  Bass & Avolio wrote about these employees, characterizing them as a “workforce of risk avoiders and individuals who work merely to standards using ‘traditional methods.’”  Got a few of those? 

Here’s something that may surprise you.   These followers “avoid attempts to innovate because they risk making mistakes and receiving negative reactions from their leader[s].”  Could it be that the problem is not the employees….but you?

Bass & Avolio describe the leaders as having a “Management by Exception” transactional leadership style characterized as monitors who detect mistakes and are on the lookout for variances from standards.  They are extremely reactive and take corrective action when errors occur.  While at times this style may be necessary, it creates a “zero-defects mentality at all costs [that] can handicap willingness to take calculated risks to do what is needed.” 

Some time ago I used a quote in my signature: “If you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate.”  See what I did there?  Are you part of the solution? Or are you part of the sludge that is holding your organization back, stifling creativity and preventing innovation? Maybe that executive Whac-a-Mole cabinet should be taken out of the office.

At the 3^rd Annual Chief Customer Officer Summit we’re going to be talking about accelerating leadership, and specifically about how you can go about becoming the leader that everyone respects and is excited to follow.  If you are the senior-most customer-facing executive in your company, can you afford not to miss this event?

I’m going to be talking a lot about leadership and authority in the coming months.  I look forward to having you join in the conversation.

By Curtis Bingham

In my mailbox today I found a fantastic personal story from my good friend, Jeff, about how treating a customer complaint as a gift ended up winning back a customer, and saving the company money.  I’ll let Jeff tell the story in his words:

“I drink Coca-Cola each day and I have my favorite Sunoco gas station where I go to get a fountain drink. The Sunoco station was out of the soda I like so I went to the nearby Mobile station, which is the only other nearby source for fountain drinks.   I don't like the soda here because the syrup mixture is way to strong for me.  As I entered, I mentioned to the manager that the mixture of syrup at his store is awfully strong.  He said he would look into it.

This morning he told me that he’d mentioned to the vendor that a customer had brought an issue to his attention and asked them to take a look at it.  I was surprised as in my experience most people forget about the customer issue or blow off the customer and go about their daily business.  The service rep discovered that the syrup mixture was double what it should be! In the back of the room, the machine pumps a specific amount of water & syrup into the tubes connected to the dispenser.   The mixture had been very wrong for quite some time, costing the company double what it should have in syrup consumed. What’s more, the nozzle had to be replaced because it was getting all "gunked up", also costing the vendor in repair and replacement costs.  When asked by the service rep, the manager of the Mobil station said, "the customer 'gets it'.  He knows what the product is supposed to taste like."  

I thought to myself, "how often to we ask our customers what they want or what the product "tastes" like?  Or how often do they listen to a customer’s complaint or recommendation?  How many customers went elsewhere because of this problem? This manager listened and reported back to me on my initial comment.  I felt great that I had been heard.  I felt I had a better relationship with the store manager, and with the store that I had shunned in the past.  I’ll be going back.”

A simple, but powerful lesson:  customer feedback is a gift.  Listening to customers not only helps us better serve them, but can often save us money.  How well are you listening to customers?  How easy do you make it for customers to contact you to voice their concerns?  How do you close the loop with customers, letting them know they’ve been heard?  How do you thank them for their feedback?  The next customer complaint you field might just mean a customer saved.