CCO Council Blog

By Curtis Bingham

This video, from last October, announces publication of a new periodical of strategic advice for CCOs, CEOs, and Boards of directors: The Bingham Advisory.

Video Transcript

The chief customer officer role is only about a decade old. It's the youngest in the C-suite and it's the most fragile role. The average tenure of a chief customer officer is only 29.6 months. The role is relatively poorly defined. There's no business school course that you can take and there's no dummies’ book that you can buy that teaches you how to become a better chief customer officer.

You can't afford to experiment at your customers’ expense; and, yet, the chief customer officers are responsible for customer loyalty and customers, as we would all agree, are one of the most valuable assets of any business.

So, where do you go to learn how to become a better chief customer officer?

I'm pleased to introduce the Bingham Advisory, strategic advice for chief customer officers, CEOs, and boards on matters of customer strategy.

The first Bingham Advisory is titled “Eight Strategic Imperatives for the Chief Customer Officer.” There are a couple of key elements within this advisory. The first is—what is the ideal reporting structure for a chief customer officer and why is it critical to get this one thing right? 

What are the three types of authority that a chief customer officer can have and how can you go about increasing that authority and that influence over the organization for customer success?

What are the key characteristics of the chief customer officer? If you, as a CEO, are looking to hire a chief customer officer, what should you be looking for?

As a CCO yourself already, what are the kinds of things, the characteristics, and the skills and abilities that you need to be working on developing?

Every CCO seems to be wrestled with six key challenges. What are they and how do you overcome them within your organization?

What are the nine things that should go on your dashboard?

Do you know the seven most important culture enablers?

What do you, as the CCO or the CEO, need to do in order to facilitate and enable culture change so that you can become more customer-centric?

The Bingham Advisory is for you if you want to improve your customer experience, drive profitable customer behavior, create a passionate customer-centric workforce, and, most importantly, if you want to drive real, tangible business results within your organization.

The “Eight Strategic Imperatives for the Chief Customer Officer” is now available through the CCO Council website.

By Curtis Bingham

In this third of three videos on CCO Authority, I discuss what earned authority is and how CCOs can gain and increase it.

Video Transcript

In this segment, we're going to talk earned authority. The most effective chief customer officers and those with the longest tenure in the world quickly earned their own authority.

Earned authority occurs as CCO-led initiatives are seen as successful both internally and externally. This type of earned authority is earned as the chief customer officer leads his or her peers, executives, and other employees to understand how customer centricity can be a very valuable part of their own jobs—everybody learning how they impact the customers and the impact that they can have on the revenue and profits of the company by focusing on the customers.

Earned authority of this type surpasses all of the other types of authority that a chief customer officer can have—the borrowed authority and the positional authority. It's the strongest and the most sustainable type of authority. The more the earned authority that you gain, it also enhances the positional and borrowed authority in this virtuous cycle.

So, how can you go about earning greater authority within your organization?

There are three things that are most important for you to start focusing on right now.

The first is to own actionable customer insight within your company. The more that you are able to draw customer insight from the customers, from the marketplace, and turn that into actions that can be taken throughout your company, the more authority that you're going to have, the more respect that you will have, and the more authority that you'll earn.

The second thing to focus on is developing very strong relationships with management, with your CEO, other members of the C-suite, your peers, employees, and customers. It's through these relationships that you begin to be able to exert influence over the organization.

We're not talking about the testosterone-laden, beat-the-drum or thump-your-chest type of authority. We're talking about the authority that enables you to say, “Hey, we have a customer who’s having a problem,” or “We're not treating our customers as well as we could. We need to fix this. Let's everybody work together to make sure that this happens.”

The third thing that you need to focus on is to demonstrate quantifiable results for every action that you do. It's no longer good enough to just do something because it's the right thing to do. We have to be focused on doing those things that are the right things to do and proving that it's the right thing to do for the company as well as the customers. So, we need to make sure that our results are tied to revenue and profitability.

We'll be talking more about how to go about earning this type of authority in coming segments. In the meantime, think about it in your own environment. What else can you do to increase your own earned authority?

By Curtis Bingham

In this video, I explain the authority that a CCO derives from the extent to which the CEO champions customer centricity.

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Video Transcript

In this segment, we're going to talk earned authority. The most effective chief customer officers and those with the longest tenure in the world quickly earned their own authority.

Earned authority occurs as CCO-led initiatives are seen as successful both internally and externally. This type of earned authority is earned as the chief customer officer leads his or her peers, executives, and other employees to understand how customer centricity can be a very valuable part of their own jobs—everybody learning how they impact the customers and the impact that they can have on the revenue and profits of the company by focusing on the customers.

Earned authority of this type surpasses all of the other types of authority that a chief customer officer can have—the borrowed authority and the positional authority. It's the strongest and the most sustainable type of authority. The more the earned authority that you gain, it also enhances the positional and borrowed authority in this virtuous cycle.

So, how can you go about earning greater authority within your organization?

There are three things that are most important for you to start focusing on right now.

The first is to own actionable customer insight within your company. The more that you are able to draw customer insight from the customers, from the marketplace, and turn that into actions that can be taken throughout your company, the more authority that you're going to have, the more respect that you will have, and the more authority that you'll earn.

The second thing to focus on is developing very strong relationships with management, with your CEO, other members of the C-suite, your peers, employees, and customers. It's through these relationships that you begin to be able to exert influence over the organization.

We're not talking about the testosterone-laden, beat-the-drum or thump-your-chest type of authority. We're talking about the authority that enables you to say, “Hey, we have a customer who’s having a problem,” or “We're not treating our customers as well as we could. We need to fix this. Let's everybody work together to make sure that this happens.”

The third thing that you need to focus on is to demonstrate quantifiable results for every action that you do. It's no longer good enough to just do something because it's the right thing to do. We have to be focused on doing those things that are the right things to do and proving that it's the right thing to do for the company as well as the customers. So, we need to make sure that our results are tied to revenue and profitability.

We'll be talking more about how to go about earning this type of authority in coming segments. In the meantime, think about it in your own environment. What else can you do to increase your own earned authority?

By Curtis Bingham

In this first of a three-part series, I explain the authority that comes from the CCO's title and his or her position within the organizational hierarchy.

Video Transcript

Let's face it! Authority is the currency of the C-suite.  Most chief customer officers don't own all of the resources within a company. In fact, many of them own very few of the resources. Regardless of how much of the organization reports in to you, the CCO needs to lead by influence.

How do you resolve customer issues and improve customer experience if you can't influence the rest of the organization?

Let's talk about influence for a moment. There are three types of authority that a chief customer officer or other senior loyalty executives might be able to exhibit within the organization.

The first is positional authority. When the chief customer officer is named, the chief customer officer or EVP of customer success or customer advocate, whatever the title may be, have some degree of authority in the hierarchy, in the organizational structure. They may have some direct control over some of the customer-facing resources such as service, support, consulting or maybe even marketing.

Some of these CCOs have very broad line authority and others have much broader process or authority and very limited line authority.

The positional authority that somebody may have typically has a bump in the initial influence at its conception. So, when the chief customer officer is first appointed, everybody is drawn to this person. It's a new and shiny thing within the organization. Everybody looks at it. Everybody is interested in how this new position or new person in the organization is going to influence them or affect them.

And so, they oftentimes, receive a lot more attention and are allowed to have more influence over the organization.

But this positional authority is fixed. After this initial bump, it's fixed; and it may even wane. It doesn't grow beyond this certain level throughout the organization unless something else happens.

Therefore, for chief customer officers or senior loyalty executives, it's very important to ensure that you have a recognizable title and a very senior position in the organization. Because it's fixed, it's not going to change unless some of the other types of influence come into play here that we'll talk about in a little bit.

Ideally, based on the research that I've done over the last decade, the CCO or the senior loyalty executive should report to the CEO directly or possibly one level down. This positional authority here, as we'll see in the next segment here, is not quite as effective as other forms of influence; and, yet, it is still very effective; and it's the constant effectiveness of the positional authority a CCO has that makes it so effective and that can make or break a chief customer officer.

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

In today's video, I discuss the value and the benefits of creating and socializing a list of top customer challenges your company faces, in order to overcome them and to gain greater authority in your role.

Video Transcript

Over the past decade, I've had scores of chief customer officers ask me—what are the most important things for me to really get right as a chief customer officer?

There are a number of CCO essentials. And, today, we're going to talk about the top 10 customer dissatisfiers. No matter where you are in your journey, whether you're brand new to the role or you're very experienced, you could always create a list of the top handful of things that drive your customers crazy and, worse, may drive them away.

Oracle uses a top 10 list, and this list is gathered from the annual loyalty survey; it's gathered from sales people; it's gathered from the call centers and a number of other sources. And it's all bubbled up into this top list that is presented to Larry Ellison.

Nationwide has the top five by complaint volume, but it also includes the top five kudos, or the top five operational issues that need to be addressed as well.

As I've said before, the number isn’t truly important; but the fact that it exists and that it is recognized as an authoritative view of the top dissatisifiers is what's truly important here.

These top priorities should be collected and prioritized based upon an agreed-upon strategy. It could be complaint volume. It could be the key drivers of customer defection. It could be the big issues that are causing public or social media backlash. It could be anything that's preventing sales or hampering profits.

What do you do with this list?

The most important thing is to get the CEO to adopt this as his or her metric. This is a huge way of borrowing greater authority within the organization because the CEO is now championing your cause and banging the drum towards customer centricity.

At Oracle, Larry Ellison uses the top 10 list on the agenda for many of his staff meetings. He goes through and reviews this and asks for progress and status updates from those people who are accountable for fixing these problems. And, believe me—you do not want to be on that list for more than a quarter.

The thing that's very important is to assign ownership for the resolution of some of these dissatisfiers. Somebody needs to be responsible for making these problems go away. You need to set a time frame, typically, one quarter or less.

There are some issues that will certainly take longer than one quarter to resolve. But, by and large, most of these issues should be targeted for resolution within one quarter; and then, other issues that are bubbling up to the top could be used to replace these on this top 10 list.

The other thing that you need to do is to make it available to employees. It's incredibly valuable in helping you earn authority if you are socializing this information and making it available to all employees so that they know how they can impact some of these top 10 issues.

One thing that's incredibly valuable here is going to the executives who are going to be responsible for resolution of some of these issues before sharing it with the executive team. That helps them prepare for the sit down with the CEO that inevitably comes when they see a new item on the list. The executive here can then say, “I got it. It's under control. We're working on it, and here's the strategy for resolution.” You help them save face and you help you earn significant authority within the organization.

I encourage you over the next number of months to think about how you can go about identifying and helping the organization adopt the top customer dissatisfiers within your company. Whether it's top 10 or top 5, it doesn't matter. Find out what it is that's driving your customers crazy or driving them away; and figure out what you can do to help the organization focus on solving those issues.