The UK Chief Customer Officer ReportJuly 2018

/03/02

CONTENTS

14Our thinking: maturity and the CCO archetypes

04Foreword

1806Chief Customer OfficersExecutive summary

2508Other customer titles: Customer Success Director

Introduction

2810Other customer titles: Chief Experience Director

The CCO role: overview

4634

5038

5242

Interviews with CCOs: Greg Ferrari, Pearson

Interviews with CCOs: Robert Bridge,The Telegraph

Interviews with CCOs: Sean Risebrow, BUPA

Interviews with CCOs: Sarah Thomas, The Guinness Partnership

SummaryInterviews with CCOs: Iain Shorthose, Interserve

/05/04

It’s a real pleasure to write the foreword for this, our second annual report on the state of the customer function within British business. This year the report is substantially more wide-reaching than in 2017. We have expanded our research into a broader selection of senior customer titles.

This reflects the truth that there are many people involved at a senior level, with a responsibility for making their businesses more customer-led, who do not have the Chief Customer Officer title.

The other way in which this year’s report is different is that we have partnered with our sister company – Comotion – to provide substantial amounts of thought leadership. This comes from both the Comotion internal team – where it is a reflection of the agenda-leading thinking that typifies the Comotion approach – and a series of in-depth interviews from some of the UK’s customer giants.

It’s an exciting time to be consulting in, and recruiting for, businesses that wish to become more customer-centric. 2018 has seen another exponential growth in the number of C-level customer roles. This report shows that they are coming from a broader set of backgrounds and represent an increasing number of sectors than ever before.

The research and thought leadership clearly explains why appointing such a person offers new challenges for business. The new combination of responsibilities, technologies and internal functions that might be affected by such an appointment requires new thinking from both the organisation and the individual going into the role. In Talecco, we delight in helping both sides of this equation, finding the right people for the roles and helping engender the cultural changes required to ensure that they (and therefore the business) will thrive.

I hope you enjoy the data, interviews and articles contained in this report and – more importantly – that they help you develop your thinking about both the people you might wish to hire and the role you need them to be doing.

Nish Kotak Director Talecco www.talecco.com

FOREWORD

The research and thought leadership clearly explains why appointing such a person offers new challenges for business.

Nish Kotak is the Managing Director of Talecco, a talent business helping organisations throughout their journey of becoming customer-led, from hiring at an executive level, through the transformation process, to building and upskilling teams. He has been working in executive search and placement for 15 years and was previously a management consultant with PwC. He has held roles as strategy and business development at both Great Universal Stores and United Business Media.

Graham Ruddick is Head of Brand for Comotion. He set up the New Media team at an agency in 1995 and has been involved with digital, marketing and publishing ever since. He has worked at Centaur, Reed Business Information, Trinity Mirror and Emap in various roles including Digital Marketing Director, Managing Director and Global E-Business Director.

ABOUT NISH KOTAK ABOUT GRAHAM RUDDICK

Talecco provides a complete solution for building and developing your Customer function and team. We are constantly learning from our community of CCOs. We run the largest community of Customer Officers and Customer Executives across Europe. The forums and seminars that we hold provide a real insight into the way that CCOs are being engaged and the challenges facing them as they join a business.

ABOUT TALECCO We believe a combined commercial and emotional approach to this opportunity is essential. This is how we build our teams, design our projects and embed value in our clients’ businesses. This combined mindset allows us to navigate the difficult terrain that our clients face on their journey to being truly customer-led.

ABOUT COMOTION

/07/06

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThe rise of customer-led thinking and the Chief Customer Officer

• It’s been 21 years since the idea that creating customer differentiation would drive competitive success – it’s been over 60 years since customer experience was identified as a commercial driver.

• Many organisations face a gap between customer expectations (in a world where those expectations are becoming ever more entrenched and vocalised) and the ability to deliver against those expectations.

• For all three roles covered within this report, there are a number of contextual issues:

• None of the roles has a standardised definition of either the person or their responsibilities.

• In many cases the responsibilities are new to both the person and the organisation.

• The roles are all looking at fundamentally changing an organisation’s relationship with its customer.

• This is not only about deploying technology – it’s also about understanding needs, creating sustainable and appropriate solutions and services, and changing the culture of an organisation through effective leadership.

• This report builds on the Chief Customer Officer (CCO) report from 2017 and extends its remit to include other customer titles (Customer Success Director and Customer Experience Director).

The Chief Customer Officer’s profile

• The CCO’s role can be described at a high level as to:

• act as the voice of the customer in all internal conversations

• create the end-to-end experience to consider the customer at every point

• ultimately drive commercial performance through acquiring and retaining customers.

• A business appointing a CCO has to expect that they will change how it operates across many, if not all, parts of the organisation.

• There is more and more data showing that being customer-led is a profound differentiator and commercial driver.

• The number of CCOs in the UK increased exponentially from 90 in 2017 to 169 in 2018.

• Customer executives in B2B have caught up with B2C.

• A large number of CCOs are stepping into a new role in their organisation and are undertaking it for the first time. This creates challenges for the individual and the employer.

• In gender diversity, the CCO world matches but does not exceed the UK boardroom averages.

• In 2018, CCOs are coming from more diverse backgrounds and are representing a larger number of sectors.

The Customer Success Director profile

• The research identified 60 Customer Success Directors (CSDs), all of whom are in the SaaS-based platform organisations.

• Within that sector, CSDs predominantly have customer service backgrounds.

• CSD roles are predominantly focused on retention and renewal.

• CSD roles are being created as a strategic imperative in response to needing earlier engagement with customers and recognising that creating great experiences is essential to commercial success.

• In tenure terms, CSDs broadly match CCOs – indicating the relative newness of these appointments at board level.

• Businesses need to be aware of the requirement to support new CSDs in new roles as they create a process of innovation and cultural change.

The Customer Experience Director profile

• The Customer Experience Director (CXD) role arose from the need to extend good experiences beyond immediate point of sale. It is the oldest of the three roles defined.

• CX is often linked to conversations about multi- and omni-channel.

• Research identified 65 board-level CXDs in the UK.

• CXDs are significantly more likely to be in B2C sectors, reflecting a recognition within B2C of the need to deliver great experiences at scale.

• The CXD role (at least in a foundational way) is likely to be better defined and understood in an organisation than the other two roles.

There is more and more data showing that being customer-led is a profound differentiator and commercial driver.

/09/08

INTRODUCTIONIn 1997 Robert Woodruff wrote a seminal paper on marketing. In it he described how understanding and creating customer value would be the next source of competitive advantage.

Robert Woodruff is the first to be credited with espousing this view in a formal paper. In the 21 years since, it has become increasingly clear that he was broadly correct. Among several key concepts is the following thought:

‘The concept of customer value only becomes an important management tool only if and when it is shared within an organisation.’1

The idea of being customer-led is now common in most organisations. Indeed, what company would ever say, ‘We’re not focused on our customers’? However, the reality remains that saying and doing are very far apart. Consumers themselves still do not believe that most companies actually do offer products, services or interactions that provide a good or great customer experience.

The ‘experience gap’ is relatively well understood. Closing this gap presents an ongoing and increasingly critical challenge to modern business. There are six factors involved in this change:

1. Strategy

2. Data/Insight

3. Design

4. Delivery

5. Measurement

6. Culture change

For all of these there, is a need for effective leadership.

Purpose of reportThe purpose of this report is to examine the adoption of senior customer roles within UK businesses and to look at who is doing the job and, to a degree, what the job entails. It will also look at the challenges and opportunities for a CCO. Customer-led thinking within organisations is still a relatively new discipline, with the result that there is a huge variety of approaches and definitions. In this report, we are attempting to pull some of this disparate thinking together and to provide a central resource for companies that are starting to think about how they might become customer-led.

This information might be used to:

• justify a CCO

• hire a CCO

• become a CCO.

There is no doubt that we are operating within a rapidly evolving marketplace.

The idea of being customer-led is now common in most organisations. Indeed, what company would ever say, ‘We’re not focused on our customers’?

1 Customer value: The next source for competitive advantage. Robert B Woodruff. Academy of Marketing Science. Journal; Spring 1997

Report background and methodologyThis report is derived from a number of sources. These include discussions with customer executives in the UK, online media including LinkedIn, web-based research and publicly available company reports and postings. We have also included five interviews with senior customer executives that provide a deep layer of extra insight into how their businesses are thinking and working.

In last year’s report, we specifically focused on the CCO role itself. This year, we have broadened the research to include other customer-focused titles. In fact, we have included nearly 40 different titles in the research. These are broadly grouped into CCO, Customer Success Director (CSD) and Customer Experience Director (CXD).

When we have looked at an individual, we have made a judgement about seniority and influence, and have only included those who are truly senior in larger organisations. (As a side note, it’s very clear that young start-up and scale-up businesses are way ahead of their more established peers in recognising the need for, and appointing, customer-focused executives.)

THE RISE OF THE CCOJack Chambers was appointed in 1994 as CCO of Texas New Mexico Power. He was the first CCO in the world.

In the 24 years since this appointment, the world has seen an explosion in rhetoric about becoming customer-led. Moreover, in recent years, this rhetoric has been matched by an increasing number of appointments and a new C-level function in the leadership team.

Young start-up and scale-up businesses are way ahead of their more established peers in recognising the need for, and appointing, customer-focused executives.

/11/10

THE CCO ROLE: OVERVIEWThere isn’t a single definition of the CCO role because, as a new member of the leadership team, the CCO’s functions are interpreted differently across many organisations. But there are a number of factors that are consistent.

The role of the CCO is to:

• act as the voice of the customer in all internal conversations

• create the end-to-end experience that considers the customer at every point

• put that learning into product and service design and delivery

• ultimately to drive commercial performance through acquiring and retaining customers

Having a customer-led approach and really delivering on the ambition to be customer-led should clearly be at the forefront of all business thinking. To deliver this, there must be alignment at board level to involve the creation of a customer function and/or customer champions across the business.

An organisation that is trying to become more customer-led is likely to have to adjust or change the way it does business across many different functions. The CCO can plausibly claim to touch all functions within an organisation. This adds a complexity to the role that suggests, in the first instance the role that it should be senior and, in the second, that recruiting such a person presents its own issues.

In these relatively early days, finding people and a team that have the required broad competencies is difficult. Later in the report, we talk about where the existing CCOs have been before they take up the role. What’s noticeable in 2018 is that the backgrounds of those appointed are becoming increasingly diverse.

However, it’s not just about the people taking on the roles. It’s clear that a CCO will likely have to fundamentally change the DNA of the organisation they work for in order to be successful. The key here is to make those changes in a manner that reflects the corporate’s position ‘today’. Iain Shorthose (Director of Customer Experience, Interserve), in his interview later in this report, puts it this way:

‘…the most important thing is to give yourself time to orientate and understand the organisation climate and what makes it tick. If you don’t, there’s a risk you’ll always be going against the grain. Every organisation tends to have a magnetic north – they have a culture already. What we do is to tap into that and evolve that culture…’

Customers need internal champions.

Traditional business inclination is to... Good customer thinking...

• focus on product differentiation • understands customer needs to drive product and service differentiation

• use existing employees and training to create better customer thinking

• creates new thinking and capabilities within the organisation, including a new focus on employee experience

• let things happen so long as they don’t interfere with sales

• makes customer thinking fundamental to sales

• use research to understand buying habits • uses research to understand customer needs and journeys

• think of customer projects as an experimental cost

• treats customer projects as critical strategic investments

• let the experts ‘get on with it’ • makes the customer a company-wide agenda and central to every employee

Having a CCO in the organisation is a great start but not enough on its own to make significant advances. Customer initiatives are no longer solely about deploying technology – platforms are not a panacea. There needs to be a shared language around the customer throughout the organisation, along with a shared view of what it means.

The complexity of the role can also be seen in the types of cultural and attitudinal changes that a CCO might be asked to make.

Customer initiatives are no longer solely about deploying technology –– platforms are not a panacea.

/13/12

The range of these changes doesn’t just present a challenge to the CCO – it’s also a real challenge to the employer who not only has to find the right person but also needs to adjust the organisational structure to enable that person to be effective. In truly customer-led organisations, power is devolved downwards – anyone who has customer interaction is given authority to make ad hoc decisions for the benefit of their customers.

It’s worth mentioning that not all companies need a specific CCO. A degree of organisational maturity required before a CCO can be fully effective. Measuring and understanding the degree of customer maturity in an organisation can take many forms but a useful guide is that it might include the following core concepts:

• Strategy

• Insight

• Design

• Delivery

• Measurement

• Culture

It’s just as important as everHowever difficult the challenges, there is no doubt that customer-led thinking is essential. Consumers and customers are becoming ever more demanding. 63% of US consumers say they’d share more information with a company that offered a great experience. This becomes particularly important in the age of GDPR. On the other hand, nearly a third of consumers would walk away from a brand they loved after just one bad experience.

Customer-led thinking is about profound organisational re-engineering – it’s not an arts and crafts exercise in a corner.

Objectives of a CCOAt the highest level, the key objectives of a CCO are – like the rest of the business – focused on commercial outcomes. Below this, they are likely to fall into the following categories:

• Driving business growth and revenue through being customer-led This requires the CCO and the organisation to start to link customer attitudes and experience with improved financial performance.

• Delivering personal and relevant relationships with customers Above all else, this requires an excellent understanding of the customers’ needs and their interactions with the organisation. It also requires a resolve to generate and act on insight on an ongoing basis.

• Competing in the modern marketplace in customer experience rather than other more traditional metrics In a world where services and products are homogenised, one of the only and major differentiators for an organisation is the experience it provides to its customers.

Apart from the more recognisable metrics of commercial success, customer-led thinking (and therefore the CCO) should be measured on:

• customer sentiment

• customer behaviour

• customer retention

• formal scoring e.g. NPS.

What are the barriers to a CCO being successful?Identified below are the key barriers that face CCOs. Their variety and impact across the organisation are a reflection of the number of areas in which a CCO has to work.

• Lacking alignment with other C-level peers

• Inability to break down the silos

• Lack of support in changing the culture of the business

• Creating a strategic imperative and defining the role in a way that everyone can understand – especially when that role is new to the organisation

• Ensuring the organisation is collecting the right data to drive understanding of customer needs and turning it into effective actions

• Creating a set of widely understood KPIs and demonstrating results

• Reducing the distance between boardroom and customer

• Creating collective ambition and alignment

Customer-led thinking is about profound organisational re-engineering –– it’s not an arts and crafts exercise in a corner.

/15/14

OUR THINKING: MATURITY AND THE CCO ARCHETYPESWe have been privileged to speak and work with many organisations over the past few years. These conversations have focused on helping businesses to become customer-led.

Our purpose has been to help them in three ways. Strategically, we help our clients build sustainable growth strategies that truly place the customer at the heart of everything they do. Operationally, we reflect the thinking that creates finance, HR and marketing functions and help our clients build a world-class customer function. Transformationally, we help our clients through the process of making the fundamental change from being product-led to customer-led businesses.

That experience has allowed us to codify thinking in a way that helps the businesses to which it is applied. A key learning has been that not all organisations are ready for a CCO role. Although intrinsically one might assume that a CCO would make a difference in any organisation, this is not necessarily immediately true. It makes sense to build up to this role. The maturity of the organisation is a key factor in deciding the type of customer practitioner that is most appropriate.

Organisational maturityMaturity modelling is a useful tool to help structure an internal conversation and allow the management team to start to align in both definitions and needs. The model has five levels of organisational maturity.

Basic There may be a vision to become a customer-led organisation but there is little or no understanding of how to achieve this. Capabilities are spread across teams, leading to a lack of coordination.

Emergent The business has measurements in place and is actively pursuing programmes across channels. There may be specific areas that are taking the lead (e.g. digital transformation).

Repeatable There is CX leadership in the business, decisions are driven based on insight and there is a more customer-focused culture emerging.

Integrated The customer is a strategic priority. Insight, design and delivery are all coordinated and strongly linked to the values and behaviours of the organisation’s culture.

Fundamental The corporate strategy is the customer. Human-centred design drives all decision making and the brand is seen in the market as a world-class leader.

It is only when you start reaching the Integrated level of maturity that a board-level CCO position becomes tenable. Prior to this, there is a set of foundation activities as follows:

• Collecting (some) customer data

• Improving UX/UI

• Starting to think about customer journeys

It is only when a more repeatable customer experience is starting to evolve operationally that the organisation should start thinking about the broader, more strategic role. If the CCO role is taken on too

early in the organisation’s maturity cycle, it is likely to lead to conflict or frustration, with the CCO looking to embrace an agenda that might be just a step too far at that time.

Even when organisations are genuinely ready for a board-level CCO, their responsibilities and the functions they manage can vary significantly.

A key lesson learned has been that not all organisations are ready for a CCO role.

/17/16

Rising Star Has previously been in a head of role rather than a full CCO but is a natural champion for the customer and has shown enough results to be taken seriously. They tend to work well in small teams and are often internal hires within immature organisations.

Operational Guru Has come through a customer services or operations background and is the practical ‘get things done’ type who can roll up their sleeves and build functions from scratch. They are often numbers driven and very delivery focused, so are a great fit for less mature businesses that need to ‘prove by doing’.

Process Practitioner Less of a pure customer background and may be more ‘techie’ in nature. Understands the business well and can link ops to tech and commercial. Again, practical in nature, they tend to think about end-to-end journeys so are more interested in larger-scale programmes. They work well in companies that are mid-level on the scale.

Engagement Expert Strong marketing, sales or digital background, keen on selling into the heart as much as the mind. They tend to have experience of running a CX function, leading on insight, and believe in the lifetime value of customers. They tend to work in businesses that are more focused on cultural change, and that are therefore high on the maturity scale.

Group Influencer More of a hybrid, working across business units within larger, complex organisations. These individuals need to engage with the board, inspire the business and cajole staff into new ways of working because they often only have a small team and a limited budget.

Not all CCOs are born equalIn order to help clarify organisational thinking, and based on our experience and interactions with pan-European companies, we have defined six different CCO archetypes. All have a strategic agenda to make an organisation customer-led, but their ways of working depend on the organisation’s structures and imperatives.

The table (opposite) shows the different archetypes, detailing the differing backgrounds and priorities that each one adopts. The different types are also partly defined through reference to the six-pillar approach to thinking described earlier in this report.

It is important to note that the ideal CCO for any particular organisation may well be a mix of some of these archetypes.

The CCO role can derive from a number of diverse backgrounds. The lack of common definition of the role also means it can become a complicated hire. On top of these specific areas, there is the broader question of organisational maturity. Even when maturity is understood, trying to understand which type of CCO best matches the organisational needs can further complicate the decision-making process.

That said, many organisations have excellent customer executives and practitioners driving the customer agenda forward. The interviews later in the report provide a snapshot of different types of customer professional and their thinking on some core questions.

The CCO role can come from a number of diverse backgrounds, the lack of common definition of the role also means it can become a complicated hire.

/19/18

The rise of the CCO in the UK is exponential.

There are

88%more CCOs in 2018 than in 2017.

In the report this year, we have not only looked at the CCO/Customer director roles that we considered in 2017 but also included a broader suite of customer-focused titles. However, we have also isolated those original titles to provide a point of comparison with our 2017 report.

This reflects what happened in the US six years ago and, based on that experience, the numbers of CCO in the UK can only be expected to continue growing.

There is no doubt that this growth will place pressure on the companies looking to appoint a CCO as the competition for qualified candidates increases.

CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICERSOne of the key drivers of that growth is the explosion of CCO roles in B2B. For a while, there was a sense that B2B was lagging behind the B2C world in customer thinking. This is clearly no longer true – in fact, in 2018, there are more B2B CCOs than B2C.

Of the 79 new CCO roles identified in the research, more than half are in the B2B sector.

/21/20

GenderIn the year of a focus on gender diversity, the customer function gender split matches the broader picture. In April 2017, women made up 35% of P&L positions on the boards of FTSE 350 companies (where P&L titles include CEO, CFO, MD and other senior leadership positions.)

Across all the titles researched for this report, the figure was 34% showing that customer roles are matching the rest of industry for gender diversity (or a lack thereof). There is only a tiny growth (two percentage points) in the number of women in the research over 2017.

With so many new appointments, it’s not surprising that the overall tenure is reducing. However, at the other end of the scale, there is a growing cadre of more experienced leaders in the market.

These are the people who will be setting the agenda, creating the manifestos and giving guidance to their peers. (Some of them are interviewed later in this report and their combined experience makes fascinating reading.)

With so many new appointments, it’s not surprising that the overall tenure is reducing. However, at the other end of the scale, there is a growing cadre of more experienced leaders in the market.

/23/22

Where do CCOs come from?For organisations that are looking for a new CCO, it may be helpful to have an idea of where to look. As mentioned earlier in this report, hiring a CCO is a complex task. The skill sets demanded of them suggest that a variety of backgrounds may be possible.

In pulling together this data, it was noted that many of the people being researched did have relatively varied backgrounds and a number of different functions under their belt. In order to create the numbers shown (below), the researchers looked at which function had been more significant in the backgrounds of the CCOs we were researching.

It is apparent that the 2018 cohort comes from a more even distribution of backgrounds. In 2017, marketing was a significantly more common background than any other. This is no longer true – indeed, commercial by a small margin leads the 2018 figures.

This is in part due to differences between B2B and B2C.

CCOs in B2C are nearly three times more likely to come from a marketing background, while those in B2B are nearly twice as likely to come from sales.

There has been a substantial increase in those moving organisation to take up the CCO role. This may be explained by the newness of the role and the relative lack of confidence that organisations looking to become customer-led have in their own abilities.

A key part of the internal change that enables customer thinking is cultural, affecting teams throughout the organisation. A key marker of success in the future will be that businesses have developed internal cultures that produce the CCOs of the future. To get there they will have to plan and ensure that the training, recruitment and operational processes at all levels combine to create internal aptitudes and the confidence to recruit from their own. Until then, those recruiting CCOs for the first time are likely to be standing on the shoulders of giants.

The growth of the role would suggest that fewer and fewer CCOs have previous experience in the role and the 2018 figures bear this out. Over 91% of CCOs in this research had not had a similar role before being appointed.

This will change over time, but presents a challenge to both the individuals being appointed and the organisations appointing them. With both sides having little previous experience of having or being a CCO it requires a great deal of adaptability and cooperation for the appointment to work.

/25/24

Where are CCOs working in 2018?In 2017, the financial services and retail sectors were clearly ahead in appointing CCOs (and ahead in customer-led thinking, taking these appointments as a useful proxy indicator). It’s fascinating to see how quickly other sectors are now catching them up.

In 2018, restaurants and food, software and business services have all seen substantial growth in the numbers of CCOs being appointed. In this chart we have kept

the same categories as last year for easy comparison. But the growth of the ‘other’ group suggests that customer thinking is increasingly spread across a number of different sectors of a wide variety of types.

OTHER CUSTOMER TITLES: CUSTOMER SUCCESS DIRECTORAlongside the growth of the CCO over the last few years, there has been a similar growth of the CSD in the specific area of SaaS-based platform organisations.

Customer success management as a concept has been around for a while and, like CCOs, covers a range of traditionally siloed skills within the business, normally including sales, marketing, professional services and training. Customer success is really focused on the ability to grow and retain a current customer base. There are two powerful drivers for its raised profile within an organisation:

• Customer success teams are recognising that the earlier the engagement with the customer, the more likely they are to be retained Earlier engagement catches issues before they become insurmountable and allows a greater relationship to be built with the customer. This also suggests that a customer success team is required to have a more strategic relationship with its clients, which in turn drives a need for more senior members on the customer success team.

• Creating great customer experiences is as important to this sector as it is to any other The pressures and incentives to become customer-led are consistent across sectors. For organisations that already have a customer success approach, it is natural that customer-led thinking should reside with their teams and that it should, increasingly, be represented by a more senior leader.

We have included the CSDs in this research because we believe they represent a true sub-set of the CCO role within this sector. They are likely to be faced with very similar challenges, and they are a natural part of the wider customer-centric conversation. In looking at CSDs, both the similarities and the differences from CCOs are enlightening.

The customer success team is increasingly required to have a more strategic relationship with its clients, which in turn drives a need for more senior leaders on that team.

/27/26

Current CSD numbersThe research identified 60 CSDs, all of whom came from a technology. As with the CCO research, we looked in detail only at those who were senior or relatively senior in their organisation, and only at organisations that had some scale.

The interesting thing in the lengths of tenure is how closely the CSD tenure matches those of the CCO. It’s an indication of the broader theme of this report – that customer thinking is burgeoning, albeit with different titles describing very similar roles.

As with CCO tenures, this data shows that senior CSD positions (certainly at board level) are relatively new and it is plausible to expect that their number will grow in much the same way.

The number of CSDs in role for the first time is even higher than that of CCOs. At 93%, it suggests that all but a small minority are creating expectations, role definitions and processes for their business. This lack of maturity offers both challenges and opportunities, but it is essential that the businesses making these appointments are aware of the need to support the process of innovation and cultural change.

93%of CSDs are new to their role

LENGTH OF TENURE

It is no surprise that the CSDs are predominantly from customer-facing roles. The software sector is perhaps defined by consultative sales processes and the need to provide ongoing support to client users. The emergence of those specialists into a more prominent leadership role is both a natural outcome of this sector profile and an indication of the natural evolutionary nature of the whole customer-led movement.

The fact that far fewer CSDs have moved organisation to take up their role suggests that their appearance is part of an evolutionary process within their businesses.

Although the functions and responsibilities look quite similar to those of a CCO, the way they have come about is, perhaps, different. The CSD role now represents a clear subset of the broader CCO role.

Although the functions and responsibilities of a CSD look quite similar to those of a CCO, the way those roles have been created is different.

55% Moved organisation

for current role

/29/28

CX as a concept has its roots in thinking from the 1950s. As such, it’s a far older business driver than either customer-led thinking or customer success.

OTHER CUSTOMER TITLES: CHIEF EXPERIENCE DIRECTORThe CXD role arose from a need to extend good experiences beyond the immediate point of sale and post-sale.

‘In 2017, Bain and Company reported that, of 362 companies studied, only 8% of their customers felt their experience was superior – against 80% of the executives of those same companies that felt they were delivering superior experiences.

The acknowledgement of this gap and the growing understanding of its possible causes were key to the creation of customer experience specialists. The growth of CX at an executive level represents the importance of more operationally focused customer experience practitioners having an impact on organisational decisions. The birth of the CX discipline paralleled the rise in the conversation about multi- and omni-channel, especially in retail organisations. There has been a greater desire to examine all interactions between a brand and its audience, and to deliver consistency and excellence throughout all customer journeys.

CXDs face many of the same internal challenges as both CCOs and CSDs. Their areas of responsibility (or at least influence) are moving outwards from their traditional customer service backgrounds to encompass new skills and functions within organisations. Businesses that have been used to the idea of customer experience being ‘over there, in a box’ are having to adjust to the fact that CXDs are taking on more responsibilities.

Businesses that have been used to the idea of customer experience being ‘over there, in a box’ are having to adjust to the fact that CXDs are taking on more responsibilities.

/31/30

Current CXD numbersLike the CCO and the CSD, the emergence of the CXD at executive level is a relatively new phenomenon in the UK (see opposite). Our research identified 65 CXDs of appropriate seniority in sufficiently large organisations.

Of the three functions that have been researched for this report, these tenure figures indicate that senior CX roles at executive level are the newest of all, with significantly fewer being in role for longer than 24 months. There is a growing trend towards using the term CXD synonymously with CCO.

Only time can tell if these roles follow the same trajectory as, first, CCOs in the UK and, second, CCOs in the US.

Of the three functions that have been researched for this report, these tenure figures indicate that senior CX roles at executive level are the newest of all.

If there’s anything that currently shows the clear distinctions between the three roles covered in this report, it is business type. CXDs are emphatically more likely to be from B2C businesses. This isn’t surprising.

B2C has led thinking when it comes to understanding the customer and delivering great experiences at scale. It is natural that it is that sector that is appointing senior CX figures.

A far higher percentage of CXDs have previous experience in this or a similar role than of the other two roles covered. This, along with the predominance of a customer service background (66% have this), suggests that the CXD role is more defined then either CSD or, particularly, CCO.

65%of CXDs were new to the role

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CX as a concept has its roots in thinking from the 1950s (inter alia W E Deming developing the concept of Total Quality Management). As such, it’s a far older business driver than either customer-led thinking or customer success management.

The data from the research indicates that the foundations of the CXD role are likely to be better understood and more recognisable than perhaps the other two roles in the survey.

Like CSDs, CXDs are far more likely to be internal appointments than CCOs. This is another indication of the greater understanding (and capability) of CX in business. It also suggests that, in CX at least, the processes of specifying attributes and metrics for the role are better understood.

60%of CXDs moved organisations for their current role

CURRENT SECTORS OF CXDS

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As a seasoned veteran in this space, how would you advise someone starting out as a CCO?I think it’s important to champion customer centricity, but also to explain some of the other areas you’re responsible for. So, within my remit, you’ve got data and insights, design, marketing. You have to champion all of these and understand how broad the remit is.

You shouldn’t underestimate how full your brain will get in the first three or four months because you’ll be on a curve, learning things that you won’t necessarily have had direct experience of before.

What functions need to sit underneath the CCO in the first instance? The cornerstone of it all is data and analytics, and insights. I think if you don’t understand the customer, you’ll struggle to drive benefits.

How well are organisations leveraging data and insights at the moment? And if there are areas where you think people need to raise their game, what might they be? There are a few factors there. You mustn’t underestimate how much work goes into getting the data in the right place: building a data lake, having the right ways of using that data, making it business ready, making sure you’re getting the DMPs and everything else. That’s not trivial.

The mindset of the business is also important. How data hungry is it? Does it have a top down or bottom up approach?

Also, the world of data changes so fast that it’s not unusual to start work on a project and then have something come along that changes everything. In this role you need to be prepared for this, pick the right battles and be ready to move ahead.

The good businesses are the ones that go back and look at the data and understand who their customers actually are and who their future customers may be.

INTERVIEWS WITH CCOS:ROBERT BRIDGE CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER, THE TELEGRAPH

Robert Bridge joined The Telegraph in March 2016, in the newly created role of Chief Customer Officer. His remit encompasses marketing, design and UX, data and insight, brand management, subscriptions and customer experience initiatives.

How would you characterise the role of the CCO within the context of a broader organisational transformation?Well, they’re part of it, for sure. I think that if the CCO is a member of the executive team, which I believe they should be, then they act as a change agent.

It’s a dual role: one is helping to understand the need for change, and the other is helping to facilitate that change.

How do CCOs tackle friction in the boardroom?It’s about generating trust that you’re delivering what’s needed for executives to do their jobs. Any time you build new organisations, there’s that time of forming, norming and then performing. And that just takes time.

What might the CCO role look like in three years versus how it is today?Digitisation matters more and more, so the role is definitely broadening to incorporate that. And depending on the way the business is set up, I see more people having P&L responsibility, but I suspect there’s no hard and fast rule for that yet.

I wonder who the CCO will become five years into the future. If I look back over my career, it’s a patchwork quilt. You know, stuff in ops, service, transformation, insight, design –– the whole caboodle. Do you think the CCO of the future is a jack of all trades? Yeah, they have to be flexible. To have that patchwork is actually beneficial.

If the data side continues to grow in importance, does the CCO have to have more strength in that world in five years’ time? I don’t know. I do think that it’s going more that way. But the beauty of the marketer is that the marketer has a little bit of left brain, right brain going on.

Digitalisation matters more and more, so the role is definitely broadening to incorporate that.

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With customer centricity, you’re generally thinking with the right brain. But with business, hierarchies and orientation, it’s instinctively more left brain. How do you draw the two together?You have to make sure you’re looking at what the customer needs and the future customer needs. It’s not easy.

A lot of organisations find it difficult to focus on understanding what customer needs are. Why might that be when most sane humans understand this will probably lead to profitable outcomes in the long run?Most businesses want to make a profit. And so it’s those trade-offs you have to make that are challenging. If you think about our business, you’ve got advertising, which is one of our key revenue sources. Advertising when done right is a good experience for the customer. But if it’s done incorrectly or is intrusive, then it’s a bad experience for a customer. That’s an example of where you could say, ‘Well, we don’t have any advertising because customers would not want to have it’. I actually don’t believe that, but I do believe that you need to have the right experience for the customer. And those are difficult decisions.

You’ve talked a bit about start-up mentality and culture. How could you transpose that into a large, more complex corporate environment?You’ve got to be realistic and understand that some things don’t transpose to more established businesses. Understanding the context you’re in is really important. For example, someone was talking about MVP, minimum viable product, which is an approach taken in the start-up world. That’s fine when you’ve got a few thousand customers or maybe tens of thousands. But when you’ve got tens of millions, you don’t want to release a product with the word ‘minimum’. You want to iterate and learn, but there’s an element of trust and love for the brand that is built off things not being minimum. You have to be careful about how you approach some of these things in bigger businesses.

I was in Seattle a few weeks ago and we got to meet some of the Amazon guys. That’s a great example of a start-up type culture within an existing business. They were an online book company and now they’ve spun out their various online retailing businesses, their cloud-based data warehousing capabilities. If I’m honest, that’s something I think British businesses need to be better at: creating that culture to innovate within the boundaries of their legacy.

Most businesses want to make a profit. And so it’s those trade-offs you have to make that are challenging.

Even as businesses are getting better at understanding the importance of data, the bit that is sorely missing is the bit between insight and product or change. Few organisations are good at human centred design, and I think it links to what you’re saying about innovation. What might be going on there?I know there are some very good tools out there that enable you to, if you’ve got a digital interface. We use Adobe Test and Target. We’ve also used Optimizely in the past and they’re both great platforms to interpret the data and to test and learn.

That’s also why your customer department should align with UX design, or product design. But you need product design with the data teams and the data feedback loops. You need to have the structure of your teams right, as I’m sitting in the conference room talking to you, the data teams and the design teams are one desk apart.

Last question: how would you characterise the main challenges facing the CCO today and what’s coming next? I think the main challenges for the CCO are the diversity of functions in the role and being able to provide effective and useful direction to the different specialists. We touched on that, the generalist versus the specialist side of it. You just never stop learning.

The other challenge is probably just operating within the matrix, making sure that your stakeholders are happy and that the fight for customer centricity is done in a way that’s right for the business.

I think the main challenges for the CCO are the diversity of functions in the role and being able to provide effective and useful direction to the different specialists.

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INTERVIEWS WITH CCOS:SARAH THOMASEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF CUSTOMER SERVICES, THE GUINNESS PARTNERSHIP

So first of all, can you tell me how you ended up in this senior customer role?After I graduated, I joined the travel industry. My first senior role was managing Eurostar’s stations in the UK, France and Belgium. After that, I moved on to another senior role at Eurostar creating the customer experience and service strategy.

Until that point, Eurostar only really had an operational focus, like most businesses at that time. But increased competition meant we started to focus on customer service using customer insights.

These days we’d call it customer journey mapping, but at the time it was relatively innovative research. By mapping out customers’ emotional journeys, we were able to tailor our efforts around what really mattered to them. Customer satisfaction increased. Sales also improved.

Having seen an opportunity in housing, I moved to a role at RHP, an innovative housing association. As one of a team of four, including the chief executive, it felt a bit like working for a start-up business in terms of agility and the ability to pilot new initiatives and innovation. I got the opportunity to shape things, and contribute to broader aspects of the whole business.

Then just over two years ago, I joined Guinness, a national housing association with over 65,000 homes and serving 130,000 customers. Guinness has such a long and rich history in housing, coupled with a modern approach to how we run our business today. What excites me about my current role is the opportunity we have to positively impact so many people’s lives by providing great services and great homes.

Sarah joined Guinness in January 2016 as the Executive Director of Customer Services. Prior to joining Guinness, Sarah was in a similar role at RHP, an innovative housing organisation in south-west London where she revitalised their customer service strategy, resulting in a string of national customer experience awards and improved customer satisfaction.

As Head of Customer Service at Eurostar, Sarah devised the service strategy and led a Europe-wide award-winning change programme to deliver service and operational excellence. Sarah’s experience includes successfully devising and implementing service strategy, operational delivery and change management in complex environments.

When it comes to understanding customers’ emotional journeys, how has your thinking and application of this changed over the years?I think there are two elements to it. On the one hand, customers want to do things quickly and easily. And today that’s usually online. But there are also times when we’re more emotional. That’s when we generally prefer human interaction. We want empathetic people to interact with.

Helping us understand when an emotional response is needed by customers is where behavioural science can help. So, for example, at Guinness, ethnographic researchers visited customers in their homes to chat about their life and how this and their home related to the service Guinness provides. This revealed some really strong emotions linked with people’s homes. And how these emotions can play out in something like a repair. When you understand this behavioural science, you can decide which services are best suited to online self-serve – click and book – and which are more suited to a call, or even a visit.

To what degree have you experienced any pushback against using these kinds of insight techniques, and how might you have overcome that?Well, I always try and look at the qualitative research and quantitative data together, to gauge the full picture. One thing we use at Guinness is text analytics. So every time a customer comments qualitatively, all that data goes through our text analytics. It brings out the customer sentiment in a quantitative way.

Helping us understand when an emotional response is needed by customers is where behavioural science can help.

Another factor that’s very important is driver analysis. We’ve noticed some significant underlying changes in customer attitudes in recent years that are affecting our business – and indeed all businesses.

Interesting. Why?We’re analysing this but one reason is differing expectations across different generations. For example, the generation brought up during the war, sometimes known as the silent generation, can be more reserved about expressing their views. Today a greater proportion of ratings for businesses which serve multiple age groups come from the more vocal Baby Boomers and Generation X. These and younger generations are more experienced consumers with a wider range of benchmarks to refer to. They also have an eye on value for money, especially if they’re feeling financial pressures. At Guinness we see this as an opportunity to get to the heart of what makes a good experience for our customers whatever their age or circumstances.

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What kind of functions do you have that help you get the job done?At a corporate level, my role is to share insights with the rest of the organisation and articulate our customer experience strategy. At Guinness I’ve led on the introduction of our service style which was co-created with our customers. We’ve embedded this through a successful training programme so that everyone at Guinness has the skills to be able to deliver this.

I think the most important thing to do is to understand what your business looks like from the outside in. By that I mean, how do customers see your business?

You can have words on a page and go, ‘Oh, here are the things our customers want,’ but nothing’s going to happen if people don’t understand your service ethos and service style, know why you have one, have the skills to deliver it and the passion to deliver it. And they need to know how to apply it in practice in their particular role – what it looks like when you write an email, when you’re on the phone and when you’re dealing with complaints.

So how did you get the business to a stage where this kind of stuff was embedded?As a member of the executive team, I was able to work collaboratively with my colleagues to incorporate the customer experience into our strategy and plans. An important step we took was to nominate a senior manager in each directorate across the business to be the lead on service style. This created a network of service style champions who worked together laterally to embed the service style in addition to our usual ways of working and delivery.

What things do you think will be on your agenda in two or three years that aren’t right now? I think what’s interesting is how we can use technology to proactively do things we can only do reactively now. Having to be at home for an appointment can be a pain for customers. There’s technology on the horizon which promises to be able to provide information to us directly without the need to go into a customer’s home, for example on the boiler’s performance.

Another idea we’re exploring is how we could potentially use key boxes, as common with users of Airbnb.

I think demonstrating the business benefits of prioritising customer experience is important. But because of the intangible nature of much of what we do in customer services and customer experience, that can be a challenge.

And in terms of your role itself, how would you like to see that evolve?The challenges are going to come from how quickly the world around us is changing. When you’re thinking strategically, looking forward over several years, rather than one, it’s harder than it used to be to think of all the possibilities ahead. This probably means that strategies will need to be more fluid and flexible in future to take advantage of the benefits new technologies can offer and to react quickly to new, emerging risks and changes.

What would your advice be to a person coming fresh into this type of role? I think the most important thing to do is to understand what your business looks like from the outside in. By that I mean, how do customers see your business? If you understand this, it can guide you on what you need to prioritise. The danger comes from inside-out thinking. So, before anything else, ask what does my business look like through my customers’ eyes?

Are there things you would recommend to people to get in place while the role’s still nascent?After I’ve understood how customers see the business, the next thing I’ve done is to understand how employees see the business. There’s often a gap and that helps you to identify employees’ engagement, training and communication needs. For example, it’s not unusual to have a gap between the perception customers have of the service you’re delivering, and the perception employees have. Understanding the differences can help steer your strategy and delivery plans.

Clearly articulating what good customer service is for your business, so that everyone is clear on this, irrespective of their cultural background, is always a really good starting point.

Any suggestions for people coming into the role, and how they might approach that in the first instance? I think demonstrating the business benefits of prioritising customer experience is important. But because of the intangible nature of much of what we do in customer services and customer experience, that can be a challenge – especially tangible financial benefits. However, there are sound, commercial reasons to deliver a good customer experience, and risks if you don’t. Look at some of the failing businesses in the news currently. There are household names which have struggled because they have failed to adapt their product and service offer and differentiate their customer experience. And there are others which are thriving because they have.

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How would you advise someone coming into this role for the first time? For me, the most important thing is to give yourself time to orientate and understand the organisation climate and what makes it tick. If you don’t, there’s a risk you’ll always be going against the grain. Every organisation tends to have a magnetic north – they have a culture already. What we do is to tap into that and evolve that culture. So, we turn up the customer dial a bit, or maybe drop down the short-term financial focus.

INTERVIEWS WITH CCOS:IAIN SHORTHOSEDIRECTOR OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, INTERSERVE

Iain has been developing and delivering customer experience strategies for 15 years. His experience ranges from organisations focused on specific sectors and markets to those with diverse propositions operating across EMEA and with global operational footprints.

The early part of his career was focused within utilities and retail; delivering multiple services to large customer bases, across multi-channel and complex processes that involve large numbers of employees (remote, mobile and site based) –– operating in highly regulated and contractual markets.

Since then he has taken customer experience to consumer-led and B2B(2C) organisations, working closely with and part of executive boards. His focus is operationalising the brand, commercial outcomes and customer solutions.

Interserve is a financially driven organisation. Trying to change that and say, ‘Well, it should be a customer-focused organisation,’ just won’t work.

What I’ve done at Interserve is demonstrate in practical terms the commercial risk to the organisation of not making changes. That’s not me trying to instantly change the culture. That’s me dovetailing customer experience as an enabler.

To what degree do you think organisations have a true grasp of what customer centricity means?I think that phrase is bandied around too much. What we’re trying to do in this role is provide the decision makers and influencers with a complementary lens to how they make strategic decisions.

What you’re asking them to do, in essence, is consider the customer as much as they consider profit, financials and employees. Moreover, the link between them all.

Why do you think it’s so hard for organisations to adopt this mindset? It’s behavioural. They have to understand why they are making these decisions, and how to apply it. The acid test will be when somebody makes a decision that puts the customer first, maybe at the expense of short-term gain, but with the view of loyalty, or longevity, or relationship or share of wallet. That demonstrates a different mind-set and in some cases bravery.

I think businesses nowadays find it increasingly difficult, because of the economy, to step away from short-term decision making. And the nature of ‘customer centricity’ and by definition how it influences all parts of an organisation; if you tried to calculate the return on it, it’s rarely short term.

What does that mean for the evolution of the role of the CCO? I think it’s increasingly evidence-based. Part of the role is to give people the confidence, the data, the insight, the evidence to make different decisions. I think a key part of the role is coaching and guidance, whilst providing a framework that enables and encourages a stepped change.

We find that the organisations are generally quite good at collecting data, but insight seems to be sorely lacking. Why might that be the case? It’s not something I experience. My focus would always be on insight rather than data, but with the confidence the data is robust and representative. What is most important is the trajectory your organisation is on and a balanced suite of metrics that reflect what’s important to you and your customers. It could be you are 30 points below a competitor but actually their trajectory might be in the wrong direction, whilst yours is positive.

It’s easy to look at a poor set of numbers, and then make some really rash decisions. But actually you can use insight to put the qual with the quant, and to get a feel for how customers are starting to experience things differently and behave in the way you need them to in order to drive business performance.

I think businesses nowadays find it increasingly difficult, because of the economy, to step away from short-term decision making.

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And in terms of the CCO him or herself, what functions do you believe should naturally sit underneath them? It depends on the organisation and what the challenges are. Any organisation I go into, I start with understanding where we are today in our service delivery, what are our current capabilities in terms of people, technology, leadership etc., and how ready are we to deliver a customer experience strategy.

It’s important to have that position of neutrality. I’ll give you an example: it’s not unusual for ops and sales to operate with a healthy tension. So, if you were to put customer experience in sales, the chances are that you will have operations backed up before you even start.

Customer experience has to inform, but equally it has to own and has to support. I’ve got customer operations at the moment, but I think once we’ve instilled some of the right disciplines and the right folks and framework I can step back from that. But right now, it needs to get on the right path as it’s fundamental to CX strategy.

What makes a strong customer experience strategy? Where it works well is when you dovetail with the overarching organisational strategy and vision, and help the organisation understand the role of CX as an enabler to that. It should touch on all aspects of it, and you should be able to articulate it easily.

I think the customer experience strategy needs to be something that people can relate to and creates a compelling reason to change. Most importantly, it shouldn’t be positioned in such a way that it feels like a project, or a change programme, or anything that has timescales attached to it. So many businesses suffer from ‘project fatigue’ and the cynicism that can follow. Where successful, the customer experience is considered a business imperative.

Who do you believe owns the customer journey end to end? The customer journey has to be recognised by the organisation. If you get it right when you do the journey mapping, you involve the organisation in developing it as part of an engaging and collaborative process that also works to calibrate the perceptions of the ‘as is’.

One of the most important things to move an organisation forward is to get everybody recognising what our current customer experience is. It’s only then that people will own it and you can collectively progress.

What do you think people are getting wrong with their journey mapping initiative? Ticking the box and saying it’s done. You should keep coming back to it as it’s the backdrop to the customer experience change plan. For example, you might do a customer satisfaction survey a couple of times a year. Overlaying that insight back to the customer journey map is critical and taking the opportunity to drill down into process, people and systems.

Customer experience has to inform, but equally it has to own and has to support.

You have to go out, roll your sleeves up and work with customers.

When you’re doing process improvements or looking at bringing in new technology, how do you make sure the customer journey map is front and centre? For a customer journey map to deliver its value, it has to live and breathe, and be brought out of the drawer. In fact, don’t put it in the drawer in the first place!

How do you challenge the belief that customers make decisions purely rationally? You have to go out, roll your sleeves up and work with customers. Part of the customer experience role is helping with relationship management.

You know, B2B is about people and relationship; trust and confidence. A procurement team might have selected us because we were the right price with the right product. But if we don’t provide the services that the operational clients need and expect, they can end up looking incompetent. There are emotional aspects in B2B than people don’t appreciate.

That sounds to me like a core insight around which you could create some real design principles. It is. We’ve got a quote next to each customer journey map about how that customer wants to feel at that stage of the journey. And it’s okay to be talking about the procurement director, or the ops director or sales director, because it is emotional.

Having a set of design principles can really help. These should be based on the key customer needs at a high level, providing guidance with the checks and measures to ensure we continue to design and improve looking from outside-in, not inside-out.

It’s challenging, though. You can’t just talk about customer experience to people and expect them to go off and do it. Providing development and practical tools really helps.

How do you develop the capabilities you need?Early on, we developed something called the CX Academy, which is part of the customer experience strategy. We’ve now trained about 40 customer experience practitioners who are not additional heads or cost. They’re in the account teams, customer facing as well as support functions such as HR, finance, operations, IT and fleet.

These guys are driving the culture change using our language, using the toolkit we gave them, like journey mapping. And that’s fast becoming part of their business as usual (BAU). All we do is support with coaching, so they’re buddied up with individuals in my team so they can bring problems and challenges with them and we work together to overcome them.

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What would your advice be for people coming in to the CCO role?The first thing to do, not in the first year, but probably in the first couple of weeks, is work hard with a peer group to establish where accountability lies, and agree some ways of working.

Next, I’d want to understand how customers were feeling right now. When new CCOs are brought in, it’s presumably not just for the fun of it.

Within the first few months, I’d want to benchmark current customer experience across all key touch points to establish what’s working and what isn’t.

I think it’s important to avoid doing that by knocking out a survey. I’d want to have some face-to-face time with key customers.

Within the first few months, I’d want to benchmark current customer experience across all key touch points to establish what’s working and what isn’t.

INTERVIEWS WITH CCOS:GREG FERRARIVP OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT, PEARSON

With a background in education and publishing, Greg has led a range of UK and international teams through numerous cultural and digital transformation programmes. Most recently, he implemented a global CX strategy for digital products, establishing a new multilingual support infrastructure across four continents. He is currently leading the deployment of an integrated ERP/CRM solution in the UK.

The next most important thing is a communication plan for the rest of the business. To say, okay, this is what I’m coming to do. This is how I see our current strengths and weaknesses, and here’s what we’re going to do about it.

I think if you get those three things right, relatively quickly, everything else falls into place. The decisions you make about where to invest resource, and what projects you prioritise, should come out of the feedback from your customers, rather than internal concerns.

Why do you think organisations still struggle to get up and close and personal with the customer?I think there’s a fear among people in leadership positions that perhaps they should know all this stuff already.

Just day to day, the noise of leadership roles means a lot of people don’t make the space in their schedules to get out and speak to customers.

Some might think it’s not the most effective use of their time. In my view, there can be no more effective use of a CTO’s time than to actually go and speak to customers.

Can you summarise what good personas look like?It’s not always immediately apparent who your customers are. For your sales organisation, clearly your customers are the people who make the purchasing decisions. Outside of that, your product guys will regard customers as being the end users. Then your operations guys, they might regard your customers as completely different parties altogether.

I tend to take the broadest possible definition of customers as not necessarily just being the people that have all the money, or use of product or service, but anybody that relies on your organisation for help and support. Until you understand that and segment it, you can’t make effective decisions about where to put your focus and your investment.

How have you worked the CCO’s role into the dynamic of the board room? Has there been friction? I think a little bit of friction is a good thing. I think there’s inevitably going to be tension when it comes to executive decision making. The CRO and the operations team are going to be asked year on year to make cost savings. The Chief Customer Officer should be the person who puts the brakes on, who makes sure they’re cutting the right things and investing in the right things. You’re speaking on behalf of customers, which ultimately is what’s going to deliver a healthy business.

Do you think the CCO is a specialist or generalist role?I think a broad skill base is the best one, and not necessarily from a customer support background. I began the first half of my career in a specialist functional role within assessment. It was interesting moving from that into a customer-facing role, which is the polar opposite.

Nobody wants to be lectured from a place of a lack of knowledge about the realities of working in other roles within the organisation. A broad background is really good. Then it becomes a case of, what do you like doing? We all know that technology can have huge impact on customer experiences, but the same goes for HR processes.

If I was pressed on it, I would say why not enjoy your particular skill? If you’re ultimately a culture person, and you’re going into a tech-focused organisation, that might be a difficult fit. If you move into a more people-focused environment, then you might have a lot of success there.

The technology solution is always put out as the silver bullet, but an incredibly engaged and motivated frontline staff can hide a multitude of things in the background.

I think a little bit of friction is a good thing. I think there’s inevitably going to be tension when it comes to executive decision making.

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How would you go about creating that internal excitement around customer? I think it’s easier for customer-facing teams. The biggest challenge is changing culture and behaviours in people who historically don’t have their performance managed using customer-related metrics. For me, this is where top-level sponsorship, strong HR policies, and strong recognition and reward policies come into their own.

I also think that if a company got its recruitment and onboarding processes right from a customer perspective, so many of its other problems would melt away within three or four years.

When I looked after large UK-based customer service teams, I would always want our teams to try and recruit from retail because they are people that really get customers. For me, the long-term way to drive cultural change is to have a hard look at how you do recruitment across the organisation.

Back to this notion of the CCO being a true business generalist, what other strings to bow are there?We’ve spoken about HR and culture. We’ve spoken about technology. The other area is sales – making sure those guys are up to speed. The other thing is understanding the feedback loop of what the customers are telling you about your products and how you translate that into product improvement.

You’ve done some amazing stuff. How would you characterise the factors that led to success?I think collective executive sponsorship and buy-in is a must. I hate to reduce it down to finances, but the biggest successes I’ve had have been where I’ve had the finance teams supporting my strategy.

The technology solution is always put out as the silver bullet, but an incredibly engaged and motivated frontline staff can hide a multitude of things in the background.

What’s your experience of getting finance bought in? You have to be disciplined in the way you construct your proposals. I came up with a strategy for Pearson, which was about building out a completely new customer support infrastructure. It was impossible to do that on the basis of pure cost savings.

We had to spend money to build up this infrastructure, and we had to do it quickly because we were pushing digital product faster than we were able to support it. That business case was built very strongly around revenue growth, revenue retention and future cost avoidance.

How do you start constructing a case around future cost reduction? At Pearson we were dealing predominantly with B2B. What we then moved into was pushing more digital and pushing a lot more B2C. Rather than just sending some books to a book shop or a school, all of a sudden, we were providing access to digital learner resources, and we were putting them in the hands of the end user.

Going back to the cost avoidance thing, if you can go without your customer support infrastructure, who’s going to deal with questions? The answer is, your field service team. Every time your sales person went out to a school or university, they would have an hour-long appointment, and they’d spend the first 59 minutes doing technical support. This might leave them a minute at the end to try and sell

If you can go without your customer support infrastructure, who’s going to deal with questions? The answer is, your field service team.

something. The cost avoidance point comes in because if you don’t build out proper support infrastructure, you end up with an increasingly inefficient sales organisation to deal with all this noise that’s out there.

What you do is spend some time building out a really robust support infrastructure so that the sales people can point their customers to the centralised teams. That was a big cornerstone of the cost avoidance piece: let’s not end up with a big, bloated, inefficient sales organisation because we didn’t have the discipline to build out a tight support function on day one.

I think that’s a wonderful example, very creative. That could be a thing: future cost reduction.

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four phases – Fix the basics, Deliver brilliantly on the fundamentals, then create Differentiated experience which you can monetise, then Delight customers, delivering an experience so good not only do they want to stay forever but they want to tell their friends about how great you are. The successful CCOs have all built the same, right, capability at the same phase. Too many people come into the role wanting to tackle immediately the big long term customer and relationship challenges whereas the place to start is the day to day frustrations your customers repeatedly experience right now.

INTERVIEWS WITH CCOS:SEAN RISEBROW DIRECTOR OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, BUPA

What would be your advice for someone coming into this new type of CCO role?Recognise that when you are appointed you are facing an execution challenge, not a strategic one. Every organisation that goes through a customer experience transformation goes through the same

As Director of Customer Experience Sean led the transformation of Virgin Media’s customer experience from its launch in 2007 until its acquisition by Liberty Global in 2013. The turnaround in the quality of experience has been by quoted by analysts as a key element in the $5 to $53 increase in share price, during which the customers’ view of the experience changed from bottom quartile to industry lead. Sean is one of a few Senior Executives that has successfully led an organisation through the four recognised stages to Customer Experience Maturity –– Fix, Deliver, Differentiate and Delight.

Sean worked for Fidelity Worldwide Investment in February 2014, to shape and drive their customer centricity programme. In January of 2015 Sean joined NewsUK, the publishers of The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun where he was responsible for the Customer Experience, Member Service and Customer Event teams. Sean now leads the Customer Experience team at BUPA as their Director of Customer Experience, dedicated to helping its customers live longer, healthier and happier lives.

Recognise that when you are appointed you are facing an execution challenge, not a strategic one.

The secret is to keep following the voice of the customer. Short term tactical improvements will help fix basics and deliver consistently on fundamentals.

Do you believe that, in general, people are trying to overthink CX?Yes. Start with the most important things customers are talking about today. It will inevitably be transactional part of the experience, the things that you are doing that are driving bad costs into the business and destroying brand value rather than creating it. That way you can make impact – both for customers and the business quickly – and begin to gain credibility.

How do you know what is most important to customers?Listen to them. We talked about the smartest CCOs building the right capability at the right time. They tend to build the programme on getting the Executive on board and then around five operation pillars, measurement, business change, embedding, target (brand) experience, and culture. And they start with the first three, in order. Sell the vision to the Exec and get them to visibly support. Then get measurement in place. You cannot run a great customer experience programme without great measurement. Once you listened to customers act on it. So the Exec foundation, Measurement, Fixing stuff is where to focus on for the first 12 months.

Reading between the lines it seems that CX professionals are almost trying too hard. Perhaps the discipline is to an extent still trying to justify its own existence?New practitioners often think too big too soon, and don’t really believe the promise we have made the business. Our promise is that if you deliver a superior experience to customers then this will deliver superior, long term, sustainable business growth. I think new practitioners intuitively believe this but struggle to connect it to where to start. When you fix the basics you save money,

when you deliver consistently customers stay with you more, when you provide a differentiated service you can charge more, or sell additional services, and when you delight customers you can increase word of mouth purchases. Let customer behaviour your existence, not rhetoric.

Nevertheless, if we look at CX as a discipline, could we argue that it can end up just delivering tactical improvements?The secret is to keep following the voice of the customer. Short term tactical improvements will help fix basics and deliver consistently on fundamentals – although these need to be fixed for good rather than being delivered by workarounds. So you will reach a point where customers are talking more about the big relationship – product and value for money – not just service. When you reach this point you’ll need really solid time series data of not only what customers talk about but how what they say today leads to what they do tomorrow. That’s when you will need to make the “right from right” decisions to keep moving on. Is very easy to stay simply fixing tactical stuff.

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The research and interviews in this report highlight the shift in how businesses are viewing their customers and that the customer agenda is being recognised in many boardroom conversations.

The journey to becoming customer-led is a long one. It’s a journey that profoundly changes most organisations’ DNA and one that requires a new flexibility and approach to both internal silos and external communications. In many cases, businesses are faced with a twinned challenge: the role itself is new and the appointee is unlikely to have all the specifically relevant experience required.

There is a huge overlap between the three roles covered – they may have come from slightly different places but the insights that drive their appointments are broadly similar, and push the organisations making those decisions in broadly similar directions.

It appears that the CSD and CXD senior functions are appearing as a development of existing corporate activities and this emergence is an evolutionary process, whereas the CCO roles are being created as part of a transformational process. Wherever they come from, each role is likely to be faced with a need to define and implement changes across technology, data, culture and leadership itself. This span presents a need for clearly understood objectives and an internal alignment in making the appointment.

In creating a senior customer role – whichever specific title is used – the organisation should understand that it needs, or will need, the answers to the following questions:

• Strategy Is the leadership aligned around a common and complete vision and strategy?

• Insight Do we fully understand our customers and what drives their use of our services?

• Design Do we understand how to create services, journeys and propositions?

• Delivery Do we have the ability to deliver on our promises to the customer?

• Measurement Do the current metrics drive the business forward?

• Culture Do we have the teams and internal process that will enable successful execution?

SUMMARY The journey to becoming customer-led is a long one. It’s a journey that profoundly changes most organisations’ DNA and one that requires a new flexibility and approach to both internal silos and external communications.

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