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THE
LIST
Customer Zealot
Getting serious about customer service.
Here’s a question for you: Do customers experience your company
the way you want them to?
If you’re like most company presidents, you probably have
to answer with a reluctant “No.” Most leaders have a
sneaking suspicion that customers aren’t shouting their praises
from the rooftops.
The answer may be creating the position of Chief Customer Officer
(CCO), whose role is to get your company customer-focused in a way
it has never been before. In “Chief Customer Officer: Getting
Past Lip Service to Passionate Action,” author Jeanne Bliss
offers help in determining whether your company is ready for a CCO
and what to look for in promoting one from within or hiring one
from outside.
For 25 years Bliss has been a customer zealot for five large U.S.
market leaders working to get the customer on the strategic agenda,
redirecting proirities and creating changes to the customer experience.
Among the questions Bliss says need to be answered are: Is there
someone in your company who clarifies what you want to accomplish
with customers? Is there a roadmap for the customer work to be done
and a way to measure progress? Is everyone’s roles and responsibilities
clear? Are appropriate resources allocated to make a real difference
to customers?
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6 Things to Look for in a CCO: |
1. Passion and Persistence. They’ve got to believe in
the work enough to stake their reputations on making it happen.
2. Ability to Give the Power Away. The greatest measure of success
for the CCO is when the work is adopted by people as their own.
3. Revenue = Attention. The work is about building the business
through the growth of customer profitability and company revenue.
4. Action. The company will need to see substantive change to
believe that the commitment is true and real.
5. Survival of the Chameleon. A CCO should understand the functions
of the organization to move quickly from being an outsider to
being “one of us.”
5. Marketing Hope. The CCO must understand what customers need
and help them to believe the company is listening.
Source: Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past
Lip Service to Passionate Action, by Jeanne Bliss, Jossey-Bass/A
Wiley Imprint, April 2006, ISBN: 0-7879-8094-3, $27.95, www.josseybass.com. |
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