2013 – the year of the Chief Customer Officer
Over the last five years Forrester Research has reported a marked increase in the number of companies with a single executive leading customer experience efforts across a business unit or an entire company: 2013 will be the year we see the exception become the rule.
Companies of all shapes and sizes finally start to realise, and acknowledge, the importance of not only pulling metrics for unilateral analysis, but also building this ‘customer intelligence’ into the company-wide business processes, enhancing customer experience management.
Leading this ‘outside in’ customer strategy, relaying it from the boardroom, across the company, and back, will be the charge of the Chief Customer Officer (CCO).
2012 has seen customer experience continue to gain momentum and become ever more important to B2B clients. Knowing how customers and potential customers, whoever they might be, want to be communicated with and the channels by which they are communicating is essential, and making the most of this customer-centric knowledge demands the expertise of an industry specialist.
In 2013 these new drivers will firmly establish the CCO as the voice of the customer at the boardroom table, consequently increasing the impetus around company-wide customer experience and journey mapping initiatives.
The secret ingredient to delivering consistent, meaningful experiences and relationships is collaboration; both internal and between employee and customer. Only through enterprise-wide transparency, information sharing, proactive feedback, and communication that transcends hierarchical structures, can teams respond to customer expectations and manage their journeys effectively; and the CCO will be the engine driving this in 2013.
