When it comes to customer success, there are various roles in an organization. If you have been following SmartKarrot’s blogs then you would find that we have written many blogs on different roles. But this blog is specifically about Chief Customer Officer (CCO).
Chief Customer Officer (CCO) is the highest position in the customer success department in any organization. They serve alongside the executive board members and are responsible for driving the customer success initiatives in an organization.
These initiatives can be in any of the forms, from creating a customer loyalty program to driving training for employees.
Since customer success is a relatively new business function, the Chief Customer Officer is one of the latest roles. Yet it picked up quite fast in the last few years. According to a report by CCO Council in 2014, 22% of Fortune 100 companies had adopted CCO roles.
And since the boom of SaaS industry, this role has seen a sudden upsurge in the last five years.
So, if you are looking forward to grooming yourself for a career as a CCO, then you must know all about it. Continue reading for more information on this.
Roles and responsibilities of a CCO
The CCO mostly reports to the CEO of a company. Most of the time they are responsible for drawing attention of the C-suite executives towards customer-centric values. This is said in a broader manner. But looking at their day-to-day responsibilities, below are a few of the areas they are involved in.
Supervising all customer-facing teams
All the different teams who have customer-facing roles come under the supervision of a Chief Customer Officer. These teams include:
- Customer success
- Customer support
- Professional services
- Customer operations
- Customer experience
The account management team also sometimes falls under the scope of CCO responsibilities. Especially when they are dealing with upselling and renewals. Other times they report to a sales head.
Enabling cross-functional collaboration
Mostly in the traditional setup, the different departments are siloed. They often work in isolation and in doing so, they forget the most important component of their business – the customer. It is the CCO’s job to align all those departments with a customer-centric culture.
When it comes to the customer, they expect a consistent and seamless experience from the brand. It is not possible to provide the same if all departments are working in silos. The CCO ensures that all departments, whether it is marketing, sales, customer support or even product management, are unified. They must have a common vision towards helping the customers succeed.
Strengthening the customer relationship
If the sales and marketing team are busy fulfilling their targets. The product management team is busy building its products. And even the support team is busy resolving tickets. Then who is responsible for maintaining the customer relationship? It is the CCO.
The CCO is the voice of the customer to an organization. They specifically target building an exceptional relationship with the customers. These relationships can form not just out of a goodwill but adding tangible values to the customers.
CCOs guide the customer success department in maintaining such high-value relationships. Which customer is more valuable than others. How is the quality of relationships the CSMs are developing with them? All these areas are overseen by a CCO.
Training the employees
To infuse the customer-centric culture in an organization is not an easy task. Every employee must have proper training towards giving the best customer experience. CCOs design the training modules towards such objectives.
They organize workshops and training modules for employees to ingrain the customer-centric values in them. If required they are also involved in hiring the right candidates for such customer-centric roles.
Building customer loyalty programs and feedback
CCOs are mainly responsible for driving initiatives towards customer loyalty programs. These programs are designed keeping the customer expectations in mind. Hence, the customer feedback forms an important part of such programs.
Without the feedback, all the customer-centric initiatives are blind shots in the dark. By gaining valuable feedback, the companies can align their strategies towards meeting customer’s expectations.
CCOs ensure that their team is using the right tools for collecting feedback and they take proper actions towards them. A feedback loop is closed only when right actions are taken based on them.
How does the CCO achieve their vision?
The points above state the broader areas a Chief Customer Officer is involved in. But let us now discuss the various methodologies they apply towards achieving those visions.
Using metrics
They often show their progress in the form of gross retention rate. This metric shows the rate of revenue that is being generated from the existing customers. These revenues can be in the form of:
- Renewals of the subscription
- Account expansion through upselling or cross-selling
They also use the net retention number which shows the number of customers retained in a given period.
Aligning the sales team
The CCO keeps a check on the sales team to ensure they are selling to the right-fit customer. If the customer leaves before the customer acquisition cost is recovered, then it is a loss for the business.
They add a layer of qualification for the right customers whose predicted lifetime value can surpass their acquisition cost.
Helping the marketing team
The CCO helps marketing team collaborate with customer advocates. They use these advocates for creating case studies and putting them in spotlight. This way, prospects can relate much deeply with those customer’s voices and they eventually add up into the sales funnel.
Enabling product enhancement
They evaluate the customer’s feedback on the product and take it forward to the product management team for implementation. They help product management teams strategize on the product for:
- Early adoption so that customer retention becomes easier
- Easy to navigate features
- Better user experience
These customer-centric dimensions to the product can only be added by the Chief customer officer.
Wrapping up
Your customer acquisition strategies are no doubt essential for scaling the business. But to ensure that you don’t leave a leaky bucket behind from where your existing customers leave you, you need to invest in customer success.
Hiring a mid-management customer success team can help you up to a certain extent. But the value that a CCO can bring with the power to influence different departments and implementing futuristic strategies towards better customer experience, can never be overemphasized.
A mid-management CS team can fulfill your present needs but a visionary angle can only be obtained through CCOs.
You might also like:
- The Role of the Key Account Manager in Boosting Customer Success! – Include the ways on how Key Account Managers can increase customer success.
- To understand how SmartKarrot helps SaaS companies keep and grow loyal customers, Request a Demo.
The post Chief Customer Officer: Roles and Responsibilities of the Modern CCO appeared first on SmartKarrot l Comprehensive Customer Success.
