I just published a new report describing “Customer Experience Executives’ Top Priorities For 2010.”

The research uncovered a significant shift in focus for established customer experience execs.

In their early days, most customer experience executives focus on building their teams, gaining visibility and momentum, and fixing broken experiences. Now, many execs have survived their early days, and they're starting to think longer-term. This shift is clearly reflected in the two most common areas of focus for this year: defining clear strategies and developing repeatable management processes. Other common efforts include infusing customer experience into standard business processes, aligning employees by tying compensation to customer experience metrics, and taking more action in response to available customer data.

We here at Forrester see this shift as a sign that customer experience is rapidly maturing, largely driven by the emergence of the chief customer officer (CCO) as a key leadership role within many organizations. As existing CCOs gain influence and other firms see the financial and competitive advantages of strong customer experience leadership, we expect this trend to become even stronger.

What do you think: Will CCOs become as common as CMOs?

On a related note: I'll be presenting the findings from this research at Forrester's Customer Experience Forum next week. Hope to see you there!