The Rise Of The Chief Customer Officer

January 24th, 2011

Paul Hagen

With contributors:

Harley Manning , Jennifer Peterson

Summary

Forrester studied more than 100 executives in charge of enterprisewide customer experience to create a composite profile that includes their titles, tenure in the job, backgrounds, and where they report in their organizations. We found that most of these chief customer officers (CCOs) have been in their jobs for two years or less time, have backgrounds as general managers, marketers, and sales leaders, and are heavily concentrated in the business services, IT, and financial services industries. The majority of them sit on the executive management team at their firms, and they are highly likely to report to the chief executive officer (CEO) or the head of a line of business. Should your company follow the example of firms like Allstate Insurance, Cardinal Health, Cigna, Dunkin' Brands, and Oracle by appointing a CCO? Our research shows that the answer is "yes" if you need to radically increase the business discipline required to deliver a differentiated customer experience.

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Forrester helps business and technology leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth. That means empowering you to put the customer at the center of everything you do: your leadership strategy, and operations. Becoming a customer-obsessed organization requires change — it requires being bold. We give business and technology leaders the confidence to put bold into action, shaping and guiding how to navigate today's unprecedented change in order to succeed.