The UK Chief Customer

Officer Report
July 2018
CONTENTS

04 14 34 46
Foreword Our thinking: Interviews with CCOs: Interviews with CCOs:
maturity and the CCO archetypes Robert Bridge, Greg Ferrari,
The Telegraph Pearson

06 18
Executive summary Chief Customer Officers
38 50
Interviews with CCOs: Interviews with CCOs:
Sarah Thomas, Sean Risebrow,
08 25 The Guinness
Partnership
BUPA

Introduction Other customer titles:

Customer Success Director
42 52
10 28 Interviews with CCOs:
Iain Shorthose,
Summary

The CCO role: Other customer titles: Interserve

overview Chief Experience Director

/02 /03
FOREWORD
It’s a real pleasure to write the foreword for this, our second annual report
on the state of the customer function within British business. This year the
report is substantially more wide-reaching than in 2017. We have expanded
our research into a broader selection of senior customer titles.
This reflects the truth that there are
many people involved at a senior level, with
a responsibility for making their businesses
more customer-led, who do not have the
Chief Customer Officer title.
The other way in which this year’s report
is different is that we have partnered with
our sister company – Comotion – to provide
substantial amounts of thought leadership.
This comes from both the Comotion
internal team – where it is a reflection of
the agenda-leading thinking that typifies
the Comotion approach – and a series of
in-depth interviews from some of the UK’s
customer giants.
It’s an exciting time to be consulting in,
and recruiting for, businesses that wish to
become more customer-centric. 2018 has
seen another exponential growth in
the number of C-level customer roles.
This report shows that they are coming
from a broader set of backgrounds and
represent an increasing number of
sectors than ever before.
The research and thought
leadership clearly explains why
appointing such a person offers
new challenges for business.
/04
The research and thought leadership clearly
explains why appointing such a person
offers new challenges for business. The new
combination of responsibilities, technologies
and internal functions that might be affected
by such an appointment requires new
thinking from both the organisation and the
individual going into the role. In Talecco, we
delight in helping both sides of this equation,
finding the right people for the roles and
helping engender the cultural changes
required to ensure that they (and therefore
the business) will thrive.
I hope you enjoy the data, interviews and
articles contained in this report and – more
importantly – that they help you develop
your thinking about both the people you
might wish to hire and the role you need
them to be doing.
Nish Kotak
Director
Talecco
www.talecco.com
ABOUT TALECCO
Talecco provides a complete solution for building and
developing your Customer function and team. We are
constantly learning from our community of CCOs. We
run the largest community of Customer Officers and
Customer Executives across Europe. The forums and
seminars that we hold provide a real insight into the
way that CCOs are being engaged and the challenges
facing them as they join a business.
ABOUT NISH KOTAK
Nish Kotak is the Managing Director
of Talecco, a talent business helping
organisations throughout their
journey of becoming customer-
led, from hiring at an executive
level, through the transformation
process, to building and upskilling
teams. He has been working in
executive search and placement
for 15 years and was previously
a management consultant with
PwC. He has held roles as strategy
and business development at both
Great Universal Stores and United
Business Media.
ABOUT COMOTION
We believe a combined commercial and emotional
approach to this opportunity is essential. This is how
we build our teams, design our projects and embed
value in our clients’ businesses. This combined
mindset allows us to navigate the difficult terrain
that our clients face on their journey to being truly
customer-led.
ABOUT GRAHAM RUDDICK
Graham Ruddick is Head of Brand
for Comotion. He set up the New
Media team at an agency in 1995
and has been involved with digital,
marketing and publishing ever
since. He has worked at Centaur,
Reed Business Information,
Trinity Mirror and Emap in various
roles including Digital Marketing
Director, Managing Director and
Global E-Business Director.
/05
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The rise of customer-led thinking
and the Chief Customer Officer
• It’s been 21 years since the idea
that creating customer differentiation
would drive competitive success –
it’s been over 60 years since
customer experience was identified
as a commercial driver.
• Many organisations face a gap
between customer expectations (in
a world where those expectations are
becoming ever more entrenched and
vocalised) and the ability to deliver
against those expectations.
• For all three roles covered within
this report, there are a number of
contextual issues:
• None of the roles has
a standardised definition of either
the person or their responsibilities.
• In many cases the responsibilities
are new to both the person and the
organisation.
• The roles are all looking at
fundamentally changing an
organisation’s relationship with
its customer.
• This is not only about deploying
technology – it’s also about
understanding needs, creating
sustainable and appropriate solutions
and services, and changing the culture
of an organisation through effective
leadership.
• This report builds on the Chief
Customer Officer (CCO) report from
2017 and extends its remit to include
other customer titles (Customer
Success Director and Customer
Experience Director).
/06
The Chief Customer Officer’s
profile
• The CCO’s role can be described at
a high level as to:
• act as the voice of the customer in
all internal conversations
• create the end-to-end experience
to consider the customer at
every point
• ultimately drive commercial
performance through acquiring
and retaining customers.
• A business appointing a CCO has to
expect that they will change how it
operates across many, if not all, parts
of the organisation.
• There is more and more data showing
that being customer-led is a profound
differentiator and commercial driver.
• The number of CCOs in the UK
increased exponentially from 90 in
2017 to 169 in 2018.
• Customer executives in B2B have
caught up with B2C.
• A large number of CCOs are stepping
into a new role in their organisation
and are undertaking it for the first
time. This creates challenges for the
individual and the employer.
• In gender diversity, the CCO world
matches but does not exceed the UK
boardroom averages.
• In 2018, CCOs are coming from
more diverse backgrounds and are
representing a larger number of
sectors.
The Customer Success Director
profile
• The research identified 60 Customer
Success Directors (CSDs), all of whom
are in the SaaS-based platform
organisations.
• Within that sector, CSDs predominantly
have customer service backgrounds.
• CSD roles are predominantly focused
on retention and renewal.
• CSD roles are being created as
a strategic imperative in response
to needing earlier engagement with
customers and recognising that
creating great experiences is essential
to commercial success.
• In tenure terms, CSDs broadly match
CCOs – indicating the relative newness
of these appointments at board level.
• Businesses need to be aware of the
requirement to support new CSDs in
new roles as they create a process of
innovation and cultural change.
There is more and more data
showing that being customer-led
is a profound differentiator and
commercial driver.
The Customer Experience Director
profile
• The Customer Experience Director
(CXD) role arose from the need to
extend good experiences beyond
immediate point of sale. It is the oldest
of the three roles defined.
• CX is often linked to conversations
about multi- and omni-channel.
• Research identified 65 board-level
CXDs in the UK.
• CXDs are significantly more likely to be
in B2C sectors, reflecting a recognition
within B2C of the need to deliver great
experiences at scale.
• The CXD role (at least in a foundational
way) is likely to be better defined and
understood in an organisation than
the other two roles.
/07
INTRODUCTION
In 1997 Robert Woodruff wrote a seminal paper on marketing. In it he
described how understanding and creating customer value would be the
next source of competitive advantage.
Robert Woodruff is the first to be credited
with espousing this view in a formal paper.
In the 21 years since, it has become
increasingly clear that he was broadly
correct. Among several key concepts is
the following thought:
‘The concept of customer value only
becomes an important management tool
only if and when it is shared within an
organisation.’1
The idea of being customer-led is now
common in most organisations. Indeed,
what company would ever say, ‘We’re not
focused on our customers’? However, the
reality remains that saying and doing are
very far apart. Consumers themselves still
do not believe that most companies actually
do offer products, services or interactions
that provide a good or great customer
experience.
The ‘experience gap’ is relatively well
understood. Closing this gap presents an
ongoing and increasingly critical challenge
to modern business. There are six factors
involved in this change:
1. Strategy
2. Data/Insight
3. Design
4. Delivery
5. Measurement
6. Culture change
For all of these there, is a need for effective
leadership.
1 Customer value: The next source for competitive advantage. Robert B Woodruff. Academy of Marketing Science.
Journal; Spring 1997
/08
The idea of being customer-led is now common in
most organisations. Indeed, what company would
ever say, ‘We’re not focused on our customers’?
Purpose of report
The purpose of this report is to examine the
adoption of senior customer roles within UK
businesses and to look at who is doing the job
and, to a degree, what the job entails. It will
also look at the challenges and opportunities
for a CCO. Customer-led thinking within
organisations is still a relatively new discipline,
with the result that there is a huge variety of
approaches and definitions. In this report, we
are attempting to pull some of this disparate
thinking together and to provide a central
resource for companies that are starting
to think about how they might become
customer-led.
This information might be used to:
• justify a CCO
• hire a CCO
• become a CCO.
There is no doubt that we are operating
within a rapidly evolving marketplace.
Report background
and methodology
This report is derived from a number of
THE RISE OF THE CCO
sources. These include discussions with Jack Chambers was appointed in 1994 as
customer executives in the UK, online media CCO of Texas New Mexico Power. He was
including LinkedIn, web-based research
and publicly available company reports
the first CCO in the world.
and postings. We have also included five In the 24 years since this appointment,
interviews with senior customer executives the world has seen an explosion in rhetoric
that provide a deep layer of extra insight about becoming customer-led. Moreover,
into how their businesses are thinking in recent years, this rhetoric has been
and working. matched by an increasing number of
appointments and a new C-level function
In last year’s report, we specifically focused in the leadership team.
on the CCO role itself. This year, we have
broadened the research to include other
customer-focused titles. In fact, we have
included nearly 40 different titles in the
research. These are broadly grouped into
CCO, Customer Success Director (CSD) and
Customer Experience Director (CXD).
When we have looked at an individual,
we have made a judgement about seniority
and influence, and have only included those
who are truly senior in larger organisations.
(As a side note, it’s very clear that young
start-up and scale-up businesses are way
ahead of their more established peers in
recognising the need for, and appointing,
customer-focused executives.)
Young start-up and scale-up businesses
are way ahead of their more established
peers in recognising the need for, and
appointing, customer-focused executives.
/09
THE CCO ROLE: OVERVIEW
There isn’t a single definition of the CCO role because, as a new member of
the leadership team, the CCO’s functions are interpreted differently across
many organisations. But there are a number of factors that are consistent.
The role of the CCO is to:
• act as the voice of the customer in all
internal conversations
• create the end-to-end experience that
considers the customer at every point
• put that learning into product and
service design and delivery
• ultimately to drive commercial
performance through acquiring and
retaining customers
Having a customer-led approach and really
delivering on the ambition to be customer-
led should clearly be at the forefront of
all business thinking. To deliver this, there
must be alignment at board level to involve
the creation of a customer function and/or
customer champions across the business.
An organisation that is trying to become
more customer-led is likely to have to adjust
or change the way it does business across
many different functions. The CCO can
plausibly claim to touch all functions within
an organisation. This adds a complexity to
the role that suggests, in the first instance
the role that it should be senior and, in
the second, that recruiting such a person
presents its own issues.
Customers need internal champions.
/10
In these relatively early days, finding
people and a team that have the required
broad competencies is difficult. Later in the
report, we talk about where the existing
CCOs have been before they take up the
role. What’s noticeable in 2018 is that
the backgrounds of those appointed are
becoming increasingly diverse.
However, it’s not just about the people
taking on the roles. It’s clear that a CCO
will likely have to fundamentally change
the DNA of the organisation they work for
in order to be successful. The key here is
to make those changes in a manner that
reflects the corporate’s position ‘today’.
Iain Shorthose (Director of Customer
Experience, Interserve), in his interview
later in this report, puts it this way:
‘…the most important thing is to give
yourself time to orientate and understand
the organisation climate and what makes it
tick. If you don’t, there’s a risk you’ll always be
going against the grain. Every organisation
tends to have a magnetic north – they have
a culture already. What we do is to tap into
that and evolve that culture…’
Having a CCO in the organisation is a great
start but not enough on its own to make
significant advances. Customer initiatives
are no longer solely about deploying
technology – platforms are not a panacea.
There needs to be a shared language
around the customer throughout the
organisation, along with a shared view of
what it means.
Customer initiatives are no longer solely about
The complexity of the role can also be
seen in the types of cultural and attitudinal
deploying technology –– platforms are not a panacea.
changes that a CCO might be asked to make.
Traditional business inclination is to... Good customer thinking...
• focus on product differentiation • understands customer needs to drive product
and service differentiation
• use existing employees and training to create • creates new thinking and capabilities within
better customer thinking the organisation, including a new focus on
employee experience
• let things happen so long as they don’t • makes customer thinking fundamental to sales
interfere with sales
• use research to understand buying habits • uses research to understand customer needs
and journeys
• think of customer projects as an • treats customer projects as critical strategic
experimental cost investments
• let the experts ‘get on with it’ • makes the customer a company-wide agenda
and central to every employee
/11

The range of these changes doesn’t just
present a challenge to the CCO – it’s also
a real challenge to the employer who not
only has to find the right person but also
needs to adjust the organisational structure
to enable that person to be effective.
In truly customer-led organisations, power
is devolved downwards – anyone who has
customer interaction is given authority
to make ad hoc decisions for the benefit
of their customers.
It’s worth mentioning that not all
companies need a specific CCO. A degree
of organisational maturity required before
a CCO can be fully effective. Measuring and
understanding the degree of customer
maturity in an organisation can take many
forms but a useful guide is that it might
include the following core concepts:
• Strategy • Delivery
• Insight • Measurement
• Design • Culture
/12
Objectives of a CCO
At the highest level, the key objectives of
a CCO are – like the rest of the business –
focused on commercial outcomes. Below
this, they are likely to fall into the following
categories:
• Driving business growth and revenue
through being customer-led
This requires the CCO and the
organisation to start to link customer
attitudes and experience with
improved financial performance.
• Delivering personal and relevant
relationships with customers
It’s just as important as ever
Above all else, this requires an
However difficult the challenges, there is excellent understanding of the
no doubt that customer-led thinking is customers’ needs and their
essential. Consumers and customers are interactions with the organisation.
becoming ever more demanding. 63% It also requires a resolve to generate
of US consumers say they’d share more and act on insight on an ongoing basis.
information with a company that offered
a great experience. This becomes particularly • Competing in the modern marketplace
important in the age of GDPR. On the other in customer experience rather than
hand, nearly a third of consumers would other more traditional metrics
walk away from a brand they loved after In a world where services and
just one bad experience. products are homogenised, one of
the only and major differentiators for
Customer-led thinking is about profound an organisation is the experience it
organisational re-engineering – it’s not an provides to its customers.
arts and crafts exercise in a corner.
Apart from the more recognisable metrics
of commercial success, customer-led
thinking (and therefore the CCO) should be
measured on:
• customer sentiment
• customer behaviour
• customer retention
• formal scoring e.g. NPS.
What are the barriers to a CCO
being successful?
Identified below are the key barriers that
face CCOs. Their variety and impact across
the organisation are a reflection of the
number of areas in which a CCO has to work.
• Lacking alignment with other
C-level peers
• Inability to break down the silos
• Lack of support in changing the
culture of the business
• Creating a strategic imperative
and defining the role in a way
that everyone can understand –
especially when that role is new
to the organisation
• Ensuring the organisation is collecting
the right data to drive understanding
of customer needs and turning it into
effective actions
• Creating a set of widely understood
KPIs and demonstrating results
• Reducing the distance between
boardroom and customer
• Creating collective ambition
and alignment
Customer-led thinking is about profound
organisational re-engineering –– it’s not an arts
and crafts exercise in a corner.
/13
OUR THINKING: MATURITY AND
THE CCO ARCHETYPES
We have been privileged to speak and work with many organisations
over the past few years. These conversations have focused on helping
businesses to become customer-led.
Our purpose has been to help them in
three ways. Strategically, we help our
clients build sustainable growth strategies
that truly place the customer at the heart
of everything they do. Operationally, we
reflect the thinking that creates finance,
HR and marketing functions and help
our clients build a world-class customer
function. Transformationally, we help our
clients through the process of making
the fundamental change from being
product-led to customer-led businesses.
That experience has allowed us to codify
thinking in a way that helps the businesses
to which it is applied. A key learning has
been that not all organisations are ready
for a CCO role. Although intrinsically one
might assume that a CCO would make
a difference in any organisation, this is
not necessarily immediately true. It makes
sense to build up to this role. The maturity
of the organisation is a key factor in
deciding the type of customer practitioner
that is most appropriate.
Organisational maturity
Maturity modelling is a useful tool to help
structure an internal conversation and allow
the management team to start to align in
both definitions and needs. The model has
five levels of organisational maturity.
/14
A key lesson learned has been
Basic
There may be a vision to become that not all organisations are
ready for a CCO role.
a customer-led organisation but there is
little or no understanding of how to achieve
this. Capabilities are spread across teams,
leading to a lack of coordination.
Emergent
The business has measurements in place
and is actively pursuing programmes
across channels. There may be specific It is only when you start reaching the early in the organisation’s maturity cycle, it
areas that are taking the lead (e.g. digital Integrated level of maturity that a board- is likely to lead to conflict or frustration, with
transformation). level CCO position becomes tenable. Prior the CCO looking to embrace an agenda that
to this, there is a set of foundation activities might be just a step too far at that time.
Repeatable
as follows:
There is CX leadership in the business, Even when organisations are genuinely
decisions are driven based on insight • Collecting (some) customer data ready for a board-level CCO, their
and there is a more customer-focused responsibilities and the functions they
• Improving UX/UI
culture emerging. manage can vary significantly.
• Starting to think about customer
journeys
Integrated
The customer is a strategic priority. Insight, It is only when a more repeatable
design and delivery are all coordinated and customer experience is starting to evolve
strongly linked to the values and behaviours operationally that the organisation should
of the organisation’s culture. start thinking about the broader, more
strategic role. If the CCO role is taken on too
Fundamental
The corporate strategy is the customer.
Human-centred design drives all decision
making and the brand is seen in the market
as a world-class leader.
/15
 Rising Star Has previously been in a head of role
rather than a full CCO but is a natural
champion for the customer and has
shown enough results to be taken
seriously. They tend to work well in
small teams and are often internal
hires within immature organisations.
Operational Guru Has come through a customer
services or operations background
and is the practical ‘get things done’
type who can roll up their sleeves and
build functions from scratch. They
are often numbers driven and very
delivery focused, so are a great fit for
less mature businesses that need to
‘prove by doing’.
Process Practitioner Less of a pure customer background
and may be more ‘techie’ in nature.
Understands the business well and can
Not all CCOs are born equal
In order to help clarify organisational That said, many organisations have
thinking, and based on our experience excellent customer executives and
and interactions with pan-European practitioners driving the customer agenda
companies, we have defined six different forward. The interviews later in the report
CCO archetypes. All have a strategic agenda provide a snapshot of different types of
to make an organisation customer-led, customer professional and their thinking
but their ways of working depend on the on some core questions.
organisation’s structures and imperatives.
The table (opposite) shows the different
archetypes, detailing the differing
backgrounds and priorities that each one
adopts. The different types are also partly
defined through reference to the six-pillar
approach to thinking described earlier in
this report.
It is important to note that the ideal CCO
for any particular organisation may well be

The CCO role can

link ops to tech and commercial. Again, a mix of some of these archetypes.
practical in nature, they tend to think
about end-to-end journeys so are more The CCO role can derive from a number
interested in larger-scale programmes.
They work well in companies that are
of diverse backgrounds. The lack of common
definition of the role also means it can come from a number
of diverse backgrounds,
mid-level on the scale. become a complicated hire. On top of
these specific areas, there is the broader
question of organisational maturity. Even
Engagement Expert Strong marketing, sales or digital
background, keen on selling into the
heart as much as the mind. They tend
when maturity is understood, trying to
understand which type of CCO best matches the lack of common
definition of the role
the organisational needs can further
to have experience of running a CX
complicate the decision-making process.
function, leading on insight, and believe
in the lifetime value of customers. They
tend to work in businesses that are more
focused on cultural change, and that are also means it can become
a complicated hire.
therefore high on the maturity scale.

Group Influencer More of a hybrid, working across

business units within larger, complex
organisations. These individuals
need to engage with the board,
inspire the business and cajole staff
into new ways of working because
they often only have a small team
and a limited budget.

/16 /17
CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICERS
In the report this year, we have not only looked at the CCO/Customer
director roles that we considered in 2017 but also included a broader suite
of customer-focused titles. However, we have also isolated those original
titles to provide a point of comparison with our 2017 report.
One of the key drivers of that growth is the
explosion of CCO roles in B2B. For a while,
there was a sense that B2B was lagging
Of the 79 new CCO roles identified in
behind the B2C world in customer thinking. the research, more than half are in the B2B sector.
This is clearly no longer true – in fact, in
2018, there are more B2B CCOs than B2C.

The rise of the CCO in

the UK is exponential.

There are

88%
more CCOs in 2018
than in 2017.

This reflects what happened in the US six years ago

and, based on that experience, the numbers of CCO
in the UK can only be expected to continue growing.

There is no doubt that this growth will place pressure

on the companies looking to appoint a CCO as the
competition for qualified candidates increases.

/18 /19

With so many new appointments, it’s
not surprising that the overall tenure is
reducing. However, at the other end of the
scale, there is a growing cadre of more
experienced leaders in the market.
With so many new
appointments, it’s not
surprising that the overall
tenure is reducing.
However, at the other end of
These are the people who will be setting
the agenda, creating the manifestos and the scale, there is a growing
cadre of more experienced
giving guidance to their peers. (Some of
them are interviewed later in this report
and their combined experience makes
fascinating reading.)

leaders in the market.

Gender
In the year of a focus on gender diversity,
the customer function gender split matches
the broader picture. In April 2017, women
made up 35% of P&L positions on the
boards of FTSE 350 companies (where
P&L titles include CEO, CFO, MD and other
senior leadership positions.)

Across all the titles researched for this

report, the figure was 34% showing that
customer roles are matching the rest of
industry for gender diversity (or a lack
thereof). There is only a tiny growth (two
percentage points) in the number of
women in the research over 2017.

/20 /21
Where do CCOs come from?
For organisations that are looking for a new
CCO, it may be helpful to have an idea of
where to look. As mentioned earlier in this
report, hiring a CCO is a complex task. The
skill sets demanded of them suggest that
a variety of backgrounds may be possible.
In pulling together this data, it was noted
that many of the people being researched
did have relatively varied backgrounds
and a number of different functions under
their belt. In order to create the numbers
shown (below), the researchers looked at
which function had been more significant
in the backgrounds of the CCOs we were
researching.
/22
It is apparent that the 2018 cohort
comes from a more even distribution
of backgrounds. In 2017, marketing was
a significantly more common background
than any other. This is no longer true –
indeed, commercial by a small margin
leads the 2018 figures.
This is in part due to differences between
B2B and B2C.
CCOs in B2C are nearly three times more likely to
come from a marketing background, while those in
B2B are nearly twice as likely to come from sales.
The growth of the role would suggest
that fewer and fewer CCOs have previous
experience in the role and the 2018 figures
bear this out. Over 91% of CCOs in this
research had not had a similar role before
being appointed.
This will change over time, but presents
a challenge to both the individuals being
appointed and the organisations appointing
them. With both sides having little previous
experience of having or being a CCO it
requires a great deal of adaptability and
cooperation for the appointment to work.
There has been a substantial increase in
those moving organisation to take up the CCO
role. This may be explained by the newness
of the role and the relative lack of confidence
that organisations looking to become
customer-led have in their own abilities.
A key part of the internal change that
enables customer thinking is cultural,
affecting teams throughout the
organisation. A key marker of success in
the future will be that businesses have
developed internal cultures that produce
the CCOs of the future. To get there they will
have to plan and ensure that the training,
recruitment and operational processes at all
levels combine to create internal aptitudes
and the confidence to recruit from their
own. Until then, those recruiting CCOs for
the first time are likely to be standing on the
shoulders of giants.
/23

Where are CCOs working in 2018?
In 2017, the financial services and retail
sectors were clearly ahead in appointing
CCOs (and ahead in customer-led thinking,
taking these appointments as a useful proxy
indicator). It’s fascinating to see how quickly
other sectors are now catching them up.
In 2018, restaurants and food, software and
business services have all seen substantial
growth in the numbers of CCOs being
appointed. In this chart we have kept
/24
OTHER CUSTOMER TITLES:
CUSTOMER SUCCESS DIRECTOR
Alongside the growth of the CCO over the last few years, there has
been a similar growth of the CSD in the specific area of SaaS-based
platform organisations.
Customer success management as
a concept has been around for a while
and, like CCOs, covers a range of traditionally
The customer success team is increasingly
siloed skills within the business, normally required to have a more strategic relationship
including sales, marketing, professional with its clients, which in turn drives a need for
services and training. Customer success
is really focused on the ability to grow and more senior leaders on that team.
retain a current customer base. There are
two powerful drivers for its raised profile
within an organisation: We have included the CSDs in this research
• Customer success teams are because we believe they represent a true
recognising that the earlier the sub-set of the CCO role within this sector.
engagement with the customer, the They are likely to be faced with very similar
more likely they are to be retained challenges, and they are a natural part of
Earlier engagement catches issues the wider customer-centric conversation.
before they become insurmountable In looking at CSDs, both the similarities and
and allows a greater relationship to the differences from CCOs are enlightening.
be built with the customer. This also
suggests that a customer success
team is required to have a more
strategic relationship with its clients,
which in turn drives a need for more
the same categories as last year for easy
senior members on the customer
comparison. But the growth of the ‘other’
success team.
group suggests that customer thinking is
increasingly spread across a number of • Creating great customer experiences
different sectors of a wide variety of types. is as important to this sector as it is to
any other
The pressures and incentives to become
customer-led are consistent across
sectors. For organisations that already
have a customer success approach, it
is natural that customer-led thinking
should reside with their teams and that
it should, increasingly, be represented
by a more senior leader.
/25
 93%
Current CSD numbers
The research identified 60 CSDs, all of
whom came from a technology. As with the
CCO research, we looked in detail only at
those who were senior or relatively senior in
their organisation, and only at organisations

of CSDs are new to their role

that had some scale.

The interesting thing in the lengths of

tenure is how closely the CSD tenure
matches those of the CCO. It’s an indication
of the broader theme of this report – that
customer thinking is burgeoning, albeit with
different titles describing very similar roles.
LENGTH OF TENURE
As with CCO tenures, this data shows that
senior CSD positions (certainly at board
level) are relatively new and it is plausible to
expect that their number will grow in much
the same way.

The number of CSDs in role for the first

time is even higher than that of CCOs.
At 93%, it suggests that all but a small
minority are creating expectations, role
definitions and processes for their business. It is no surprise that the CSDs are
predominantly from customer-facing roles.
This lack of maturity offers both challenges
The software sector is perhaps defined
Although the functions and responsibilities of
and opportunities, but it is essential that
the businesses making these appointments by consultative sales processes and the a CSD look quite similar to those of a CCO, the way
are aware of the need to support the need to provide ongoing support to client those roles have been created is different.
process of innovation and cultural change. users. The emergence of those specialists
into a more prominent leadership role
is both a natural outcome of this sector
profile and an indication of the natural
evolutionary nature of the whole customer-
led movement.

55%
The fact that far fewer CSDs have moved
organisation to take up their role suggests
that their appearance is part of an
evolutionary process within their businesses.

Although the functions and responsibilities Moved organisation

look quite similar to those of a CCO, the way for current role
they have come about is, perhaps, different.
The CSD role now represents a clear subset
of the broader CCO role.

/26 /27
CX as a concept has its roots OTHER CUSTOMER TITLES:
CHIEF EXPERIENCE DIRECTOR
in thinking from the 1950s. The CXD role arose from a need to extend good experiences beyond the

As such, it’s a far older immediate point of sale and post-sale.

business driver than either

‘In 2017, Bain and Company reported
that, of 362 companies studied, only 8%
of their customers felt their experience was
Businesses that have been used to the idea of
superior – against 80% of the executives of customer experience being ‘over there, in a box’

customer-led thinking or
those same companies that felt they were are having to adjust to the fact that CXDs are
delivering superior experiences.
taking on more responsibilities.
The acknowledgement of this gap and

customer success.
the growing understanding of its possible
causes were key to the creation of customer
experience specialists. The growth of
CX at an executive level represents the
importance of more operationally focused
customer experience practitioners having
an impact on organisational decisions.
The birth of the CX discipline paralleled
the rise in the conversation about multi-
and omni-channel, especially in retail
organisations. There has been a greater
desire to examine all interactions between
a brand and its audience, and to deliver
consistency and excellence throughout
all customer journeys.

CXDs face many of the same internal

challenges as both CCOs and CSDs.
Their areas of responsibility (or at least
influence) are moving outwards from their
traditional customer service backgrounds to
encompass new skills and functions within
organisations. Businesses that have been
used to the idea of customer experience
being ‘over there, in a box’ are having to
adjust to the fact that CXDs are taking on
more responsibilities.

/28 /29
Current CXD numbers
Like the CCO and the CSD, the emergence of
the CXD at executive level is a relatively new
phenomenon in the UK (see opposite). Our
research identified 65 CXDs of appropriate
seniority in sufficiently large organisations.
Only time can tell if these roles follow the
same trajectory as, first, CCOs in the UK
and, second, CCOs in the US.
If there’s anything that currently shows the
clear distinctions between the three roles
covered in this report, it is business type.
CXDs are emphatically more likely to be
from B2C businesses. This isn’t surprising.
B2C has led thinking when it comes to
understanding the customer and delivering
great experiences at scale. It is natural that
it is that sector that is appointing senior
CX figures.

Of the three functions that have been Of the three functions that have been researched for
researched for this report, these tenure
figures indicate that senior CX roles at
this report, these tenure figures indicate that senior
executive level are the newest of all, with CX roles at executive level are the newest of all.
significantly fewer being in role for longer
than 24 months. There is a growing trend
towards using the term CXD synonymously
with CCO.

65%
A far higher percentage of CXDs have
previous experience in this or a similar role
than of the other two roles covered. This,
along with the predominance of a customer
service background (66% have this), suggests
that the CXD role is more defined then either
CSD or, particularly, CCO.

of CXDs were new

to the role

/30 /31
 CURRENT SECTORS OF CXDS

CX as a concept has its roots in thinking
from the 1950s (inter alia W E Deming
developing the concept of Total Quality
Management). As such, it’s a far older
business driver than either customer-led
thinking or customer success management.
The data from the research indicates
that the foundations of the CXD role are
likely to be better understood and more
recognisable than perhaps the other two
roles in the survey.

60%
Like CSDs, CXDs are far more likely to
be internal appointments than CCOs.
This is another indication of the greater
understanding (and capability) of CX in
business. It also suggests that, in CX at least,
the processes of specifying attributes and
metrics for the role are better understood.

of CXDs moved organisations

for their current role

/32 /33
INTERVIEWS WITH CCOS:
ROBERT BRIDGE
CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER,
THE TELEGRAPH
Robert Bridge joined The Telegraph in March 2016,
in the newly created role of Chief Customer Officer.
His remit encompasses marketing, design and UX,
data and insight, brand management, subscriptions
and customer experience initiatives.
As a seasoned veteran in this space, how
would you advise someone starting out as
a CCO?
I think it’s important to champion customer
centricity, but also to explain some of
the other areas you’re responsible for.
So, within my remit, you’ve got data and
insights, design, marketing. You have to
champion all of these and understand how
broad the remit is.
You shouldn’t underestimate how full
your brain will get in the first three or
four months because you’ll be on a curve,
learning things that you won’t necessarily
have had direct experience of before.
What functions need to sit underneath the
CCO in the first instance?
The cornerstone of it all is data and
analytics, and insights. I think if you don’t
understand the customer, you’ll struggle to
drive benefits.
/34
How well are organisations leveraging data
and insights at the moment? And if there
are areas where you think people need to
raise their game, what might they be?
There are a few factors there. You mustn’t
underestimate how much work goes into
getting the data in the right place: building
a data lake, having the right ways of using
that data, making it business ready, making
sure you’re getting the DMPs and everything
else. That’s not trivial.
The mindset of the business is also
important. How data hungry is it? Does it
have a top down or bottom up approach?
Also, the world of data changes so fast that
it’s not unusual to start work on a project
and then have something come along that
changes everything. In this role you need to
be prepared for this, pick the right battles
and be ready to move ahead.
The good businesses are the ones that go
back and look at the data and understand
who their customers actually are and who
their future customers may be.
Digitalisation matters more and more,
so the role is definitely broadening to
incorporate that.
How would you characterise the role of
the CCO within the context of a broader
organisational transformation?
Well, they’re part of it, for sure. I think that if
the CCO is a member of the executive team,
which I believe they should be, then they act
as a change agent.
It’s a dual role: one is helping to understand
the need for change, and the other is
helping to facilitate that change.
How do CCOs tackle friction in the
boardroom?
It’s about generating trust that you’re
delivering what’s needed for executives
to do their jobs. Any time you build new
organisations, there’s that time of forming,
norming and then performing. And that just
takes time.
What might the CCO role look like in three
years versus how it is today?
Digitisation matters more and more, so the
role is definitely broadening to incorporate
that. And depending on the way the
business is set up, I see more people having
P&L responsibility, but I suspect there’s no
hard and fast rule for that yet.
I wonder who the CCO will become five years
into the future. If I look back over my career,
it’s a patchwork quilt. You know, stuff in ops,
service, transformation, insight, design –– the
whole caboodle. Do you think the CCO of the
future is a jack of all trades?
Yeah, they have to be flexible. To have that
patchwork is actually beneficial.
If the data side continues to grow in
importance, does the CCO have to have
more strength in that world in five years’
time? I don’t know. I do think that it’s going
more that way. But the beauty of the
marketer is that the marketer has a little
bit of left brain, right brain going on.
/35
With customer centricity, you’re generally
thinking with the right brain. But with
business, hierarchies and orientation, it’s
instinctively more left brain. How do you
draw the two together?
You have to make sure you’re looking at
what the customer needs and the future
customer needs. It’s not easy.
A lot of organisations find it difficult to
focus on understanding what customer
needs are. Why might that be when most
sane humans understand this will probably
lead to profitable outcomes in the long run?
Most businesses want to make a profit. And
so it’s those trade-offs you have to make
that are challenging. If you think about our
business, you’ve got advertising, which is
one of our key revenue sources. Advertising
when done right is a good experience for
the customer. But if it’s done incorrectly or
is intrusive, then it’s a bad experience for
a customer. That’s an example of where
you could say, ‘Well, we don’t have any
advertising because customers would not
want to have it’. I actually don’t believe that,
but I do believe that you need to have the
right experience for the customer. And
Most businesses want to make a profit.
And so it’s those trade-offs you have to make
that are challenging.
You’ve talked a bit about start-up mentality
and culture. How could you transpose
that into a large, more complex corporate
environment?
You’ve got to be realistic and understand
that some things don’t transpose to more
established businesses. Understanding
the context you’re in is really important.
For example, someone was talking about
MVP, minimum viable product, which is
an approach taken in the start-up world.
That’s fine when you’ve got a few thousand
customers or maybe tens of thousands. But
when you’ve got tens of millions, you don’t
want to release a product with the word
‘minimum’. You want to iterate and learn,
but there’s an element of trust and love for
the brand that is built off things not being
minimum. You have to be careful about
how you approach some of these things in
Even as businesses are getting better at
understanding the importance of data,
the bit that is sorely missing is the bit
between insight and product or change.
Few organisations are good at human
centred design, and I think it links to what
you’re saying about innovation. What might
be going on there?
I know there are some very good tools
out there that enable you to, if you’ve got
a digital interface. We use Adobe Test and
Target. We’ve also used Optimizely in the
past and they’re both great platforms to
interpret the data and to test and learn.
That’s also why your customer department
should align with UX design, or product
design. But you need product design with
the data teams and the data feedback loops.
You need to have the structure of your
teams right, as I’m sitting in the conference
room talking to you, the data teams and the
design teams are one desk apart.
Last question: how would you characterise
the main challenges facing the CCO today
and what’s coming next?
I think the main challenges for the CCO are
the diversity of functions in the role and
being able to provide effective and useful
direction to the different specialists.
We touched on that, the generalist versus
the specialist side of it. You just never
stop learning.
The other challenge is probably just
operating within the matrix, making sure
that your stakeholders are happy and that
the fight for customer centricity is done in
a way that’s right for the business.

I think the main challenges for the

bigger businesses.
those are difficult decisions.
I was in Seattle a few weeks ago and we got

CCO are the diversity of functions

to meet some of the Amazon guys. That’s
a great example of a start-up type culture
within an existing business. They were an
online book company and now they’ve spun
out their various online retailing businesses, in the role and being able to provide
effective and useful direction to the
their cloud-based data warehousing
capabilities. If I’m honest, that’s something
I think British businesses need to be better

different specialists.
at: creating that culture to innovate within
the boundaries of their legacy.

/36 /37
INTERVIEWS WITH CCOS:
SARAH THOMAS
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF CUSTOMER
When it comes to understanding customers’ Another factor that’s very important
emotional journeys, how has your thinking and is driver analysis. We’ve noticed some
application of this changed over the years? significant underlying changes in customer

SERVICES, THE GUINNESS PARTNERSHIP I think there are two elements to it. On the attitudes in recent years that are affecting
one hand, customers want to do things our business – and indeed all businesses.
quickly and easily. And today that’s usually
online. But there are also times when we’re Interesting. Why?
Sarah joined Guinness in January 2016 as the Executive Director of more emotional. That’s when we generally We’re analysing this but one reason is
Customer Services. Prior to joining Guinness, Sarah was in a similar role at prefer human interaction. We want differing expectations across different
empathetic people to interact with.
RHP, an innovative housing organisation in south-west London where she generations. For example, the generation
brought up during the war, sometimes
revitalised their customer service strategy, resulting in a string of national Helping us understand when an emotional
known as the silent generation, can
response is needed by customers is where
customer experience awards and improved customer satisfaction. behavioural science can help. So, for example, be more reserved about expressing
at Guinness, ethnographic researchers visited their views. Today a greater proportion
As Head of Customer Service at Eurostar, Sarah devised the service customers in their homes to chat about their of ratings for businesses which serve
multiple age groups come from the more
strategy and led a Europe-wide award-winning change programme to life and how this and their home related to
vocal Baby Boomers and Generation X.
the service Guinness provides. This revealed
deliver service and operational excellence. Sarah’s experience includes some really strong emotions linked with These and younger generations are more
successfully devising and implementing service strategy, operational people’s homes. And how these emotions experienced consumers with a wider range
of benchmarks to refer to. They also have an
delivery and change management in complex environments. can play out in something like a repair. When
eye on value for money, especially if they’re
you understand this behavioural science, you
can decide which services are best suited to feeling financial pressures. At Guinness
we see this as an opportunity to get to the
So first of all, can you tell me how you ended Having seen an opportunity in housing, online self-serve – click and book – and which
heart of what makes a good experience
up in this senior customer role? I moved to a role at RHP, an innovative are more suited to a call, or even a visit.
for our customers whatever their age or
After I graduated, I joined the travel housing association. As one of a team of four,
circumstances.
industry. My first senior role was managing including the chief executive, it felt a bit like To what degree have you experienced any
Eurostar’s stations in the UK, France working for a start-up business in terms of pushback against using these kinds of
and Belgium. After that, I moved on to agility and the ability to pilot new initiatives insight techniques, and how might you have
another senior role at Eurostar creating the and innovation. I got the opportunity to overcome that?
customer experience and service strategy. shape things, and contribute to broader Helping us understand when an emotional
Well, I always try and look at the qualitative
aspects of the whole business.
research and quantitative data together, to response is needed by customers is where
Until that point, Eurostar only really had an
operational focus, like most businesses at Then just over two years ago, I joined gauge the full picture. One thing we use at behavioural science can help.
Guinness, a national housing association Guinness is text analytics. So every time
that time. But increased competition meant
with over 65,000 homes and serving a customer comments qualitatively, all that
we started to focus on customer service
130,000 customers. Guinness has such data goes through our text analytics. It
using customer insights.
a long and rich history in housing, coupled brings out the customer sentiment in
These days we’d call it customer journey with a modern approach to how we run our a quantitative way.
mapping, but at the time it was relatively business today. What excites me about my
innovative research. By mapping out current role is the opportunity we have to
customers’ emotional journeys, we were positively impact so many people’s lives by
able to tailor our efforts around what really providing great services and great homes.
mattered to them. Customer satisfaction
increased. Sales also improved.

/38 /39

I think the most
important thing to do
is to understand what
your business looks
like from the outside
in. By that I mean, how
do customers see your
business?
What kind of functions do you have that
help you get the job done?
At a corporate level, my role is to share
insights with the rest of the organisation and
articulate our customer experience strategy.
At Guinness I’ve led on the introduction
of our service style which was co-created
with our customers. We’ve embedded this
through a successful training programme so
that everyone at Guinness has the skills to
be able to deliver this.
/40
You can have words on a page and go,
‘Oh, here are the things our customers
want,’ but nothing’s going to happen if
people don’t understand your service ethos
and service style, know why you have one,
have the skills to deliver it and the passion
to deliver it. And they need to know how to
apply it in practice in their particular role –
what it looks like when you write an email,
when you’re on the phone and when you’re
dealing with complaints.
So how did you get the business to a stage
where this kind of stuff was embedded?
As a member of the executive team,
I was able to work collaboratively with my
colleagues to incorporate the customer
experience into our strategy and plans.
An important step we took was to nominate
a senior manager in each directorate across
the business to be the lead on service style.
This created a network of service style
champions who worked together laterally
to embed the service style in addition to
our usual ways of working and delivery.
What things do you think will be on your
agenda in two or three years that aren’t
right now?
I think what’s interesting is how we can
use technology to proactively do things
we can only do reactively now. Having to
be at home for an appointment can be
a pain for customers. There’s technology
on the horizon which promises to be able to
provide information to us directly without
the need to go into a customer’s home, for
example on the boiler’s performance.
Another idea we’re exploring is how we
could potentially use key boxes, as common
with users of Airbnb.
And in terms of your role itself, how would
you like to see that evolve?
The challenges are going to come from how
quickly the world around us is changing.
When you’re thinking strategically, looking
forward over several years, rather than one,
it’s harder than it used to be to think of all
the possibilities ahead. This probably means
that strategies will need to be more fluid
and flexible in future to take advantage of
the benefits new technologies can offer
and to react quickly to new, emerging risks
and changes.
What would your advice be to a person
coming fresh into this type of role?
I think the most important thing to do is
to understand what your business looks
like from the outside in. By that I mean,
how do customers see your business?
If you understand this, it can guide you
on what you need to prioritise. The danger
comes from inside-out thinking. So, before
anything else, ask what does my business
look like through my customers’ eyes?
Are there things you would recommend
to people to get in place while the role’s
still nascent?
After I’ve understood how customers see
the business, the next thing I’ve done is
to understand how employees see the
business. There’s often a gap and that helps
you to identify employees’ engagement,
training and communication needs. For
example, it’s not unusual to have a gap
between the perception customers have
of the service you’re delivering, and the
perception employees have. Understanding
the differences can help steer your strategy
and delivery plans.
Clearly articulating what good customer
service is for your business, so that
everyone is clear on this, irrespective of
their cultural background, is always a really
good starting point.
Any suggestions for people coming into the
role, and how they might approach that in
the first instance?
I think demonstrating the business benefits
of prioritising customer experience is
important. But because of the intangible
nature of much of what we do in customer
services and customer experience, that can
be a challenge – especially tangible financial
benefits. However, there are sound,
commercial reasons to deliver a good
customer experience, and risks if you don’t.
Look at some of the failing businesses in the
news currently. There are household names
which have struggled because they have
failed to adapt their product and service
offer and differentiate their customer
experience. And there are others which
are thriving because they have.
I think demonstrating the business benefits of
prioritising customer experience is important.
But because of the intangible nature of much of
what we do in customer services and customer
experience, that can be a challenge.
/41
INTERVIEWS WITH CCOS:
IAIN SHORTHOSE
DIRECTOR OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE,
To what degree do you think organisations
have a true grasp of what customer
centricity means?
I think businesses nowadays find it increasingly

INTERSERVE I think that phrase is bandied around too

difficult, because of the economy, to step away
much. What we’re trying to do in this role is from short-term decision making.
provide the decision makers and influencers
with a complementary lens to how they
Iain has been developing and delivering customer experience strategies make strategic decisions.
What does that mean for the evolution of
for 15 years. His experience ranges from organisations focused on What you’re asking them to do, in essence, the role of the CCO?
specific sectors and markets to those with diverse propositions is consider the customer as much as they I think it’s increasingly evidence-based. Part
operating across EMEA and with global operational footprints. consider profit, financials and employees. of the role is to give people the confidence,
Moreover, the link between them all. the data, the insight, the evidence to make
The early part of his career was focused within utilities and retail; different decisions. I think a key part of
Why do you think it’s so hard for
delivering multiple services to large customer bases, across multi- organisations to adopt this mindset?
the role is coaching and guidance, whilst
providing a framework that enables and
channel and complex processes that involve large numbers of employees It’s behavioural. They have to understand encourages a stepped change.
(remote, mobile and site based) –– operating in highly regulated and why they are making these decisions, and
contractual markets. how to apply it. The acid test will be when We find that the organisations are generally
somebody makes a decision that puts the quite good at collecting data, but insight
Since then he has taken customer experience to consumer-led and customer first, maybe at the expense of seems to be sorely lacking. Why might that
short-term gain, but with the view of loyalty, be the case?
B2B(2C) organisations, working closely with and part of executive or longevity, or relationship or share of It’s not something I experience. My focus
boards. His focus is operationalising the brand, commercial outcomes wallet. That demonstrates a different would always be on insight rather than
and customer solutions. mind-set and in some cases bravery. data, but with the confidence the data
I think businesses nowadays find it is robust and representative. What is
increasingly difficult, because of the most important is the trajectory your
How would you advise someone coming into Interserve is a financially driven organisation.
economy, to step away from short-term organisation is on and a balanced suite of
this role for the first time? Trying to change that and say, ‘Well, it should
decision making. And the nature of metrics that reflect what’s important to you
For me, the most important thing is to give be a customer-focused organisation,’ just and your customers. It could be you are 30
‘customer centricity’ and by definition how
yourself time to orientate and understand won’t work. points below a competitor but actually their
it influences all parts of an organisation;
the organisation climate and what makes if you tried to calculate the return on it, trajectory might be in the wrong direction,
What I’ve done at Interserve is demonstrate whilst yours is positive.
it tick. If you don’t, there’s a risk you’ll in practical terms the commercial risk to it’s rarely short term.
always be going against the grain. Every the organisation of not making changes. It’s easy to look at a poor set of numbers,
organisation tends to have a magnetic That’s not me trying to instantly change and then make some really rash decisions.
north – they have a culture already. What the culture. That’s me dovetailing customer But actually you can use insight to put the
we do is to tap into that and evolve that experience as an enabler. qual with the quant, and to get a feel for
culture. So, we turn up the customer dial how customers are starting to experience
a bit, or maybe drop down the short-term things differently and behave in the way
financial focus. you need them to in order to drive
business performance.

/42 /43
 And in terms of the CCO him or herself, what
functions do you believe should naturally sit
underneath them?
It depends on the organisation and what
the challenges are. Any organisation I go
into, I start with understanding where we
are today in our service delivery, what are
our current capabilities in terms of people,
technology, leadership etc., and how ready
are we to deliver a customer experience
strategy.
It’s important to have that position of
neutrality. I’ll give you an example: it’s not
unusual for ops and sales to operate with
a healthy tension. So, if you were to put
customer experience in sales, the chances
are that you will have operations backed up
before you even start.
Customer experience has to inform, but
equally it has to own and has to support.
I’ve got customer operations at the
moment, but I think once we’ve instilled
some of the right disciplines and the right
folks and framework I can step back from
that. But right now, it needs to get on the
right path as it’s fundamental to CX strategy.
What makes a strong customer experience
strategy?
Where it works well is when you dovetail
with the overarching organisational strategy
and vision, and help the organisation
understand the role of CX as an enabler to
that. It should touch on all aspects of it, and
you should be able to articulate it easily.
Customer experience has to inform, but equally
it has to own and has to support.
/44
I think the customer experience strategy
needs to be something that people can
relate to and creates a compelling reason
to change. Most importantly, it shouldn’t
be positioned in such a way that it feels
like a project, or a change programme, or
anything that has timescales attached to
it. So many businesses suffer from ‘project
fatigue’ and the cynicism that can follow.
Where successful, the customer experience
is considered a business imperative.
Who do you believe owns the customer
journey end to end?
The customer journey has to be recognised
by the organisation. If you get it right when
you do the journey mapping, you involve
the organisation in developing it as part of
an engaging and collaborative process that
also works to calibrate the perceptions of
the ‘as is’.
One of the most important things to move
an organisation forward is to get everybody
recognising what our current customer
experience is. It’s only then that people will
own it and you can collectively progress.
What do you think people are getting wrong
with their journey mapping initiative?
Ticking the box and saying it’s done. You
should keep coming back to it as it’s the
backdrop to the customer experience
change plan. For example, you might do
a customer satisfaction survey a couple of
times a year. Overlaying that insight back
to the customer journey map is critical and
taking the opportunity to drill down into
process, people and systems.
When you’re doing process improvements
or looking at bringing in new technology,
how do you make sure the customer
journey map is front and centre? For
a customer journey map to deliver its
value, it has to live and breathe, and be
brought out of the drawer. In fact, don’t
put it in the drawer in the first place!
How do you challenge the belief that
customers make decisions purely rationally?
You have to go out, roll your sleeves up and
work with customers. Part of the customer
experience role is helping with relationship
management.
You know, B2B is about people and
relationship; trust and confidence.
A procurement team might have selected
us because we were the right price with
the right product. But if we don’t provide
the services that the operational clients
need and expect, they can end up looking
incompetent. There are emotional aspects
in B2B than people don’t appreciate.
That sounds to me like a core insight
around which you could create some real
design principles.
It is. We’ve got a quote next to each
customer journey map about how that
customer wants to feel at that stage of the
journey. And it’s okay to be talking about the
procurement director, or the ops director or
sales director, because it is emotional.
Having a set of design principles can really
help. These should be based on the key
customer needs at a high level, providing
guidance with the checks and measures to
ensure we continue to design and improve
looking from outside-in, not inside-out.
You have to go out,
roll your sleeves up
and work with customers.
It’s challenging, though. You can’t just talk
about customer experience to people and
expect them to go off and do it. Providing
development and practical tools really helps.
How do you develop the capabilities
you need?
Early on, we developed something called
the CX Academy, which is part of the
customer experience strategy. We’ve now
trained about 40 customer experience
practitioners who are not additional
heads or cost. They’re in the account
teams, customer facing as well as support
functions such as HR, finance, operations,
IT and fleet.
These guys are driving the culture change
using our language, using the toolkit we
gave them, like journey mapping. And
that’s fast becoming part of their business
as usual (BAU). All we do is support with
coaching, so they’re buddied up with
individuals in my team so they can bring
problems and challenges with them and
we work together to overcome them.
/45
INTERVIEWS WITH CCOS:
GREG FERRARI
VP OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT, PEARSON
With a background in education and publishing, Greg has led a range
of UK and international teams through numerous cultural and digital
transformation programmes. Most recently, he implemented a global
CX strategy for digital products, establishing a new multilingual support
infrastructure across four continents. He is currently leading the
deployment of an integrated ERP/CRM solution in the UK.
What would your advice be for people
coming in to the CCO role?
The first thing to do, not in the first year,
but probably in the first couple of weeks,
is work hard with a peer group to establish
where accountability lies, and agree some
ways of working.
Next, I’d want to understand how
customers were feeling right now. When
new CCOs are brought in, it’s presumably
not just for the fun of it.
Within the first few months, I’d want to
benchmark current customer experience
across all key touch points to establish
what’s working and what isn’t.
I think it’s important to avoid doing that
by knocking out a survey. I’d want to have
some face-to-face time with key customers.
Within the first few months, I’d want to benchmark
current customer experience across all key touch
points to establish what’s working and what isn’t.
/46
The next most important thing is
a communication plan for the rest of the
business. To say, okay, this is what I’m
coming to do. This is how I see our current
strengths and weaknesses, and here’s what
we’re going to do about it.
I think if you get those three things right,
relatively quickly, everything else falls into
place. The decisions you make about where
to invest resource, and what projects you
prioritise, should come out of the feedback
from your customers, rather than internal
concerns.
Why do you think organisations still
struggle to get up and close and personal
with the customer?
I think there’s a fear among people in
leadership positions that perhaps they
should know all this stuff already.
Just day to day, the noise of leadership
roles means a lot of people don’t make
the space in their schedules to get out
and speak to customers.
Some might think it’s not the most effective
use of their time. In my view, there can be
no more effective use of a CTO’s time than
to actually go and speak to customers.
Can you summarise what good personas
look like?
It’s not always immediately apparent
who your customers are. For your sales
organisation, clearly your customers are
the people who make the purchasing
decisions. Outside of that, your product
guys will regard customers as being the
end users. Then your operations guys, they
might regard your customers as completely
different parties altogether.
I tend to take the broadest possible
definition of customers as not necessarily
just being the people that have all the
money, or use of product or service, but
anybody that relies on your organisation
for help and support. Until you understand
that and segment it, you can’t make
effective decisions about where to put
your focus and your investment.
How have you worked the CCO’s role into
the dynamic of the board room? Has there
been friction?
I think a little bit of friction is a good thing.
I think there’s inevitably going to be tension
when it comes to executive decision
making. The CRO and the operations team
are going to be asked year on year to make
cost savings. The Chief Customer Officer
should be the person who puts the brakes
on, who makes sure they’re cutting the
right things and investing in the right things.
You’re speaking on behalf of customers,
which ultimately is what’s going to deliver
a healthy business.
I think a little bit of friction is
a good thing. I think there’s
inevitably going to be tension
when it comes to executive
decision making.
Do you think the CCO is a specialist or
generalist role?
I think a broad skill base is the best one,
and not necessarily from a customer
support background. I began the first
half of my career in a specialist functional
role within assessment. It was interesting
moving from that into a customer-facing
role, which is the polar opposite.
Nobody wants to be lectured from
a place of a lack of knowledge about the
realities of working in other roles within
the organisation. A broad background is
really good. Then it becomes a case of,
what do you like doing? We all know that
technology can have huge impact on
customer experiences, but the same
goes for HR processes.
If I was pressed on it, I would say why
not enjoy your particular skill? If you’re
ultimately a culture person, and you’re
going into a tech-focused organisation,
that might be a difficult fit. If you move into
a more people-focused environment, then
you might have a lot of success there.
The technology solution is always put
out as the silver bullet, but an incredibly
engaged and motivated frontline staff
can hide a multitude of things in the
background.
/47
 What’s your experience of getting finance something. The cost avoidance point comes
bought in? in because if you don’t build out proper

The technology solution is always put out as You have to be disciplined in the way you
construct your proposals. I came up with
support infrastructure, you end up with an
increasingly inefficient sales organisation to

the silver bullet, but an incredibly engaged

a strategy for Pearson, which was about deal with all this noise that’s out there.
building out a completely new customer What you do is spend some time building

and motivated frontline staff can hide

support infrastructure. It was impossible out a really robust support infrastructure
to do that on the basis of pure cost savings. so that the sales people can point their
customers to the centralised teams. That

a multitude of things in the background.

We had to spend money to build up this
infrastructure, and we had to do it quickly
because we were pushing digital product
faster than we were able to support it.
That business case was built very strongly
around revenue growth, revenue retention
was a big cornerstone of the cost avoidance
piece: let’s not end up with a big, bloated,
inefficient sales organisation because we
didn’t have the discipline to build out a tight
support function on day one.

How would you go about creating that
internal excitement around customer?
I think it’s easier for customer-facing teams.
The biggest challenge is changing culture
and behaviours in people who historically
don’t have their performance managed
using customer-related metrics. For me, this
is where top-level sponsorship, strong HR
policies, and strong recognition and reward
policies come into their own.
I also think that if a company got its
recruitment and onboarding processes
right from a customer perspective, so many
of its other problems would melt away
within three or four years.
When I looked after large UK-based
customer service teams, I would always
want our teams to try and recruit from
retail because they are people that really
get customers. For me, the long-term way
to drive cultural change is to have a hard
look at how you do recruitment across the
organisation.
Back to this notion of the CCO being a true
business generalist, what other strings to
bow are there?
We’ve spoken about HR and culture. We’ve
spoken about technology. The other area
is sales – making sure those guys are up to
speed. The other thing is understanding
the feedback loop of what the customers
are telling you about your products and
how you translate that into product
improvement.
You’ve done some amazing stuff.
How would you characterise the factors
that led to success?
I think collective executive sponsorship and
buy-in is a must. I hate to reduce it down to
finances, but the biggest successes I’ve had
have been where I’ve had the finance teams
supporting my strategy.
and future cost avoidance.
I think that’s a wonderful example,
How do you start constructing a case very creative. That could be a thing:
around future cost reduction? future cost reduction.
At Pearson we were dealing predominantly
with B2B. What we then moved into was
pushing more digital and pushing a lot more If you can go without your customer support
B2C. Rather than just sending some books
infrastructure, who’s going to deal with questions?
to a book shop or a school, all of a sudden,
we were providing access to digital learner The answer is, your field service team.
resources, and we were putting them in the
hands of the end user.
Going back to the cost avoidance thing,
if you can go without your customer
support infrastructure, who’s going to deal
with questions? The answer is, your field
service team. Every time your sales person
went out to a school or university, they
would have an hour-long appointment,
and they’d spend the first 59 minutes
doing technical support. This might leave
them a minute at the end to try and sell

/48 /49
INTERVIEWS WITH CCOS:
The secret is to keep
SEAN RISEBROW following the voice of
DIRECTOR OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE,
Do you believe that, in general, people are

the customer. Short term

trying to overthink CX?

BUPA
Yes. Start with the most important things

tactical improvements
customers are talking about today. It will
inevitably be transactional part of the

will help fix basics and

experience, the things that you are doing
that are driving bad costs into the business
As Director of Customer Experience Sean led the transformation of and destroying brand value rather than
Virgin Media’s customer experience from its launch in 2007 until its
deliver consistently on
creating it. That way you can make impact
– both for customers and the business
acquisition by Liberty Global in 2013. The turnaround in the quality of
fundamentals.
quickly – and begin to gain credibility.
experience has been by quoted by analysts as a key element in the $5
to $53 increase in share price, during which the customers’ view of the How do you know what is most important
to customers?
experience changed from bottom quartile to industry lead. Sean is one
Listen to them. We talked about the
of a few Senior Executives that has successfully led an organisation smartest CCOs building the right capability when you deliver consistently customers
through the four recognised stages to Customer Experience Maturity –– at the right time. They tend to build the stay with you more, when you provide
Fix, Deliver, Differentiate and Delight. programme on getting the Executive on a differentiated service you can charge more,
board and then around five operation or sell additional services, and when you
Sean worked for Fidelity Worldwide Investment in February 2014, pillars, measurement, business change, delight customers you can increase word of
embedding, target (brand) experience, mouth purchases. Let customer behaviour
to shape and drive their customer centricity programme. In January of and culture. And they start with the first your existence, not rhetoric.
2015 Sean joined NewsUK, the publishers of The Times, The Sunday Times three, in order. Sell the vision to the Exec

and The Sun where he was responsible for the Customer Experience,
Member Service and Customer Event teams. Sean now leads the Customer
Experience team at BUPA as their Director of Customer Experience,
dedicated to helping its customers live longer, healthier and happier lives.
What would be your advice for someone four phases – Fix the basics, Deliver
coming into this new type of CCO role? brilliantly on the fundamentals, then
create Differentiated experience which
Recognise that when you are appointed
you can monetise, then Delight customers,
you are facing an execution challenge,
delivering an experience so good not only
not a strategic one. Every organisation
that goes through a customer experience do they want to stay forever but they want
transformation goes through the same to tell their friends about how great you
are. The successful CCOs have all built
the same, right, capability at the same
phase. Too many people come into the role
Recognise that when you are appointed you are wanting to tackle immediately the big long
facing an execution challenge, not a strategic one. term customer and relationship challenges
whereas the place to start is the day to day
frustrations your customers repeatedly
experience right now.
and get them to visibly support. Then get
measurement in place. You cannot run
a great customer experience programme
without great measurement. Once you
listened to customers act on it. So the Exec
foundation, Measurement, Fixing stuff is
where to focus on for the first 12 months.
Reading between the lines it seems that CX
professionals are almost trying too hard.
Perhaps the discipline is to an extent still
trying to justify its own existence?
New practitioners often think too big too
soon, and don’t really believe the promise
we have made the business. Our promise
is that if you deliver a superior experience
to customers then this will deliver superior,
long term, sustainable business growth.
I think new practitioners intuitively believe this
but struggle to connect it to where to start.
When you fix the basics you save money,
Nevertheless, if we look at CX as
a discipline, could we argue that it can end
up just delivering tactical improvements?
The secret is to keep following the voice
of the customer. Short term tactical
improvements will help fix basics and
deliver consistently on fundamentals
– although these need to be fixed for
good rather than being delivered by
workarounds. So you will reach a point
where customers are talking more about
the big relationship – product and value
for money – not just service. When you
reach this point you’ll need really solid time
series data of not only what customers talk
about but how what they say today leads
to what they do tomorrow. That’s when
you will need to make the “right from right”
decisions to keep moving on. Is very easy to
stay simply fixing tactical stuff.

/50 /51
SUMMARY
The research and interviews in this report highlight the shift in how
businesses are viewing their customers and that the customer agenda
is being recognised in many boardroom conversations.
The journey to becoming customer-led is
a long one. It’s a journey that profoundly
changes most organisations’ DNA and
one that requires a new flexibility and
approach to both internal silos and
external communications. In many cases,
businesses are faced with a twinned
challenge: the role itself is new and
the appointee is unlikely to have all the
specifically relevant experience required.
There is a huge overlap between the three
roles covered – they may have come from
slightly different places but the insights that
drive their appointments are broadly similar,
and push the organisations making those
decisions in broadly similar directions.
It appears that the CSD and CXD senior
functions are appearing as a development
of existing corporate activities and this
emergence is an evolutionary process,
whereas the CCO roles are being created
as part of a transformational process.
Wherever they come from, each role is
likely to be faced with a need to define and
implement changes across technology,
data, culture and leadership itself. This span
presents a need for clearly understood
objectives and an internal alignment in
making the appointment.
/52
The journey to becoming
customer-led is a long one.
In creating a senior customer role – It’s a journey that profoundly
changes most organisations’
whichever specific title is used – the
organisation should understand that it
needs, or will need, the answers to the
following questions:
DNA and one that requires
• Strategy
Is the leadership aligned around
a common and complete vision and
a new flexibility and approach
strategy?
• Insight
Do we fully understand our
to both internal silos and
customers and what drives their
use of our services?
• Design
external communications.
Do we understand how to create
services, journeys and propositions?
• Delivery
Do we have the ability to deliver on
our promises to the customer?
• Measurement
Do the current metrics drive the
business forward?
• Culture
Do we have the teams and internal
process that will enable successful
execution?
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