While not yet mainstream, the Chief Customer Officer (CCO) position continues to gain traction. Forrester has highlighted several trends and commonalities that help us put together a profile of the CCO in 2013:
- Title: “Chief Customer Officer.” Chief Customer Officer is now the title used by 45% of these types of executives, up notably from 30% last year. Apart from that, the only two titles with any real traction are Chief Experience Officer (18%) and Chief Client Officer (11%).
- Tenure: two years or fewer. This is a relatively new position at most companies, which explains why 44% of CCOs have spent two years or fewer in their current job. However, 55% of these leaders are internal hires with significant history with their company. Among those we studied, the median time at their firms was more than seven years.
- Background: diverse and senior. While CCOs’ backgrounds remain diverse, 31% of them now come from previous positions within operations, quality, or process improvement. Additionally, 29% were previously division presidents or general managers, showing the importance in seniority within this position.
- Reporting structure: member of the executive leadership team. 85% of CCOs now sit on the executive management team within their companies, up from just above 50% in 2012. More than half of those we observed report directly to the CEO. The rest report most frequently to the president of a division or a line of business, or to a senior executive such as the CMO or COO.
- Company size: all sizes. Similar to 2012, CCOs are fairly evenly distributed among companies of different sizes. The largest concentrations are found in companies with revenues between $1 billion and $5 billion (26%) and in small companies with revenues below $250 million (25%).
- Industry: software firms lead the pack. Firms in a wide range of industries have CCOs, but we found these executives most frequently in the software, professional services, and financial services industries. Highly regulated industries—such as financial services, utilities, healthcare and telecommunications services—all had an increase in representation relative to 2012.
CCOs will play an increasingly critical role for firms—not just in helping them differentiate based on great experiences, but also in adopting new business architectures and operating models made possible by new capabilities like digitally connected products and services, mobile computing, social networks and dynamic partner networks. Successful CCOs will move their company from a reactive find-and-fix mentality to one that aligns employees, partners, processes, and technologies around customer goals and uses emerging capabilities to deliver new value.
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