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Wanted: CEO

Needed badly, seldom hired

With the proliferation of new job titles like new media coordinator and downsizing specialist, there’s a massive gap in hiring for the most important function in any company: CEO.

Quickly, who is the CEO of your company? Not the Chief Executive Officer. We’re talking about the Customer Experience Officer. It’s a full-time job, very challenging, and few companies have such a person in place.

The CEO is responsible for talking with the customers regularly, figuring out how to keep them happy and crossing the internal silos to assure a smooth delivery of products, services and support. The CEO looks at the connections that make customers more loyal and works internally to strengthen those links. The CEO doesn’t just take surveys or field complaints, but helps develop and implement strategies for more profitable account retention.

Ask most of those other CEOS, the Chief Executive Officers, and they will tell you that customer satisfaction is everyone’s job. Of course, if it’s everyone’s job, then it’s nobody’s job. If there isn’t someone who lives, sleeps and breathes the customer experience, gaps will open up between the value the company tries to deliver and the perception of value received. At many companies, that gap is a chasm—both obvious and dangerous.

The CEO role, by the way, is not a marketing function or even a customer service responsibility. It’s a corner office job, because the customer experience is created by products, delivery, pricing, warranties, timelines and pretty much every other ingredient that goes into a business relationship. In a company that does it right, the CEO would report directly to the CEO.

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