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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About Michael Rosenbaum

Rosenbaum

Quadrant Five founder Michael Rosenbaum has walked the walk when it comes to building a business, so he can be a confidant and compatriot—not just an advisor—for clients. Rosenbaum worked his way up to president of a $35 million company with 300 people and 600 clients. Along the way, he managed operations, HR, IT, and marketing, and advised CEOS and CFOs at more than 200 companies.

Beginning as a newspaper reporter, he developed a specialization in business journalism and earned an MBA on his way to a 30-year consulting career. Representing both angel-backed startups and Fortune 100 giants, Rosenbaum identified the patterns and processes that drive success across a wide range of industries and business cycles.

He is well regarded for designing each performance-improvement process around specific client needs, capabilities, and culture, rather than pushing a pre-fab set of rules for clients to follow. He brings a unique set of skills to each engagement, including experiences as a company president, financial journalist, marketer, IR advisor, non-profit founder, author, and public speaker. Items of note include:

• Received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 2015 for non-profit work
• Honored for the Best Business Biography of 2012 for his fifth book, Six Tires, No Plan
• Frequent speaker on customer relationship value
• Sales instructor for Certified Value Growth Advisor certification program.
• Regional Communications Chair, YPO Gold
• Marketing Chair, AMAA’s Mid-Market Alliance
• Former Chicago Chapter Chair, National Association of Corporate Directors

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