The Chief Customer Officer (CCO) position is a relatively new addition to the c-suite, with more companies appointing someone to the position in the hopes of cultivating a customer-centric culture.
Yet, that is not all. The CCO also plays a significant role in creating CX strategies, encouraging cross-departmental collaboration, and making mission-critical investment decisions.
In doing so, the CCO aims to meet critical CX goals, which they likely set, such as achieving a high Net Promoter Score (NPS), lowering customer effort, or enhancing sentiment in critical moments that matter.
CCOs Are in High Demand
While the CCO may have once seemed like a superficial figurehead, new HubSpot research demonstrates the high perceived value they bring to an organization. In Australia alone, it finds that nine in ten Australian business leaders agree that the role is necessary to improve the relationship between a company and its customers.
As a result, more customer success teams seemingly report to C-level leaders like the CCO instead of sales, service, and support leaders. Perhaps this is partially to defeat the tribalism that traditionally exists between different departments and encourage collaboration in the name of CX.
Indeed, the chief customer officer is often responsible for disseminating an organization’s customer-centric message and helping to implement tactics that increase revenues through enhancing customer experiences.
Primary Duties of a CCO
The chief customer officer reports to the company’s CEO, reporting on the critical customer outcomes and bringing relevant trends to the attention of C-suite executives. In addition, they will:
1. Oversee Customer Service Teams
Supervising every aspect of a business’s relationship with its customers, a CCO leads every team with customer-facing responsibilities. Such teams may include customer support, branding, marketing, and sales. Account management teams occasionally come under the supervision of a CCO, especially when they manage upsells and renewals.
2. Facilitate Cross-Functional Cooperation
Too often, departments work in isolation, failing to support one another. It is the responsibility of the CCO to change this and drive positive collaboration in the interest of achieving shared goals. Forrester notes this as a critical consideration to driving better CX. In one article, Su Doyle, CX Exec Partner & Sr Analyst, states: “Start thinking of CX as a team sport, and tap alliances to accelerate your transformation!”
3. Create CX Strategies
While the sales and marketing teams focus on reaching quantifiable business targets, the product management team works on developing new offerings, and the support staff works on resolving tickets. provides the overarching blueprint to keep these operations running and institutes operational strategies that will increase customer satisfaction. Ultimately, it is the CCO’s job to act as the customer’s voice in the organization and advocate for their needs.
4. Train Employees to Deliver CX Strategies
Chief customer officers must coach the necessary skills to ensure the enterprise delivers on its CX strategy. CCOs work with HR, learning & development, and business unit heads to create training courses with these goals in mind. They hold workshops and training modules to instill customer-centric principles and impart wisdom. In some organizations, CCOs may also help hire people with their desired skillsets.
5. Formulate Insights from Customer Feedback
Customer-facing initiatives rely on feedback, as it helps illuminate pain points and journey improvement opportunities. As such, CCOs create a transparent reporting process and often play their part in devising feedback strategies. They may also oversee the testing, learning, and optimizing the development of CX transformation projects – especially those designed to enhance the digital proposition.
6. Drive Technology Decisions
CCOs are responsible for selecting the suitable systems to support an organization’s digital goals. In some cases, a company may hire a CCO solely to devise its digitalization journey. They must strike a balance between resource constraints and customer engagement objectives. As a result, they are likely familiar with cutting-edge CX tools and technologies.
Salary Range of Chief Customer Officer
As per salary.com data (last updated on March 29, 2022), the median salary for this role is USD 231,800 – while typically ranging from $160,000 to USD 315,000 per year.
The salary will likely fluctuate with respect to years of experience, market conditions, and company size.
Final Thoughts
Having a customer advocate within the upper echelons of a business is becoming a critical enabler to driving CX success. While hiring a mid-management team may help, a CCO offers the skills and leadership to drive innovation, collaboration, and customer-first thinking across the company.
Want to know which metrics a CCO is likely to report? If so, check out our article: 5 Important Metrics for Customer Satisfaction
