5. CEOs Should Drive Regular Accountability for Customers and Customer Experience

Part of the series, “What the CEO Needs to Do to Ensure Chief Customer Officer Success.” (5 of 8)

Demand regular accountability sessions for the sole purpose of identifying and tracking progress with the customer agenda.

Resist the temptation to tack it on to some other meeting. What often happens is that the customer topic moves from the top of the agenda to the bottom of the agenda, then its erased off the agenda completely as other priorities prevail, and the meeting time runs out.

Don’t make your CCO expend energy and cycles lobbying to get a place on the corporate agenda. That’s the irony to this work that I’ve never quite understood. Why bring someone into the job and then make it nearly impossible that he or she be heard?

Instead, establish a set of meetings with the specific agenda of discussing and advancing the customer experience work.  Create continued clarity by having the CCO drive these meetings and steer the process. The CCO can create a flow and meeting focus by topic area and can facilitate the meetings. However, the executive sponsor will need to step in as the person asking for and expecting the performance.