Executive leadership and all the members of the C-Suite need to embrace the vision, goals and strategies associated with bringing the customer and the customer experience into the boardroom. It should be a high priority of each leader. Their senior teams also need to actively embrace being customer centered in all approaches and processes.

Here are some imperatives.

• Customer experience is key in virtually all customer-facing processes and activities: from customer service and customer retention to loyalty and engagement.
• Research by several companies clearly indicates what most suspect: there is a clear link between customer experience success and CEO leadership involvement.
• Customer experience is the essence of the future growth of the organization as more research clearly indicates. There is a clear link between business performance and C-level customer experience involvement.
• Customer experience and employee engagement go hand in hand. Employee engagement requires leadership as studies have confirmed.
• The change and strategy required to focus on the customer and customer experience can’t happen without C-level direction.

Everyone plays a part in achieving customer experience excellence, but some do more than others. A variety of roles has been on the rise over the past few years to make customer focus a reality and customer experience enhancement more than lip service. These responsibilities are shared but there always needs to be leadership.

Does your company have a Chief Customer Officer? Are they a member of the C-Suite? Do they manage significant resources? What is their relationship to the CIO and CMO?

Customer Expectations