Please check out my book: Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action. It is packed with real-world experiences youll recognize and practical and realistic actions you can t ake right from the page to action.

Also take a look at Fred Reichhelds Book – The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth. Reichheld advocates using the Would you Recommend? question to customers as a key indicator of driving profitability. Youll find th at my book complements and agrees with his conceptand puts forth some concrete ideas on how to execute on the concept in the real world of the corporate machine. For example; one thing to watch out for is to ensure that you dont just use the referral question to get a good Net Promoter score. My concern is that companies are already getting precariously close to using this powerful tool to game the system and work for the score rather than where it should drive companies to improve and change. Asking the question without going back and clarifying the issues with customers on why they did or did not or would not recommend you wont get your company to change. Im already hearing of companies out there who are starting to prod their customers, call us if you cant say youd recommend us. It would be a shame for this to fall into another number thats gamed rather than used to get the company to drive action for customers.

My other favorite book that complements and gives meat on the bones to the concept of customer profitability is Managing Customers as Investments by Sunil Gupta and Donald R. Lehmann.

If your goal is to take action to drive your company closer to customers these three books click-together well to give you strong concepts, real-world advice and practical application for driving customer focus yielding customer profitability for your corporate machine.

Some CEOs are considering the creation of a C-level position to drive the action for customer experience and customer profitability. However, beyond the notion that its a good idea, not many know how to structure the Chief Customer Officer role and its place in the organization. Here are some thoughts to help you proceed.

Suggesting a CCO may seem frivolous to leaders who believe they already focus on customers. Theres often a proliferation of tactics and projects underwaythe problem is they dont amount to anything significant for customers. So first decide: will leaders be okay with someone (other than themselves) driving consensus on customer strategy and deliverables? You may be saying, We have consensus now. Im sure that youve had some good meetings, but how much of it stuck? When they were over, did everyone return to their respective corners and business as usual? Getting company alignment is tricky. You may need someone full time to ensure it exists for your direc tion with customers.

What about sustaining the work? After the first and second meeting of what I call the funky task force on the customer work, people start to lose interest. You know these meetings. The kick-off has forty people at the table, some who clamored for an invite. One month later, six regularly show up. And the person who got the job to run the task force layered on top of his/her regular job? Well, theyre losing interest fast. Driving this work needs hard-wired participation. Do you have headcount and staff time commitments to drive it forward?

Now to the roadmap and action plan: lets discuss the sticky wicket of how to move past the hoopla of meetings and empty commitments. Do you have a central roadmap that everyone follows on how youll drive the customer work and measure progress? I didnt think so. How about consistent metrics everyone agrees to? We have metrics galore in our companies and of course the customer is now on our scorecards. But these are typically neither clear nor connected down to the operational level.
Roles and responsibilities and holding people accountable are a slippery slope in the customer work. This is about the hand-offs between the silos. Most companies need a task list that clearly states what each part of the organization will do and when to get the priorities accomplished. But most dont have one. Do you?

Is funding customer projects like pulling teeth? This may be due to duplicate spending across the organization. Everything is pitched as an individual program from inside the silos. At planning time these investments are often vulnerable in the first round of budget cuts. Why? Because each project shows up as a one-off tactic. Theres rarely an annual plan for understanding and managing customers as a key corporate asset – determining how many were lost and why and pooling resources to keep and grow profitable customers. Why? Because its no ones job to do this job.

And finally, does the hoopla have any chance of sustainability as things stand now? Are leaders committing to customers, but not changing the metrics or the motivation to realign business priorities? Is the back-up position still about counting sales but not counting customers? For what actions are the most Atta-boys doled out? The customer work will not emerge as a priority of the organization until peoples success and career paths are tied to their accountability for how their actions impact customers. How far along are you with this? Are you heading in the right direction?

Most leaders wouldnt refute that any of these actions are important. They want them to happen. Theyve always wanted them. Their failure has been in assuming the company could miraculously defy the l aws of the silos to make them a reality. Separate motivation, the metrics and the mechanics have stayed firmly rooted in each silo. And they will continue to stay there until someone duct-tapes the silos together in a unified and executable customer plan. Is it time you established a Chief Customer Officer to connect your company for customers?

Can you hear that? Its the shot being fired into the air by CEOs the world over saying that they want focus on the customer. CEOs now know that customer profitability is the Promised Land, the final frontier of validation that theyre running their business well. However the quest for how to get there remains elusive. Frequently the CEO hasnt thought through how accountability for customer experiences and customer profitability will be wired in. In the absence of clearly redefined metrics and methods for accountability, nothing changes.

See if you recognize your company in this example: A home builder declared its mantra to be customer partnership. Customer revenue, it was predicted, would dramatically climb as customers would come to rely on the builder for services such as move-in support, spring cleaning, fencing, security and ongoing warranty and maintenance. The revenue upside and future rates of customer profitability were calculated. Only thing was – accountability metrics didnt change to direct focus of customers and customer partnerships. They were still home sales, quarterly sales goals on upgrades and costs of running the business. Customers were lost in the shuffle.

Besides the standard sales goals, that home builder should have also been asking for the Guerrilla Metrics. Thats because the Guerrillas give CEOs five questions for driving the business toward customer relationships and customer profitability:

1. New Customers; Volume and Value?
   Ask about the volume and value of your incoming customers as often as you ask about sales goals. You may find that you are tracking incoming customers across a multitude of company areas – with conflicting definitions of what it means to be a new customer. The wild card here is if you have achieved alignment in how customers are classified inside your system. The part thats not likely tracked is the quality of incoming customers.
2. Lost Customers: Volume and Value and Reasons
   The volume and value of lost customers needs to be paired with the new customer information to lay out the true situation for your company. You must reconcile Customers In with Customers Out to know how well you are doing with managing customers as an asset of your company. In addition to knowing which customers left, you need to know the reasons why they dont care to do business with you anymore so you can drive change across the business.
3. Customer Renewals with Reasons
   For this to have relevance for your company, youll need to define customer behaviors that constitute renew or the commitment to continue doing business with you, according to your business model. The key is to understand patterns which indicate loyalty based on continuous purchase habits. You must ask for reasons why customers are staying with you to ensure that you personally know what you are delivering to customers that they value and to ensure that there is awareness when these reasons shift or begin to erode, and actions are taken to reverse the trend.
4. Revenue and Profitability by Customer Group
   Getting to this classification of customers is not a trivial project. You need to understand the movement of customers from one profitability group to another so you can strategically lead the customer agenda. Your goal should be driving efforts that cause your costliest customer groups to decline and those most profitable to grow. If you are not demanding that the business be tracked this way and if you do not ask for accountability around these metrics in the regular language of meetings, it wont happen.
5. Referrals by Customer Group
   If your customers are willing to stick their necks out vouching for you, they have become your marketers. Keeping these customers, growing them and developing other customers like them are the key. If you can track the rate of referrals in general and by customer group, youll know the strength of your ongoing revenue stream before you even spend another dollar on marketing. Companies completely focused on customer profitability will learn how referral rates differ by customer group and reasons for not referring.

This is the elusive CEO platform thats missing for people after the big focus on customers is announced. These questions power the customer on to the corporate agenda. What do you think of the Guerrillas? Lets talk about how they might work for you.

For customer zealots, its important to know what the company power core isAnd if the power core is committed to customers.

Common sense, right? Not so much. Because this is often the muck thats stepped in as brave zealots charge ahead into the corporate fray determined to make things right for customers. Im sure youll recognize this

Every company has a power core. It is usually the strongest skill set in the company, the strongest strength of senior executives. Information Technology (IT) for example; is a central base of power in many organizations now because of the pull they have in defining the corporate agenda due to budget and how dependant the corporate machine is on what they deliver. So the way that IT prioritizes things will have an impact on where the customer stuff falls on that list. Lets say you have a product power core company. This is where product development is the most important product resources and product leaders get the most play, the most glory, the most reco gnition and the most resources. Customerswell, sure they get the products. But are the products built from the customers point of view? Is the experience of receiving the product and the post-product experience the right one? A product power core may only be thinking of the product itselfnot the customer who buys it or uses it or the field force who has to service or explain it or the operator who must field calls about it. The insular nature of the company power core often gets in the way of building an experience for customers that is meaningful.

Knowing what the company Power Core is and engaging those whose finger is on the power button is critical to driving and transforming a company to have lasting customer focus. Why? Because customer focus will mean tampering with the normal flow of priorities from the Power Core. Those leading the customer effort MUST ask the Power Core to the transformation dance. Heck, the Power Core has to take a lead in actively redefining the priorities of the corporation for the corporation.

Most people leading the customer charge dont think this through. Often the customer effort begins when bad survey results came in, or the President decides its now (finally, at last, or once again) a major priority. This audible from leadership is assumed to be important enough to be the driving force to get people to line up and take action. But its not. Everyone will salute the flag all right. But real change wont happen until the impact of how company priorities need to shift, how resources need to be reallocated, and how success needs to be redefined is agreed to by those in the Power Core who are currently calling the shots. And THIS is one of the maj or reasons why many, many customer efforts crash and burn. The Power Core hasnt been asked to the dance.

In most companies the power core lies is one of these seven:

1. Product Power Core
2. IT information technology Power Core
3. Sales Power Core
4. Marketing Power Core
5. Vertical discipline (such as doing the business of a bank, or health care, or insurance) Power Core
6. Customer Power Core

Lets talk about your company Power Core and how it is impacting your companys ability to focus on customers and customer profitability.

My book is called Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action.
Heres the deal about this book: its about reality. How to get the customer thing (you know, the public proclamation to focus on customers, followed by mass confusion on what to do) done beyond the lip service, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and big kickoffs. Its about how to push the customer rock up the hill by turning the focus on the obvious: customer experience and customer profits. Its about how to figure out how big that hill is. And its about how to keep that rock from falling on your head . . . as little as possible. Its about figuring out if youve got the leadership chops to take this effort on, and its about navigating the corporate machine to figure out how and where to best leverage this effort from.

What This Book Will Do for You

Executives and CEOs:
Use this book as a platform to evaluate your organization and your personal role in driving the customer agenda. You may be wondering why you just cant get traction on customer management and customer profitability even though youve named it as a corporate priority. Through this books evaluations and outline of the issues, you can understand why the impasse exists. There is information to assist you in determining if the answer is a single position or a whole host of conditions, attitudes, and actions that must change in your organization. Hiring or appointing a chief customer officer will require a personal commitment by you. This book will outline what yo u need to be ready and willing to step up to doing before you put a name on that organization chart.

To the new and existing chief of the customer effort:
This is your comprehensive handbook packed with ideas on how to get this vital work accomplished. The tools, approaches, stories, and empathy contained in it will arm you with a place to start and a methodology for how to proceed in the first month, the first year, and those that go beyond when things really start to take hold. Youll get ideas for how to manage across the silos, where to weave in accountability, and how to engage the commitment of top leaders in the journey. Most important, it will provide ideas on how to break the work into segments so you can advance the organization down a specific path of improvement.

Senior leadership and functional leaders:
You may be trying to crack the nut on how to deliver a comprehensive customer experience. You may be at the point where its obvious that all of the factions youre trying to bring together to get that project done have different agendas. Or perhaps youre the service vice president with vast amounts of customer information that could drive the company forward, but people just arent lining up to participate. You may have joined forces with another functional vice president to get the company to make some tough cross-company changes required to manage customer relationships. In your passion, you may have found yourself the de facto leader for this gnarly compa nywide effort. This book takes and translates the issues youre experiencing but may not have had time to articulate. It offers tools to move the logjams youre experiencing and tactics for how to proceed with your particular brand of challenge.

Good morning everyone. Im Jeanne Bliss. For 25 years I arm-wrestled 5 major US corporations to get them to focus on their customers and customer profitability. Today Im here to share and discuss the ecstasy and the agony of driving customer focus and customer profitability. My goal is to discuss what Ive learned abou t what makes customer efforts wildly successful, and what makes them crash and burn. At the end of our conversation today, you should have some concrete ideas on what you can do to thrive, survive and drive the customer agenda ahead. Along the way, Ill throw in a few personal tidbits about how my role of chief customer zealot often required being as annoying as the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard to get the attention of the corporate machine and often the president who hired me.

So lets begin. Whats on your mind about how to get your president and corporation to focus on customers, customer experience and customer profitability? Hit me with your best shotIm ready for it! Heck, Ive probably lived it.