“Why Your Company Needs A Chief Customer Officer, Yesterday…” is Carol’s recent post on LinkedIn.
Your customers are the most important part of your business, and yet often within companies there isn’t an individual charged with solely advocating for – and interacting with – customers. Carol begins:
Your company’s most valuable asset doesn’t even show up on your financial statements. That asset is your customers. If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business. You can outsource manufacturing capabilities, fill in gaps in management and even beg or borrow for products and services to sell, but there are no substitutes for customers.
Social media and digital tools have enabled deep and real-time connections between companies and their raving fans, as well as their disgruntled current and former customers. This has given customers and fans a lot of power in voicing their opinions, but it doesn’t mean that it has fully transformed customers into stakeholders for businesses.
Businesses of all sizes would be well served giving their customers a seat at the table with a C-suite or similar high-level executive that liaises with customers on an ongoing basis and represents their interests in all company planning and decisions.
Ironically though, when you look at the C-suite of virtually every company, from mom-and-pop businesses to billion-dollar multinationals, there is rarely a person truly focused on representing the customer.
You can read the rest of the post here.
