Customer or Marketing for the CCO/CXO

During the last few years when looking at Customer Service and Experience, there hasn’t been a lot of innovation, creativity or ambition.  However, the world of customer, the discipline, function and leadership in this space are all set for big and exciting shifts.

It is what led Martin Hill-Wilson to state recently “The contact centre is the source of the new CEO.”

With many other customer channels closed, customer contact has achieved a long-awaited seat at the table, no longer considered a cost to be rationalised, executives are realising the value not only for the customer, but for the business and brand as they benefit from the insight and data available to them about their company and future product and service direction.  

Those organisations who want to become more customer-centric and truly engage their customers are realising significant change is required in their approach and organisational structure.

We are already seeing a serious rise in the appointment of Chief Customer Officer and Chief Experience Officer roles.

Not only are more boards creating these roles, we are also seeing a move in how these roles are structured and who is appointed to them.

Historically, where the role of a CCO, or CXO exists these have been led by a CMO, or Marketing professional, almost double the number of individuals from any other background (The Customer Director Report), with CX as a direct report. This is a structure the CX community has long believed is wrong. 

Any CX leader worth their salt knows how damaging sales and or marketing strategies can be when not aligned to the customer experience delivered. This is why there are those companies who want to realise the benefits of being more customer focussed are starting to think differently with some already looking to proven Customer Experience and Customer Service Directors leaders who know what it is like to walk in the customers shoes for the role of a CCO or CXO but with marketing as their direct report.

What do you think, we would welcome your thoughts, please do comment on the article or you can get in touch with me directly at michelle@douglas-jackson.com

Michelle Ansell, is a Managing Partner at Douglas Jackson – a high-end retained executive search firm exclusively focused on customer, consumer centric, digital and data led business, delivering high performance, diverse, impactful leadership.

The State of The Market

I am asked on a daily basis about the state of the market and many are talking about ‘The Great Resignation’, is it real?, What is the market like, how are salaries being affected etc.

I was delighted to be asked for my thoughts on the current market challenges by the Customer Experience Foundation.

Some of my key points were as follows:

Everything is possible

“Don’t be afraid to dream big”

“It doesn’t matter where you come from, you can show the world nothing is impossible” Nims Purja MBE.

These are the opening lines to the new Netflix documentary 14 Peaks, featuring Nirmal “Nims”, Purja in his attempt to climb all 14 ‘death zone’, 8000m+ mountains within seven months.

According to Wikipedia only 40 climbers have reached the summit of all 14 8000m peaks, the first of who was Reinhold Messner, and which took him 16 years. Reinhold is also featured in the film and states how, ‘climbing all 14 of the 8000m peaks in one lifetime is very hard’.

For most climbers, the process of climbing one of the 8000m mountains is a two month endeavour and here in 2019, was Nims Purja, a Nepal born British, pretty unknown mountaineer putting a stake in the ground and setting out to climb all 14 peaks within seven months. The previous record was seven years!

Are you on the dance floor or the balcony?

We were delighted to hold a live event with Dr Lucy Ryan, ‘Shifting the Balance Back To More Effective Leadership’.

Lucy showed us how when our Leadership vs Management vs Coaching self are out of balance the impact it has on us, our business and our teams is significant.

Lucy shared 6 key strategies of what to do about it and how to become a better leader with higher performance individually, as a business and through our teams.

In this 1 minute clip Lucy asks “Are you on the dance floor or the balcony”?.

The concept, taken from Heifetz in Adaptive Leadership, is that, only in the largest of conglomorates can leaders be afforded the privilage of always being on the balcony.  It is unrealistic that we seperate out Leadership and Management, when the reality is it is much more grey than that.

If you would like us to send you a copy of the full recording, drop us a note and we will get one to you.

I don’t like recruiters

This is something that someone said to me not that long ago and it is something that if it isn’t said, it is often inferred through actions or sentiment.

Luckily on this occasion, my client added but I do like you, which thankfully is the case with many of the people I deal with but let’s talk about why people don’t tend to like recruiters.

To be fair there are a lot more professionals that people don’t like…

5 Top Tips To Stop Feeling Burnout

The last 20 months have been intense, for everyone.

The demand on our leaders has been significant and whilst leading through a crisis and getting involved in the day to day can be exhilerating and fulfilling, the prolonged, relentless pace of change, coupled with the feeling that we always need to be online or available is taking it’s toll.

The good news is it does not have to be this way, there are some simple steps that everyone can take to gain more clarity, focus and importantly practice some much-needed self-care.

Here are five top tips to help you get back some balance and not just for you but your teams too:

Stop Losing Your Diverse Talent

Whilst some organisations have seen a massive uptick in D&I activity in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. Others have seen major programmes, like leadership development and diversity projects take a back seat for business critical activities bought about due to the pandemic.

Whatever the situation EDI is here to stay, especially as more private equity and venture capital firms are now asking for and looking for more diversity and sustainability across their portfolios. EDI and ESG initiatives should already have a seat at the boardroom table and if not they are waiting at the door to be let in.

But where do you start and how do you develop a better initiative across Diversity, Equality and Inclusion?

The worst word in your best life?

Is this four-letter word stopping you from attaining your very best life?

It isn’t what you might think…

I was watching a Ted Talk last week with Mel Robbins.

Startup diversity still has some way to go…

Over 50% of startups have no female senior leadership representation whatsoever…research carried out by Silican Valley Bank shows with only one in four startups having a woman on the founding team.

Yet a study by Boston Consulting Group and MassChallenge found that for every dollar of investment, female-led startups generated a 78% ROI, while male founders generated only 31%. This is a huge difference and one that should matter to any investor, male or female.

When a wrong decision is better than no decision at all

When looking at the behaviours of top performing CEO’s, The Harvard Business Review article, ‘What Sets Successful CEOs Apart’, identified that one of the critical behaviours to acheiving high performance was the ability to make quick decisions with conviction. In fact their data suggested that people who were described as “decisive” were 12 times more likely to be high-performing CEOs.

For those executives who are considering elevating their board careers, deliberately developing, practicing and improving this key behaviour will raise the odds that they’ll become high-performing chief executives themselves.

Automation at what cost?

I read a recent article from John Timpson, Chairman of High Street retailer Timpson in the Telegraph this week on the decline of customer service in the UK.  I have long admired Timpson and had the pleasure of seeing John speak a number of years ago now, which led to me writing a post on Self Management, are you ready to start firing highlighting the similarities between Timpson and Netflix in their approach to getting the best from your workforce, something John learnt over 25 years ago and has stayed true to ever since…

back to the Telegraph article…

Is The Chief Sustainability Officer A Fastrack To CEO?

Is the Chief Sustainability Officer the next step to becoming CEO? We are seeing the role of Chief Sustainability Officer grow in importance in many organisations, as corporate business shifts towards sustainability and investors look for more sustainable options.

A few weeks ago leading investment company Blackstone, asked executives in companies controlled by its private equity arm to regularly report on environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters to their boards, according to Reuters.

The Impact Room – Greg Reed, Board Director, Advisor

Recently we welcomed Greg Reed to The Impact Room.

Greg is a Board Director, Advisor and Former CEO of HomeServe UK. Greg is an award-winning and high-achieving executive and CEO. A business leader with a proven track record of delivering transformation and growth.

In this really interesting session you can hear from Greg on how best to progress your board career.

The benefits of a sideways moves and learning in your career development.

How when you look after your people the rest looks after itself.

The most critical traits to success and how to be a successful board level leader.

Grab a coffee, or take a short break and hear more from Greg here.

The Impact Room – Where exceptional, diverse and impactful leadership and wisdom is shared.

A high-end retained executive search firm exclusively focused on consumer centric business, delivering high performance, diverse, impactful leadership.

Top CEO/C-Suite, Board Executive Search – Inclusion/Diversity for Digitally Native Brands E-Commerce, Insuretech, Fintech, Fast Growth and Transformation.

Operations, Revenue, Product, Digital, Data, Customer, Strategy, Planning.

Help to move the dial when it comes to EDI…

How important is EDI, Equality, Diversion and Inclusion, to you and or your business?

Employers are increasingly coming to recognise the strong business case for improving the level of diversity and inclusion within their workforce and across all levels of their senior leadership.  A more diverse and inclusive workforce delivers higher levels of engagement, creativity and innovation.

Latest research carried out by McKinsey on why diversity matters, found that companies in the top quartile for gender or racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians.

In their latest report, Diversity wins: How inclusion matters they state that they have seen ‘a stronger business case for diversity, but slow progress overall’. Since 2014 the data has seen uplifts from 15-20% on executive team female representation in the US and UK, yet globally, just a one percentage point from 2017 to 2019, with over one third of the companies having no women at all on their executive teams.

The Impact Room – Jo Causon CEO Institute of Customer Service

We were delighted to see Jo Causon, Chief Executive Officer of Institute of Customer Service in the Impact Room recently. Jo joined Hannah Louise Cox to share some insight and thoughts about customer service, customer demands, ease of customer service, challenges, transparency, communications, opportunities.

What do the organisations that do well with customer service do differently, ethics, value.

What needs to change in the UK to help our customers feel happier and improve customer experience.

The role the boardroom has to play in delivering great customer service, setting the purpose and legacy.

The Impact Room – Where exceptional, diverse and impactful leadership and wisdom is shared.

#instituteofcustomerservice#jocauson#customerservice#customerstrategy#boardrooms#customerlegacy#customerpurpose#theimpactroom

Hannah Louise Cox, Practice Lead, Douglas Jackson. Helping CEO’s and Senior Executives | Retained Search | Diversity & Inclusion | Senior Leadership | High Growth | Technology | Large Scale Transformation | ⭐ CX Professionals List 2021, CX Magazine

A high-end retained executive search firm exclusively focused on consumer centric business, delivering high performance, diverse, impactful leadership.