10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success

10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success.Discover what every customer experience leader needs from the CEO and C-suite to deliver lasting business results.

“There is only one boss — the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

— Sam Walton

10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 1

Securing executive alignment and clearly defined priorities in support of Customer Experience Management is crucial. Yet, so few companies have a game plan for making this happen. In most cases customer experience, as a priority within the business, originates and stagnates within customer service or call center departments. The initiative fails to gain traction in other customer-facing areas of the business. It never receives executive support and endorsement. As a result, the customer experience never delivers material business results.

Why is this? For the customer experience to translate into improved financial performance and become a competitive advantage, it must be embraced enterprise-wide. It must be implemented in a cross-functional manner — and, it has to be a priority for the CEO and the entire C-suite.

The fact is, for Customer Experience Management to be successful, the CEO must truly believe that it matters. The CEO must commit to creating an experience that will differentiate the company in the market and grow the

business. Without this level of commitment, customer experience becomes just another business fad. Something a few members of the team talk about for a while before it quickly fades to black. It’s never institutionalized. It never becomes a cornerstone of the company’s business model or infused into the company’s culture. In these cases, companies should save their money or spend it elsewhere. But for those companies where the CEO, the entire C-suite and the CMO are fully committed to making customer experience management a difference maker, it is the best place the company can invest its money.

There is a clear link between a CEO’s commitment to customer experience management and business profitability. That’s the key takeaway from a global study led by The Economist Intelligence Unit. The study found that 58 percent of companies reported much higher profitability than their competitors when the CEO was in charge of customer experience, and 59 percent experience better revenue growth as a result of prioritizing strategic customer experience investments. The study also discovered that 63 percent of executives who make customer experience a priority actually deliver a better customer experience than their competition.

This paper explores how CMOs can assess the commitment level of the CEO and C-suite; determine if the executive team is willing to invest in lasting change; and how to ensure customer experience management translates into improved business performance.

“Many business leaders pay lip service to the concept of customer experience — publicly affirming its importance, but privately skeptical of its value.” — Jon Picoult Founder & Principal, Watermark Consulting


Priority No. 1: Locking In CEO CommitmentThere are a multitude of reports that explain one simple fact: If the CEO is not actively evangelizing customer experience management — the game is over. A company’s customer experience has no chance of producing lasting and meaningful results without CEO commitment. This deficit of CEO buy-in means the initiative will not sustain energy long enough for the benefits to materialize in the customer experience.

That’s why the very first step a CMO has to take in this process is to get one-on-one time with the CEO and have a candid, open discussion about the customer. About how customer experience is changing the competitive environment; why customer acquisition, retention, loyalty and advocacy will determine future success; and why people, processes and technologies must be centered on the customer for the company to win. During this conversation, CMOs should be prepared to surface relevant and meaningful proof points that validate how a superior customer experience will improve the long-term financial performance of the business.

In this meeting, you’ll also need to ask your CEO some difficult questions. Such as, does your CEO feel leaders have a deep understanding of the customer? Is the business centered on the needs and desires of high-value customers? Is the company’s go-to-market strategy rooted in deep, meaningful customer insights? Is the company’s product and service roadmap anchored in current and future customer requirements? Do the conversations

and decisions in the C-suite revolve around meeting and exceeding customer expectations? Is the company’s culture driven by a deep desire to deliver a superior experience? Does the company have the people, processes and technologies in place to create a superior customer experience?

Once you get these questions on the table, you will need to be prepared for the answers — and, you’ll need to be prepared to read between the lines. Where does the CEO take the conversation? Does your CEO acknowledge challenges the company has with respect to delivering a compelling and consistent customer experience? Does your CEO recognize the gaps that currently exist in your people, processes and technologies? Does your CEO realize how the culture has to change if the customer experience is going to change? Does your CEO see how an improved customer experience can become a strategic advantage in the marketplace? How the CEO responds to these questions will tell you a lot about how convinced he or she is that customer experience should be a strategic priority for the business.

Be prepared to have multiple conversations. The CEO may ask you to dig deeper, provide more insights about your current customer experience and identify metrics that determine how customer experience improvements will benefit the bottom-line. If this happens, it is a great sign. It means your CEO is interested. It means your CEO wants to know more and is taking the conversation seriously. Your job is to help your CEO assess and define the upside, then lock in his or her commitment. Here’s what that commitment looks like.


10 CEO Customer Experience CommitmentsThere are 10 commitments you need to secure from your CEO if you want to achieve customer experience management success.

1. Customer-Centricity2. CXM Ownership3. Direct C-Suite Reporting Relationship4. C-Suite Involvement and Funding5. Cross-Functional Leadership Accountability6. Organizational Change

(People, Process, Technology)7. Crystal Clear Performance Metrics 8. Measurement and Reporting Systems9. Realistic Timeline for Business Impact10. Sustained CXM Company-Wide Cadence

Based on our experience, if you want your customer experience to deliver material results, these are nonnegotiable. Each one of these represents the commitment required for customer experience management to translate into a competitive advantage. Let’s delve into each one of these commitments in more detail.

1. Customer-CentricityFirst and foremost, the CEO must make customer-centricity a cornerstone of the company’s business. The CEO must commit to driving customer knowledge deep into the fabric of the company’s culture and strategy. It has to start here. A superior customer experience can’t take shape without the CEO’s commitment to securing rich and actionable insights about your customer.

This commitment must take the form of increased funding in support of customer research and knowledge- sharing systems. Customer intimacy must become a critical aspect of every employee’s job description and performance review. Leaders must center their overall approach to managing the business and their decision-making processes on the customer. The operations team will need to deploy technologies and optimize processes that deliver customer insights to front-line workers so they can create a superior experience across every customer-facing area of the business. All of this requires commitment from the top. Commitment from your CEO.

2. CXM OwnershipIf the CEO is committed to creating a customer-centric culture and institutionalizing customer experience as a cornerstone of the company’s business model, ownership must be clearly established and defined. The CEO must appoint a sole leader of customer experience management who can be fully responsible for defining, managing and optimizing the customer experience. This individual must be equipped with the authority to manage across

“Understanding who your customers are, collectively and as individuals, has never been more important. Companies that prioritize customer experience report higher revenue, lower costs, increased customer loyalty and more engaged employees.”

— Fortune Knowledge Group

“Smart companies use customer-focused measurements and analytics to redesign their products, processes, services, and employee positions and responsibilities. Smart leaders make sure employees are given access to the tools, skills, and information they need to grow and be accountable in a customer-centric environment.”



organizational and political boundaries and be empowered to influence or enact change. This authority could, in fact, be the responsibility of the CMO, or it could rest with a newly defined Chief Customer Officer position. The point is, clearly defined ownership is critical. Distributed ownership doesn’t work. It’s important to note, we are talking about ownership, not accountability. By making customer-centricity and the customer experience core to the business, the CEO will hold everyone accountable for meeting specific customer experience management performance standards. However, one individual must own the end-to-end strategic planning, execution and management process. The CEO must clearly assign and communicate ownership of this initiative across the enterprise for customer experience management to be successful.

3. Direct C-Suite Reporting RelationshipWith an executive-level owner in place, the CEO must formalize a direct reporting relationship with the C-suite. Ideally, this individual would report directly to the CEO. However, this is not a requirement. What is required is a direct reporting relationship to a C-level executive and direct access to the C-suite. Why is this critical? Because, it’s imperative that the customer experience leader have consistent access to the entire C-suite. This is how he or she will ensure strategic business decisions are aligned with customer requirements and vice versa. It also ensures the business impact of customer experience initiatives are visible to the entire executive team on a consistent basis. Your CEO should be completely willing to grant direct access to the C-suite. A CX Report recently stated, “Knowing what’s working, where there’s

room for improvement, and why specific allocations can improve a company’s customer experience allows for smarter investment decisions from all stakeholders in the C-suite.” A global study conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit also shows that C-suite-led customer experience initiatives can increase revenues and customer satisfaction while reducing costs.

A direct reporting relationship to and involvement from the C-suite is not an option. The CEO has to make sure the customer experience leader has unfettered access to the highest level of the organization if customer experience management is going to materially impact the business.

“Your whole C-suite will likely approve of the general idea of delivering better experiences to customers. But actually implementing new customer-centric processes throughout their own departments can require a lot of effort and reorganization. The best executives won’t want to contribute their teams’ limited resources to such a project until they understand specifically how it will help them fulfill their responsibilities to the company.”

— Former Boston Consulting Group Consultant


4. C-Suite Involvement and Funding The CEO should not just be asking for commitment from the C-suite, it’s more than commitment — it’s strategic involvement. Each member of the C-suite must play an active role in shaping the customer experience strategy.

Finance, operations, marketing, and other functional leaders must be held accountable for actively managing customer experience initiatives that pertain to their area of the business. Performance metrics and budget dollars that pertain to C-suite areas of responsibility should also be assigned. This is the only way the CEO can demand accountability and the customer experience leader can secure their time and attention. The question then comes down to, “where will the funding come from and what level of funding is required?”

McKinsey & Company discovered that the most successful customer experience management initiatives are self-funded. McKinsey states, “early wins remove costs from the system and simplify the business. Those savings can then fund medium-term initiatives to innovate, to change the trajectory of the customer experience, and to support some of the boldest actions. With a self-funding business case, a customer-experience program can maintain momentum and build buy-in throughout an organization.”

Funding discussions quickly help you gauge executive-level commitment and conviction in customer experience management. These discussions will help you determine just how important it is to the CEO and C-suite. Anyone who has worked in a large organization knows when an initiative is important enough and senior leaders are convinced it can be a difference maker, dollars will be found. With that said, be prepared to help shape a realistic and fiscally sound business case. Patrick Gibbons of Walker believes the key to getting funding and the CEO’s attention is connecting it to a “burning platform” that already exists within the C-suite. Gibbons says, “If you can show how customer experience management investments will address market share losses, slowing revenue growth, or out-of-control service costs, chances are you’ll get an audience with those holding the purse strings.”

5. Cross-Functional Leadership AccountabilityActive C-suite involvement must go beyond the boardroom. Executives must hold lieutenants accountable for leading initiatives that are designed to improve the customer experience. They must ensure leaders understand the strategic nature of customer experience initiatives that pertain to their area of the business. They must realize these initiatives and the associated business results will be visible at the highest level of the organization. Not momentary visibility, but sustained visibility within the C-suite. These leaders must take complete ownership for ensuring front-line managers and workers understand the role they play in the customer journey. They must ensure direct reports know what customer-centricity means, how customer experience is being measured and how it impacts daily work activities.

“With a solid game plan to gather support from every corner of the C-level from CEO to CMO, customer experience strategists will be much better positioned for success.”

— Duff Anderson, Voice of the Customer Expert

“It can be tempting to think the appointment of a customer experience officer means the voice of the customer has found a home. The customer-centric journey is, in fact, one that everyone in the company must take, with shared understanding and commitment, and accountability across leadership and every job function. Everyone is responsible for the customer.”



The customer experience should be managed and measured across all customer-facing areas of the business. At the executive level, the focus may be on customer retention or advocacy, and at the next level down, it may be on phases of the customer journey within specific areas of the business. On a department basis, managers might look at key performance data pertaining to specific customer touchpoints. At the employee level, companies can measure customer interaction scores, unacceptable customer incidents, satisfaction scores, operational-performance indicators, and more. What’s critical is that leaders across the organization know what dimensions of the customer experience they are accountable for and how they will be measured. The CEO must commit to managing this degree of accountability at every level of the company.

6. Organizational Change (People, Process, Technology)This is where customer experience leaders will find the greatest resistance — resistance to change. It is also where the CEO must ensure everyone in the organization embraces the changes that are essential in delivering a superior customer experience. The CEO must make it absolutely clear that there are no sacred cows, political motivations are outlawed and functional barriers are being torn down. The CEO must remind everyone that it’s all about the customer and about delivering a superior experience for the customer. That’s what matters most. The CEO must provide the customer experience leader with complete autonomy and authority to inject change into customer-facing areas of the business. This doesn’t mean the customer experience leader runs through the organization like a bull in a china shop. The customer

experience leader must respect the domain expertise that each functional leader has in their area of the business. However, the CEO must ensure functional leaders keep their eye on the prize and not on their pride.

The fact is, organizational silos are the greatest barriers to success. According to Korn Ferry, more than half of marketing executives indicate the biggest hurdle they face when developing an integrated customer experience is aligning all facets of the organization. In fact, 43 percent of CMOs said aligning department strategies and priorities was the primary challenge of working across departments to develop a single customer experience. More than one-quarter said the same about integrating the customer experience across various sales channels.

According to McKinsey & Company, customer-experience driven organizations can start to break down silos “by making customer experience a top priority for the CEO,

“Recognizing that employees are the driving force that can make or break a great customer experience is the first step. An effective change management initiative is the second step necessary to ensure that employees have the knowledge and structure to deliver.” — JG Staal Head of Customer Experience Management at Tahzoo


by having senior leaders model the customer-centric behaviors that will engage and motivate employees on the front line, and by designing a customer-experience team that promotes cross-functional collaboration via targets and metrics.”

7. Crystal Clear Performance Metrics A critical part of customer experience management is defining and securing agreement on the metrics that matter. What business performance improvement are we in search of? What specific dimensions of the customer experience do we need to improve? What metrics will we use to measure results? The Experience Imperative Report, published by Fortune Knowledge Group, reinforces the fact that measurement is important, but measuring the metrics that matter is essential. Executives interviewed for the report said they were familiar with traditional customer loyalty or happiness indicators, such as the Net Promoter Score — which many management experts consider to be a leading indicator of revenue growth. However, the majority of executives felt that score was insufficient. Another recent study conducted by Genesis found 62 percent of companies that measure their customer experience initiatives are more likely to deliver better customer experience. Needless to say, metrics are critical, but they have to be metrics that matter to your CEO and the C-suite.

Once customer experience metrics have been defined, the CEO’s job is to get every member of the C-suite to lock arms and to communicate consistently across the organization. These are the key performance indicators we are going to focus on. This is the data set that we will consistently monitor to determine what is working and what is not.

The point is, the CEO has to commit to defining and approving the metrics that matter most to your business. Then it’s your job to demonstrate how changes in your customer experience positively influence those metrics. This means you need commitment to ensure you have the appropriate measurement and reporting systems in place.

8. Measurement and Reporting SystemsA recent Temkin survey found that 73 percent of large companies considered “lack of taking action based on customer experience metrics” to be one of their most significant roadblocks to improving the customer experience. The inability to take action is rooted in “lack of visibility and access” to actionable insights that employees, managers and leaders can leverage to improve the customer experience in their daily work activities.

Securing commitment from the CEO and C-suite on performance metrics that matter is only half the battle. You also have to get the CEO to commit to putting data collection, measurement systems and reporting processes in place so you can capture and act on those metrics. Fortunately, with the tremendous growth in customer experience management, there are a large number of

“A great customer experience, and the internal ecosystem supporting it, can deliver tremendous strategic and economic value to a business, in a way that’s difficult for competitors to replicate.”

— Watermark Consulting

“When you have the right tools in place, you’ll be able to understand the customer experience across time, channels and devices, making it possible to win more business and drive loyalty.”

— Elizabeth Magill, IBM Customer Analytics


measurement and reporting systems available today. Your task is to find systems that will provide you with visibility and access to the metrics that matter at every level of your organization.

The key to success is prioritizing and starting small. Don’t overcomplicate things. Start gathering metrics that require the least amount of lead time and disruption. This will enable you to start surfacing meaningful customer experience data early in the process and capture more sophisticated metrics as time goes by.

A Chief Customer Officer in the finance industry was recently interviewed and said that because of their customer experience work, “We now have a roadmap as to how we are going to get more sophisticated about what we are measuring to improve the customer experience. It’s long-term. We expect our measures will change and evolve over the next three years and beyond.”

9. Realistic Timeline for Business ImpactThe most critical factor in achieving success is ensuring executives are fully aligned with respect to timing. More specifically, when does the CEO and the C-suite expect to see customer experience management materialize into measurable business results? The answer to this question will determine the degree of alignment and level of commitment you have at the executive level of the company. Do they expect business results to come next quarter? Next year? Two to three years down the road? What is the executive team’s tolerance level from a timing perspective? Time-to-impact really depends on the priorities you have defined in your customer experience strategy. If some of the initiatives are tied to increased performance in isolated or contained areas of the business, the time to impact can be months. If

they are tied to enterprise-wide performance metrics like improvements in customer retention, loyalty or share of wallet, then a longer-term view may be required. Research has shown that metrics tied to revenue per customer; customer lifetime value; market share; marketing costs; and customer support and service costs, typically impact earnings per share (EPS) two or three years after the first customer experience initiative started. What this means is you have to set realistic expectations with the executive team. Expectations relative to when performance metrics will start moving in the right direction. Ensuring alignment across the executive team is critical. When expectations are out of alignment, uncertainty and doubt creep in and commitment quickly becomes compromised.

10. Sustained CXM Company-Wide CadenceThe final commitment you need to secure pertains to the cadence of communication in support of customer experience management. What you are asking for is the CEO’s commitment to ensuring the strategic importance and business value of customer experience remains

“A 2% increase in retention or a 20% increase in average sale or order size doesn’t happen in a few months; it takes time, and that’s why it’s so crucial to forecast eventual increases, set longer-term strategies, and “execute hard” while taking heart in those quick wins.” — Lori Carr Former Chief Customer Officer, Bombardier Flexjet


omnipresent. This is important because the only way to change the corporate culture — and ultimately the customer experience — is to ensure customer-centricity is woven into the fabric of the company. Executives, business unit leaders, directors and managers must have a cadence by which they communicate, manage and drive change throughout the customer experience.

This is one area where most executives undervalue and underestimate the power of consistency. They wonder why their message isn’t resonating, why lasting change isn’t taking shape in the company’s culture and customer experience. More often than not, it’s because they have not remained committed to a disciplined cadence of communication. They have not maintained visibility to the metrics that matter. That have not showcased the impact the initiative is having on the business. They simply have not stayed the course. This is what happens in organizations where the CEO is not fully committed to a sustained customer experience cadence across the enterprise.

To deliver lasting business results, the CEO must commit to infusing mindset, behavior and cultural change throughout the organization. This happens when the management team — and eventually your entire employee population — instinctively understand one simple truth: their words and actions matter. The words they use and the actions they take play a critical role in the perception your company creates in the minds of your customers. When their words and actions are anchored in a clearly defined customer experience strategy and centered on the customer’s needs, desires, expectations — positive, sustained growth can be achieved.

Is this too much to ask? While securing your CEO’s commitment to customer experience management may sound like a difficult task, it is better than the alternative. The alternative is to not have CEO and C-suite commitment on the front end of this journey and then deal with more costly consequences down the road, like tarnished reputations, damaged careers and material financial losses. Customer experience management is not something you can do halfway. It’s not something you can dabble in. If you plan to invest in customer experience, get the commitment you need up front to ensure success.

“We’ve found that organizations able to skillfully manage the entire experience reap enormous rewards: enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced churn, increased revenue, and greater employee satisfaction. They also discover more effective ways to collaborate across functions and levels, a process that delivers gains throughout the company.”

— McKinsey & Company


10 Commitments CEOs Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success.Below is a summary of the 10 commitments you need to secure from your CEO if customer experience is going to deliver lasting business results ...

1. Commitment to Customer-Centricity

2. Commitment to CXM Ownership

3. Commitment to a Direct C-Suite Reporting Relationship

4. Commitment to C-Suite Funding and Involvement

5. Commitment to Cross-Functional Leadership Accountability

6. Commitment to Organizational Change (People, Process, Technology)

7. Commitment to Meaningful Performance Metrics

8. Commitment to Measurement and Reporting Systems

9. Commitment to Realistic Timeline for Business Impact

10. Commitment to Sustained, Company-Wide CX Cadence

About OnMessage Companies that succeed in maintaining complete alignment between their corporate story and strategy — win. They win because their words and actions are consistent; creating a superior experience that increases customer acquisition, retention, loyalty and competitive differentiation. OnMessage specializes in helping executives align and activate their entire organization around a corporate strategy and story that dramatically improves the customer experience. Leveraging our disciplined methodology — executive teams are able to crystalize their go-to-market strategy, formulate a strategically aligned corporate messaging platform and ensure every stakeholder understands how to activate the strategy and story throughout the customer journey. In addition, our cloud-based intelligence console provides leaders with timely and accurate insights. Market, customer, employee, culture, competitor and partner insights they need to optimize their strategy, story and customer experience overtime. We are OnMessage, the strategy consulting firm helping executives win in the highly competitive “experience economy” that exists today.

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James O’Gara President and Founder

James O’Gara is the president and founder of OnMessage. Under his leadership, OnMessage has developed a proven model for helping companies develop a clear, compelling and consistent message. With almost 25 years’ experience working in business and marketing leadership positions, O’Gara is known and respected for building collaborative relationships with executive teams that result in highly effective go-to-market, messaging / positioning and demand generation strategies.

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