For businesses where keeping and growing customers is central, the Chief Customer Officer is a valuable hire. Here is how to approach it.
Give the customer an owner
A Chief Customer Officer exists to ensure the customer has a single senior owner and advocate — rather than being everyone's concern and no one's responsibility. Before hiring, be clear this is what you want: a leader accountable for the health of the business's relationship with its customers, focused on keeping and growing them, not just winning them. Where retention and loyalty genuinely drive the business, this ownership is valuable.
Advocate and operator
The strongest Chief Customer Officers are both genuine advocates for the customer at the executive table and effective operators who drive the metrics that reflect customer health — satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and lifetime value. A pure advocate who cannot move the numbers, or an operator who does not genuinely champion the customer, each falls short. Look for a leader who combines the voice of the customer with real operational impact.
Define the remit clearly
The role overlaps with marketing, the Chief Experience Officer, and service leadership, so its remit must be defined against them. Broadly, marketing wins customers, experience shapes how they feel, and the Chief Customer Officer owns the ongoing relationship and its value. Clarity about what this role owns, and how it works with the others, prevents the confusion and turf issues that undermine cross-cutting roles.
How the search works
Define what the Chief Customer Officer owns and the customer challenge the business faces — retention, loyalty, or lifetime value — and a retained search can match a leader who both champions the customer and delivers results.
Building customer leadership?
We recruit Chief Customer Officers and retention and loyalty leaders across consumer businesses.
Explore Executive Search →Frequently asked questions
What should you look for when hiring a Chief Customer Officer?
A leader who is both a genuine advocate for the customer at the executive table and an effective operator who drives the metrics of customer health — satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and lifetime value — with a clearly defined remit relative to marketing and experience.
When does a business need a Chief Customer Officer?
Where keeping and growing customers is central to the business and responsibility for the customer is otherwise diffuse across sales, marketing, product, and service — so no single leader owns whether customers stay and thrive.
Related: What Does a Chief Customer Officer Do? · What Does a Chief Experience Officer Do? · How to Retain Your Leadership Team
