The CCO Playbook Unlocking Customer Experience Leadership | Transcription

Good morning, Jeb, how are you doing?

Good morning, great.

Kay, how are you?

Very good.

I'm super excited for this conversation here because this looks like a consolidation of talking to multiple CC OS all at once.

Talking to you hopefully.

Yeah, I think yes, that's fair.

I'll try.

So Jeb, you were a chief customer officer at Oracle and one of the even even before chief customer officers was a cool thing to be in and, but you chose a path to actually guide and coach other CC OS.

Why did you pick this path?

Well, first and foremost, it's, it's easier to coach than it is to actually do the work, which I so there's, there's one small point, but setting that aside, you know, there's a, there's a few reasons.

I, I mean, I think fundamentally when I, I've talked to a lot of CC OS over the last several years, as you might imagine.

And, and what I, what I found, and I'm sure this is no surprise to you, is that every single CCO goes about their job differently.

I mean, literally everyone goes about their job in a different way.

They have different focus, different span of responsibility, different way they measure their performance.

It's all different.

And if I can do a just a little bit to help solve that problem and to make it easier and more effective for people coming into this role to be able to execute quickly, I feel like I'll, I'll have done some good.

I also kind of look at it that the situation from the standpoint of, I mean, I would like to help at this point in my, in my work life in a way that I could have used help, you know, so if I, I just kind of look at I, I was ACCCO for 12 years, I guess about that.

And if I had somebody that could help me in the way that hopefully I'm helping chief customer officers, that would have been amazing.

Also there, you know, there's, there's just this kind of goes to the first point about every CCO having a different approach to their job and different span of responsibilities and so forth.

There's no playbook at all.

Like if you're, if you're a chief financial officer or CMO or even a chief operating officer, there's at least a playbook that's in your head, you know, that you can use to go about your job and, and really kick, kick into gear with some, some setting of priorities and, and working with people to kind of figure out what needs to be done and what can really make a big difference for the organization.

Nothing like that really exists for the chief customer officer.

And the last thing is just selfishly, I mean, I, every conversation I have with the CCO, I, I learn a lot.

So it's, it's fun to me for, for that reason that I'm just, I'm just constantly learning and if I can share what I learn and, and share, you know, what I've learned in different ways, either doing the job or talking to people who are actively doing the job today, you know, I, I feel good about that.

Hopefully, hopefully I've made a contribution.

Thank you for that.

Actually, you know, I have noticed that some non traditional industries CCO is even called chief experience officers.

And I, if I, if I look at the so I run this group called the experience alliance.

And if I look at the members of the group today, there's a wide range of people.

There are chief customer officers, chief client officers, there's a chief, there's a chief experience officer, there's a, there's a patient experience officer for a healthcare provider.

I mean, it runs a broad range of, of titles.

So, so even when I look to bringing new, say new members into my group, I, I, I kind of generally sort of focus on those titles, but you have to kind of look beyond that for people that just fundamentally are thinking about CX broadly and thinking about how they can really have a positive effect on their business through CX programs.

So that's, that's kind of more, more of the way I think about it.

Yeah.

So, so it's a good point that the titles are different, the job descriptions are different, the way in which each of the Ccos are approaching their own role is different and how they measure, how they implement what they do, it's all very different.

So are you, you know, in terms of what you're achieving from the coaching program, are you trying to bring normality in the sense that are you trying to define this is a standard in which somebody needs to operate?

Or are you saying, you know, Jeb as a CCO is doing it this way, how can I make them better and K as a chief experience officer or a patient experience officer is doing it this way and how can I make it better?

What is the approach?

I, I, I think it's a combination of those things.

If, if I had to come down on one side of that or the other, I would say it's more about the latter in the sense that every, every chief customer officer, every chief experience officer, they're all, they're all doing their jobs differently.

And so if I can, if I can learn about how they're doing it and try to help them do it better, that's, that's great.

You know, I, I do, I do try to create some, some, some commonalities and, and kind of, kind of some best practices or at least some, some frameworks for thinking about how to approach the job.

I, I'm, I'm not a big believer in one size fits all for anything, certainly not for CX and CCO work.

So, so I try to avoid that.

But, but I do think there's some, there are some things that people can learn from others and there are some commonalities, you know, that, that, that I try to, to bring out and, and really try to, to get people to, to think about in their own context.

I mean, it's, it's a, it's a little bit like, I mean, I think about the, the commonalities of, of, of the customer experience in the sense of, you know, there's, there's some basic human psychology that underlies the way that customers make decisions and, and, and the way that they perceive their interactions with the business, you know, and there's some, some basic sort of economic principles that underlie the business decisions.

And, and so if you can understand those and apply those in, in your own unique business context, I think that's, that's, that's kind of a good way to go about it.

So I do, I do try to, to bring some, some commonality to, to what people are doing, but, but I also try to be very respectful of the fact that it's, it's, it's very much a, a, a unique role for each person.

And, and if, if I, if I can help them get better, if I can help them sort of really drive some results in the business, however they go about their job, then, then, then I've done something useful.