| Detail | For this role |
|---|---|
| Department | Leadership and Senior Management |
| Level | Leadership |
| Reports to | Chief Executive Officer |
| Direct reports | Head of Customer Success, Head of Customer Support, Head of Onboarding |
| Experience | 12+ years in customer success or service, with 4 years leading a customer function |
Chief Customer Officer job description template
Copy this job description, replace the text in square brackets and post it on your careers page or a job portal.
Job title: Chief Customer Officer
Department: Leadership and Senior Management
Reports to: Chief Executive Officer
Location: [City], [office, branch or site]
About the role
A Chief Customer Officer owns the entire relationship a customer has with the company after the sale. They bring support, success, onboarding and retention under one leader and make the customer experience a board-level number. The role sits on the leadership team and speaks for the customer in every product, pricing and process decision. A good CCO cuts churn, lifts renewals and expansion, and turns unhappy customers into references, while keeping the cost of service in line with the plan.
Key responsibilities
- Own customer retention, renewal and expansion targets, and report churn and satisfaction to the CEO and board each quarter.
- Lead the customer success, support and onboarding teams, and set service standards and response-time commitments for each.
- Design the customer journey from onboarding to renewal, and fix the steps where customers get stuck or leave.
- Set up the voice-of-customer process and carry customer issues into product, pricing and operations decisions.
- Own the escalation path for large or at-risk accounts, and step in personally before a key customer leaves.
- Track health scores across the customer base, and act early on accounts that show early signs of churn.
- Set the service budget and headcount, and balance service quality against the cost to serve each account.
- Build the renewal and upsell playbook with sales so expansion revenue grows without hurting trust.
- Report recurring product and service complaints to the CTO and COO with a fix plan and owner.
- Coach service managers on difficult conversations, refunds and goodwill decisions within clear limits.
Requirements
- MBA or a graduate degree in any discipline
- Strong record in customer success or service leadership
- Experience owning retention and renewal numbers is an advantage
- 12+ years in customer success or service, with 4 years leading a customer function
KRAs and KPIs for a Chief Customer Officer
Key result areas for the appraisal form, each with a KPI you can measure every month or quarter.
| Key result area | How to measure it |
|---|---|
| Retention | Customer churn held at or below the target set for the year |
| Renewals | Renewal rate on contracts due stays above the agreed threshold |
| Expansion | Upsell and cross-sell revenue meets the annual expansion target |
| Satisfaction | Customer satisfaction and NPS at or above the planned level each quarter |
| Service response | Support tickets answered and resolved within the committed response times |
| Cost to serve | Cost of the service function stays within the approved budget |
Skills and tools
Tools used day to day: CRM software, Customer success platform, Ticketing tools, BI dashboards, MS Excel.
Reporting line and career path
Next roles: Chief Operating Officer, Chief Executive Officer
Interview questions for a Chief Customer Officer
- How would you measure whether our customers are happy, beyond a single satisfaction score?
- A top-ten account has given notice to leave. Walk me through your first two weeks.
- How do you balance faster support response against the cost of running a service team?
- Tell me how you turned a rising churn number around in a business you ran.
- How do you carry customer complaints into product and pricing without slowing the company down?
- How do you set health scores that predict churn rather than just describe the past?
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What does a Chief Customer Officer do?
A Chief Customer Officer owns everything that happens after the sale: onboarding, support, success and renewals. They design the customer journey, run the voice-of-customer process, handle large escalations and carry customer needs into product and pricing. They are measured on retention, renewals, expansion revenue and customer satisfaction.
What is the difference between a CCO and a customer success head?
A customer success head runs the success team and its accounts day to day. A Chief Customer Officer owns the whole post-sale relationship across support, success and onboarding, sits on the leadership team, sets service budgets and speaks for the customer in board and product decisions. The success head usually reports to the CCO.
Who does a Chief Customer Officer report to?
A Chief Customer Officer usually reports to the Chief Executive Officer, and in some companies to the Chief Operating Officer or Chief Revenue Officer. They sit on the leadership team and present retention, renewal and satisfaction results to the board alongside the sales and product leaders.