Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Contents
USAAs Wayne Peacock. . ......... 1
Recommendations
Pave The Way For
A CCO..................................... 7
Recommendations
Create A Foundation
For A CCO..............................12
Recommendations
Customer Success
Requires A CCO With
Power, Support, And
Clout......................................16
seeks to move USAA from a company that is already successful on a product-by-product basis to one that is even
more successful because it operates as an integrated service network.
What Was The Breakthrough Moment That Led USAA To Appoint A CCO?
Wayne: Weve been on this customer experience journey for awhile now. We have done a lot without really
changing the business model. But we began to understand that we needed to take a quantum leap forward in order
to complete the integration journey. 2009 was the best year in USAAs history from the perspective of market and
financial performance. It might have been a time for us to rest on [our] laurels and feel good about where we were.
Instead we looked at it as an opportunity to make a play from strength.
Forresters take: USAA laid the foundation for appointing a CCO by making customer experience a strategic
mandate, fostering a culture that was receptive to a CCO, and creating a viable position one with power,
operational linkage, and budget influence. CCOs appointed before companies have laid this groundwork may
struggle with legitimacy issues. Time Warner Cables vice president of branded customer experience warns: I
could not have built the movement that I did if I had the CCO title.
What Does USAA Hope To Accomplish By Having A CCO?
Wayne: We wanted to elevate our game and start serving members in more of an advisory capacity than we have
done in the past. Our ability to serve members across a wide spectrum of products and services is much more
powerful than just helping them with a loan or insurance product. Its about knowing them better, being proactive,
and responding more holistically when they come to us: for example, when they come to us asking about auto
insurance and their real need is to buy a new car. We want to help members solve the need of buying a car rather
than just buying insurance.
Forresters take: USAA has taken tangible steps to make the vision of serving members holistically a reality, as
evidenced by its Auto Circle offering (see Figure 2). The current effort to organize the firms business structure
around customers builds on that foundation and should result in a big financial payback. Thats because a better
customer experience drives improvement for three types of customer loyalty: willingness to consider another
purchase, likelihood to switch business to a competitor, and likelihood to recommend to a friend or colleague.
How big is the opportunity? A 10-point improvement in Customer Experience Index scores can have a $606
million annual impact for insurance companies and a $212 million impact for banks.
organizational Structure
USAAs move is a radical realignment that centers the company on customers. The move has Wayne overseeing
all customer-facing resources in the company, which amounts to about 9,000 staff members across marketing,
channel management, sales, and service functions.
Like any big change, you have to start with painting a vision of what can be in the future, how that will be different
from the past, and who will benefit. The rest of it is about planning, organizing, and executing, which is substantial
when youre moving 9,000 employees across the company.
Frontline employees have been powerful advocates in leading the charge for the change. Our biggest wins this past
year have come from the frontline employees who see the opportunity, who value the change, and who are telling
their peers and bosses how excited they are. Employees see this as a way to broaden their skills, operate across a
much wider array of products, and serve members better.
Forresters take: Engaging employees early in customer experience efforts is a powerful tool, which we heard often
from CCOs. Firms that implement a voice of the employee (VoE) program in parallel with a voice of the customer
(VoC) program will identify policies and processes that undermine employees ability to serve customers. In
addition to helping find and fix problems, these empowered employees also give CCOs new advocates to promote
the customer experience cause.
R eco m m e n d at i o n s
Wayne Peacock puts it, If you are not committed or you dont think the
company can make those changes, it is wasteful to go down the path. One
clear readiness indicator is whether your company is willing to create an
explicit customer experience strategy and, if necessary, revise the overall
company strategy to make it more customer-centric. If the organization
cant make that level of commitment, its a sign that your executives arent
prepared to take the CCO plunge.
Then build a business case that justifies the position. USAAs business
case for its customer experience effort (and CCO) had three tiers: 1) serving
members better; 2) creating an environment for employees to be their best;
and 3) achieving better business results. This aligns well with Forresters
research, which shows that customer experience professionals need to build
business cases that appeal to executives on three levels: authority, logic, and
emotion. When building your own business case, start by understanding
the top influencers youll be presenting to, classifying their current level of
support, and creating customized action plans and progress trackers.
have a third-party office that was a constant advocate for the client, that would bring the clients voice into decisionmaking, and [that would] manage the target client experience.
Forresters take: Trina, who was appointed to her position in 2010, joins a host of other freshman customer
experience executives in fact, 55% of the CCOs we researched in January 2011 had been on the job for a year
or less. Similar to other firms, her appointment came about after several years of customer experience efforts
at the company and was prompted by a change in leadership. KeyBanks realization that it needed an executive
champion to bring customer experience concerns into the mainstream decision-making process was spot on: The
lack of customer experience management processes is one of the top three obstacles to improving the customer
experience that firms deliver. Firms that put a centralized team in place reduce that barrier.
How Is The CCO Position And Team Structured?
Trina: I report to KeyCorps Vice Chair Beth Mooney, who runs the companys Community Bank, which includes
retail and business banking, wealth management, private banking, investment services, and mortgage products. I
sit on the companys executive council and am a peer of the regional presidents and other business-line heads.
I run several areas in addition to customer experience. My customer experience team has two strategists and five
field advocates, managed directly by a senior vice president. The field advocates, who are aligned with regions,
disseminate service measurements and voice-of-the-client feedback to field staff. They spot problem areas
that prevent employees from delivering the target experiences. The strategists and field advocates partner with
businesses to drive the desired experience into strategy and operational plans. The strategists also work on a dozen
or so problems identified by staff monthly, from process to technology issues.
Forresters take: Trina and her team play an advisory role. This is significantly different from the operational
role of the customer experience teams at USAA and Boeing, which Forrester has also profiled. Both structures
can be effective, and Forrester recommends that customer experience leaders pick the one that has worked most
successfully for strategic change initiatives at their firms in the past.
Key Activities
Like other customer experience leaders we have interviewed, Trina spends a significant portion of her time
evangelizing customer experience efforts and creating a shared understanding at the executive level of the company.
How Do You Spend Your Time?
Trina: In addition to customer experience, I also run desktop and information management, rewards and
recognition, the risk management office, and the strategic planning process. Because of the way that the various
parts of my organization are aligned, it has tremendous leverage. I essentially clear the way for my team, which
focuses on the day-to-day customer experience opportunities.
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One of the more important roles I play is to bring the customer experience perspective into top-level meetings.
I am able to shape what is happening at the highest levels, create a broad circle of influence, and give input on
priorities. I see other CCOs [who] are either aligned to one part of the organization, like marketing, or stand alone
and report to the CEO but dont have tentacles to other parts of the company. The standalone customer experience
leader is sometimes anemic; its like having superpowers that cant be used.
Forresters take: As a peer on the firms executive council, Trina is able to gain executive support on a day-to-day
basis, which is something that firms without such a leader often struggle to get. When customer experience leaders
build the business case for their efforts, they should start by understanding the top influencers, classifying each ones
current level of support, and then creating personalized action plans. They should go on to develop a portfolio of
projects and pilots that support the business goals of these top influencers. Once theyve achieved some measured
successes, they can publicize the results to build a coalition of new leaders who support customer experience efforts.
What Are Your Top Strategic Priorities This Year?
Trina: Our team has four priorities this year: 1) a training tool kit to help area and branch leaders coach sales staff
on how to service clients in a way that builds sales; 2) faster, one-time-and-done problem resolution in response
to client feedback; 3) greater transparency of the status of service requests for both employees and clients; and 4)
foundation coursework for new and existing employees. We found that groups [that] make good use of coursework
perform better on satisfaction scores.
Forresters take: Two of KeyBanks priorities focus on training, which is an important element when building a
customer-centric culture. Forrester encourages firms to utilize three important levers in focusing its culture: hiring
(e.g., recruiting and selection processes), socialization (e.g., training, storytelling, rituals), and rewards (e.g., formal
and informal incentives).
What Have Been Your Teams Top Wins Over The Past Year?
Trina: Three recent wins have been important to our team:
Creating a consistent way of measuring customer experience across the company. Each business unit
used to conduct surveys on [its] own, sometimes by email and other times by mail, each with a different set
of questions. Our customers cross channels, so we wanted a consistent way to measure them and make the
comparison across the channels.
Embedding service training into sales training. Knitting a service tool kit together with the sales tool kit was
a very big win for us. Now salespeople will be coached to service well, not just to sell more.
Getting external validation. The validation weve received from places like J.D. Power and Associates and
ACSI have helped energize employees and senior leaders. Everyone enjoys the external confirmation.
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Forresters take: Establishing consistent enterprise metrics is an important early step in any customer experience
transformation journey. As firms gather more sophisticated data about customer experience, they build models that
capture the complex mix of factors that influence customer decisions. For example, executives at Southwest Airlines
are already working on models that show the correlation between changes in subjective metrics and a lift in outcome
metrics, such as the likelihood to make Southwest customers first choice when booking a flight. These metrics
become a powerful tool for customer experience teams to drive employee change and build executive support.
R eco m m e n d at i o n s
Create A Foundation
For A CCO
12
Set clear expectations with employees. Trina says: Firms need to define
in the simplest terms what client-centered activity looks like. They have to
bring it to life make it real and tangible. This starts to set expectations.
At the same time, companies need to deliver adequate tools and training
to help employees deliver on promises. Otherwise, dont bother with a
CCO . . . the position will just churn, which sends a very powerful negative
message to employees. Forrester agrees. A portfolio of customer experience
projects, engaged employees, and involvement by the human resources (HR)
department signal that the firm is ready to appoint a customer experience
executive.
Ensure alignment of executives. Trina advises: Make sure that the set
Trina recommends that the position needs tentacles to other parts of the
organization. It needs knowledge of the operational mechanics of the company
as well as the team who can help to make change. For teams structured in
an advisory capacity, such as the one at KeyBank, this operational linkage is
all the more critical. Firms should ensure that CCOs have the ability to break
down and mediate across organizational silos. This means establishing a
governance structure that arbitrates resource allocation and activities.
13
Rosetta Stone Appoints A CCO To guide the Transition from product to service
Rosetta Stone is a $260 million language learning company that aims to make language acquisition fun, easy, and
effective. The firm recently transitioned from a product-focused model of selling CDs to a services model that
supplements software-based learning with online companion activities such as language coaching and interaction
between learners. The firm decided that it needed a CCO position to guide its transition and ensure that the
company gained the competencies that drive success in a services-oriented industry.
As part of an ongoing series of interviews with CCOs, Forrester spoke with Jay Topper, senior vice president of
customer success at Rosetta Stone, to learn about how the company set up his organization and responsibilities.
Centralized Customer Experience Aligns Rosetta Stones Organization With Its Strategy
As the firms chief information officer (CIO), Jay was heading up a new customer relationship management (CRM)
implementation as part of the transition when he realized that the fragmented nature of different services groups
would not support the kind of relationships the organization sought with its new model. Rosetta Stones senior
management realized that the new technology alone would not solve the problem, so it:
Created a CCO position that reports to the CEO. The executive management team agreed with Jays
assessment and created a new position the senior vice president (SVP) of customer success to oversee
and unify the firms new customer strategy. As someone who understood the companys goals, technology, and
culture, Jay was tapped for the position. I didnt have any designs on the position, but the management team
felt like it was easier to find a new CIO than to fill this position. The CEO looks at my group as one of three
strategic pillars along with product and brand/marketing. So he made me a direct report, explained Jay.
Aligned all post-sales functions under the CCO. Unlike many centralized customer experience teams that
play more of an advisory role to other parts of the organization, Jay has operational control over Rosetta
Stones service delivery organization. Jay explains that this organization is responsible for everything after the
initial sale, whether consumer or business-to-business (B2B), US or international. We encompass traditional
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customer service, product support, CRM, and product-related components like our live online instruction and
concierge services.
Strengthened connections with the marketing and product divisions. Although Rosetta Stone didnt fold
control of pre-sales activities into the position as others have done, Jay has gained responsibility for B2B
account managers and call center sales as the position has evolved. Jay told Forrester that this was part of an
ongoing alignment between the product, marketing, and services groups. The amount of time I spend with
marketing, sales, and brand now versus two years ago is up by 20 times. One way or another, these groups
need to be really intertwined and push on each other.
Leveraged behavioral personas to drive alignment. Rosetta Stone uses personas to understand consumers
motivation for learning a language and to align services to those customer needs. Says Jay, One person may
be rehabilitating his brain after a stroke, and another may have personal enrichment reasons. The behavioral
personas have enabled us to go back upstream to the people who are just starting language learning and be
more specific about how we message to them. When we were a box product culture, we focused only on buy,
buy, buy. As a service organization, we are using the personas to help us transition to here is something that
you can use to reach your goal. Our big word now is nurture.
Product usage is a strong predictor of NPS . . . and renewals. For Jay and his company, success comes down
to a combination of satisfied usage and the right touches. Jay says, My number-one metric is what we call the
usage funnel. It starts at purchase [and] includes online activation, logins, taking a studio coaching session,
and average hours using the product. This is our bread and butter in terms of both revenue and customer
experience. People who socialize within the product experience (e.g., take a coaching session) have a 20-point
jump in NPS. People who socialize outside of the direct learning experience (e.g., participate in a webinar):
Their usage more than triples, their renewals more than triple, and their NPS can jump up over 70.
Usage and satisfaction are key employee metrics. Jay said that employees down to the agent level have
compensation tied to usage. We have a group of concierge agents who solely focus on usage. They are
constantly testing and identifying what works. Top agents that are able to stimulate learners and find the
secret sauce for usage are definitely compensated accordingly. Those people who crack the code are incredibly
valuable to this organization.
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Automating processes that drive scale. Many of the smart touches the company has with customers to date
are manual. Jay recognizes that the company needs to build in some automation to scale the effort. According
to Jay: We are working to put the business rules in place to automate the interactions we are now doing mostly
manually. We now have enough data and the personas to know the kinds of different interactions that help
different customers move from one stage in the learning process to the next. We know if a customer gave high
satisfaction ratings for a learning module, he is likely to sign up for a coaching within a couple of days if we
give him a little nudge.
Creating a plan for global customer experience expansion. Rosetta Stone is looking to replicate the
operational improvements it has made in the US market into growing markets across the globe. Jay says: I will
spend a lot of time helping with the architecture of those organizations so they stay tightly aligned with what
were doing here. We will largely replicate our existing organizational structure and approach, though well
likely tailor certain elements to the local markets. Our hypothesis is that at the root level, there are a lot more
commonalities among learners than we think. People want to learn a language, its not easy, and they have a
reason motivating them to learn.
Embedding social support into the product. To date, Rosetta Stones social media initiatives have largely
revolved around marketing and service, but Jay sees great potential in enabling social within the product itself.
What has me most excited is when our guest coaches and concierge agents socialize with a learner who is
afraid of taking a section for some reason. The likelihood of that customer going to the next level goes from 0%
to nearly 70%. Whether its a coach or another learner on Facebook, it stimulates engagement with the product,
which improves our Net Promoter Scores.
Translating personas into B2B service improvements. Jay indicated that personas are helping Rosetta Stone
extend its relationships with B2B customers. When we sold to Booz Allen or the Army, we looked at the
company as a demographic. Thats crazy! There are different personas within the institution. But Jay is still
looking to extend personas further: There are a lot of complexities involved with our B2B customer, because
we are also serving the overall overseer of the language program, which could be human resources, training,
or some other department in a company. At this point, whats most important to us is focusing at the learner
persona level. We have not yet mastered the personas for others.
R eco m m e n d at i o n s
Customer Success
Requires A CCO With
Power, Support, And
Clout
16
Make the CCO a direct report to the CEO. To succeed, companies must
give a CCO the clout and tools to transform the way a company operates.
To do this, firms need to create a position that has: power, operational
linkage, and budget influence. The best way to do this is to have the CCO
report directly to the chief executive officer (CEO) so that the CCO has peer
status with other executives. In addition, ensure that executive management
teams uniformly understand and support the position by building customer
experience into the company strategy and adopting companywide customer
experience metrics that correlate with key business performance outcomes.
Hire a CCO whos passionate about the customer . . . but credible as well.
Forrester found that about 83% of CCOs were internal hires with a median
of eight years of tenure with the firm and most often held general manager or
division president positions prior to the appointment. Because the customer
experience organization gets most of its work done through others, the ability
of its leaders to influence people across the business is critical to long-term
success. Look for someone who has a broad range of experience, skills at
defusing politically charged situations, passion, pragmatism, persistence, and
a natural desire to collaborate across organizational boundaries.
This document is excerpted from the following Forrester Research reports: the February 15, 2011, Conversations With Chief Customer
Officers: USAAs Wayne Peacock report; the June 3, 2011 Conversations With Chief Customer Officers: KeyBanks Trina Evans report; and
the November 15, 2011 Conversations With Chief Customer Officers: Rosetta Stones Jay Topper report.
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