CMO & CCO: Minding the Gap

Brand integrity is the ideal for both CMOs and CCOs. You work hard to attract and expand customers, yet gaps in brand integrity can ruin your results. Good experiences are a one-to-one ratio between what was received versus what was expected. That’s how discount brands as well as luxury brands can both have raving fans. Thus, the key to growing earnings per share (EPS) is careful management of both expectations and what’s received.

The gap between what's promised and what's received, as seen by customers, is your brand integrity gap. Minding the gap is the ultimate purpose of a CCO.

CMOs set expectations for customer acquisition and CCOs assure expectations are delivered for customer retention. Both acquisition and retention are less of an uphill battle when you have high brand integrity. Here are 3 success factors:

1. Setting the right expectations: Consistency is at the heart of trust and relationship strength. After you nurture potential customers along their buying journey, there’s the handoff to Accounts Receivable, customer onboarding, account management, Customer Success, Customer Service, Customer Loyalty, etc. This end-to-end experience of customers must be tightly coordinated for brand integrity -- and consistently focused on lifetime value.
2. Acquiring the right customers: What percentage of new customers match your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)? Imagine how much cost-to-serve may be reduced via ICP customers (what I’ve coined as “core-growth customers”). Similar to grooming high-potential employees, CCOs should ensure stellar brand integrity for them. You need to "own" this customer segment. Get CX right with these customers first, and then expand your focus to accommodate other segments.
3. Preventing gaps: This is a shared responsibility between Marketing, Sales, and Operations. And it relies on consistency across your entire enterprise and its ecosystem: suppliers, partners, etc. Even the darling brands have ongoing challenges as dynamics evolve. Think about Southwest, for example. A CCO/CXO overseeing brand integrity would be helping executives in all areas of the company’s ecosystem to foresee and prevent snafus like the 2022 holiday shutdown that is now costing Southwest dearly. Think broadly, be bold, and ally with every group that's re-engineering processes or policies, leading initiatives, and making strategic decisions. Step-up and share CX insights with them in timely, actionable, collaborative ways. This is your purpose as CCO: be the indispensable imp on managers' shoulder to guide unbreakable brand integrity.

Related articles:

1. 3 CX Growth Keys for CEOs
2. 23 Customer Experience Practices to Stop in 2023

Author Lynn Hunsaker is Chief Customer Officer at ClearAction Continuum, providing e-learning as remarkably powerful and efficient consulting. You can build competencies for achieving what's described in this article through the Experience Value Exchange, CX+EX+PX Strategy Masterminds Symposiums, and other resources at?ClearAction.com. You're welcome to join the Value Exchange today!

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