One side effect of working within the customer relationship management industry is collecting business cards that feature cloying, cutesy titles. A quick flip through the business cards rubber-banded together in most desk drawers will reveal several from chief client advocates, chief experience officers, chief customer evangelists and the like.
A few lucky folks will even have one from a chief happiness officer. This probably means that they have had executive palaver with Ronald McDonald in person (it’s the clown spokesman’s official title). But it may not -- this particular malady has spread, and currently a small-but-growing number of firms feature this executive title.
I’ve got nothing against the sentiment behind these titles: Ultimately, having a corporate officer who believes that making nice-nice with customers is a good idea is a smart move. But when the person with that responsibility is given – or takes – a Flopsy, Mopsy or Cottontail-style title, several concerns come to mind.
The first is whether people bearing these titles carry clout within their own companies. A memo from a chief customer-cuddling officer won’t carry the same weight as a scribbled note from the senior vice president of finance. If employees are mocking the title in the washroom, there will be spillover – conscious or not – into how they view the importance of customer relations.
Second, let’s say that an individual with one of these titles performs successfully, but then leaves the company. The firm could advertise that it has a chief customer-cuddling officer position open, and doubtless a few do. But a more likely scenario is that the position will be looked at as one person’s egotistical little fiefdom, and go unfilled. When this happens, the good work and the legacy knowledge of the position are lost.
Third, a cutesy-sounding position practically offers itself up as the first to be cut when times are lean. During fallow times, when top brass are looking at a corporate hierarchy chart, the folks in accounts receivable are going to be safe. The chief customer-cuddling officer is going to end up hugging his or her unemployment counselor.
Finally, creating a chief customer-cuddling officer creates a dangerous precedent of isolating the responsibility of caring for customers away from where it should be – within marketing and sales operations, at the very least, if not part of an enterprise-wide mandate.
Want a great title for someone within a firm who bears ultimate responsibility for caring about customers? Try this on for size: Chief executive officer.
To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact e-mail: rlevey@primediabusiness.com
