Securing executive alignment and clearly defined priorities in support of Customer Experience Management is crucial. Yet, so few companies have a game plan for making this happen. In most cases customer experience, as a priority within the business, originates and stagnates within customer service or call center departments. The initiative fails to gain traction in other customer-facing areas of the business. It never receives executive support and endorsement. As a result, the customer experience never delivers material business results. Why is this? For the customer experience to translate into improved financial performance and become a competitive advantage, it must be embraced enterprise-wide. It must be implemented in a cross-functional manner — and, it has to be a priority for the CEO and the entire C-suite. Read this report to discover what every customer experience leader needs from the CEO and C-suite to deliver lasting business results.

1. 10 Commitments
Every CEO Must Make
to Realize Customer
Experience Success.
Discover what every customer experience
leader needs from the CEO and C-suite
to deliver lasting business results.

2. “There is only one boss —
the customer. And he can fire
everybody in the company
from the chairman on down,
simply by spending his
money somewhere else.”
— Sam Walton

3. 10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 1
Securing executive alignment and clearly defined priorities
in support of Customer Experience Management is crucial.
Yet, so few companies have a game plan for making this
happen. In most cases customer experience, as a priority
within the business, originates and stagnates within
customer service or call center departments. The initiative
fails to gain traction in other customer-facing areas of
the business. It never receives executive support and
endorsement. As a result, the customer experience never
delivers material business results.
Why is this? For the customer experience to translate into
improved financial performance and become a competitive
advantage, it must be embraced enterprise-wide. It must
be implemented in a cross-functional manner — and, it
has to be a priority for the CEO and the entire C-suite.
The fact is, for Customer Experience Management to be
successful, the CEO must truly believe that it matters.
The CEO must commit to creating an experience that will
differentiate the company in the market and grow the
business. Without this level of commitment, customer
experience becomes just another business fad. Something
a few members of the team talk about for a while before it
quickly fades to black. It’s never institutionalized. It never
becomes a cornerstone of the company’s business model
or infused into the company’s culture. In these cases,
companies should save their money or spend it elsewhere.
But for those companies where the CEO, the entire C-suite
and the CMO are fully committed to making customer
experience management a difference maker, it is the best
place the company can invest its money.
There is a clear link between a CEO’s commitment
to customer experience management and business
profitability. That’s the key takeaway from a global
study led by The Economist Intelligence Unit. The study
found that 58 percent of companies reported much
higher profitability than their competitors when the CEO
was in charge of customer experience, and 59 percent
experience better revenue growth as a result of prioritizing
strategic customer experience investments. The study
also discovered that 63 percent of executives who make
customer experience a priority actually deliver a better
customer experience than their competition.
This paper explores how CMOs can assess the
commitment level of the CEO and C-suite; determine if
the executive team is willing to invest in lasting change;
and how to ensure customer experience management
translates into improved business performance.
“Many business leaders pay lip
service to the concept of customer
experience — publicly affirming its
importance, but privately skeptical
of its value.”
— Jon Picoult
Founder & Principal, Watermark Consulting

4. 10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 2
Priority No. 1:
Locking In CEO Commitment
There are a multitude of reports that explain one simple
fact: If the CEO is not actively evangelizing customer
experience management — the game is over. A company’s
customer experience has no chance of producing lasting
and meaningful results without CEO commitment. This
deficit of CEO buy-in means the initiative will not sustain
energy long enough for the benefits to materialize in the
customer experience.
That’s why the very first step a CMO has to take in this
process is to get one-on-one time with the CEO and have
a candid, open discussion about the customer. About
how customer experience is changing the competitive
environment; why customer acquisition, retention, loyalty
and advocacy will determine future success; and why
people, processes and technologies must be centered
on the customer for the company to win. During this
conversation, CMOs should be prepared to surface
relevant and meaningful proof points that validate how a
superior customer experience will improve the long-term
financial performance of the business.
In this meeting, you’ll also need to ask your CEO some
difficult questions. Such as, does your CEO feel leaders
have a deep understanding of the customer? Is the
business centered on the needs and desires of high-value
customers? Is the company’s go-to-market strategy rooted
in deep, meaningful customer insights? Is the company’s
product and service roadmap anchored in current and
future customer requirements? Do the conversations
and decisions in the C-suite revolve around meeting
and exceeding customer expectations? Is the company’s
culture driven by a deep desire to deliver a superior
experience? Does the company have the people,
processes and technologies in place to create a
superior customer experience?
Once you get these questions on the table, you will need
to be prepared for the answers — and, you’ll need to
be prepared to read between the lines. Where does the
CEO take the conversation? Does your CEO acknowledge
challenges the company has with respect to delivering
a compelling and consistent customer experience? Does
your CEO recognize the gaps that currently exist in your
people, processes and technologies? Does your CEO realize
how the culture has to change if the customer experience
is going to change? Does your CEO see how an improved
customer experience can become a strategic advantage
in the marketplace? How the CEO responds to these
questions will tell you a lot about how convinced he or she
is that customer experience should be a strategic priority
for the business.
Be prepared to have multiple conversations. The CEO may
ask you to dig deeper, provide more insights about your
current customer experience and identify metrics that
determine how customer experience improvements will
benefit the bottom-line. If this happens, it is a great sign.
It means your CEO is interested. It means your CEO wants
to know more and is taking the conversation seriously.
Your job is to help your CEO assess and define the upside,
then lock in his or her commitment. Here’s what that
commitment looks like.

5. 10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 3
10 CEO Customer
Experience Commitments
There are 10 commitments you need to secure from
your CEO if you want to achieve customer experience
management success.
1. Customer-Centricity
2. CXM Ownership
3. Direct C-Suite Reporting Relationship
4. C-Suite Involvement and Funding
5. Cross-Functional Leadership Accountability
6. Organizational Change
(People, Process, Technology)
7. Crystal Clear Performance Metrics
8. Measurement and Reporting Systems
9. Realistic Timeline for Business Impact
10. Sustained CXM Company-Wide Cadence
Based on our experience, if you want your customer
experience to deliver material results, these are
nonnegotiable. Each one of these represents the
commitment required for customer experience
management to translate into a competitive advantage.
Let’s delve into each one of these commitments in
more detail.
1. Customer-Centricity
First and foremost, the CEO must make customer-
centricity a cornerstone of the company’s business. The
CEO must commit to driving customer knowledge deep
into the fabric of the company’s culture and strategy. It
has to start here. A superior customer experience can’t
take shape without the CEO’s commitment to securing rich
and actionable insights about your customer.
This commitment must take the form of increased
funding in support of customer research and knowledge-
sharing systems. Customer intimacy must become a
critical aspect of every employee’s job description and
performance review. Leaders must center their overall
approach to managing the business and their decision-
making processes on the customer. The operations team
will need to deploy technologies and optimize processes
that deliver customer insights to front-line workers
so they can create a superior experience across every
customer-facing area of the business. All of this requires
commitment from the top. Commitment from your CEO.
2. CXM Ownership
If the CEO is committed to creating a customer-centric
culture and institutionalizing customer experience as a
cornerstone of the company’s business model, ownership
must be clearly established and defined. The CEO must
appoint a sole leader of customer experience management
who can be fully responsible for defining, managing
and optimizing the customer experience. This individual
must be equipped with the authority to manage across
“Understanding who your customers
are, collectively and as individuals,
has never been more important.
Companies that prioritize customer
experience report higher revenue, lower
costs, increased customer loyalty and
more engaged employees.”
— Fortune Knowledge Group

6. “Smart companies
use customer-focused
measurements and analytics
to redesign their products,
processes, services, and
employee positions and
responsibilities. Smart leaders
make sure employees are
given access to the tools, skills,
and information they need to
grow and be accountable in a
customer-centric environment.”
— Fortune Knowledge Group

7. 10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 5
organizational and political boundaries and be empowered
to influence or enact change. This authority could, in
fact, be the responsibility of the CMO, or it could rest
with a newly defined Chief Customer Officer position. The
point is, clearly defined ownership is critical. Distributed
ownership doesn’t work. It’s important to note, we are
talking about ownership, not accountability. By making
customer-centricity and the customer experience core
to the business, the CEO will hold everyone accountable
for meeting specific customer experience management
performance standards. However, one individual must
own the end-to-end strategic planning, execution and
management process. The CEO must clearly assign and
communicate ownership of this initiative across the
enterprise for customer experience management to
be successful.
3. Direct C-Suite Reporting Relationship
With an executive-level owner in place, the CEO must
formalize a direct reporting relationship with the C-suite.
Ideally, this individual would report directly to the CEO.
However, this is not a requirement. What is required is
a direct reporting relationship to a C-level executive
and direct access to the C-suite. Why is this critical?
Because, it’s imperative that the customer experience
leader have consistent access to the entire C-suite. This
is how he or she will ensure strategic business decisions
are aligned with customer requirements and vice versa. It
also ensures the business impact of customer experience
initiatives are visible to the entire executive team on
a consistent basis. Your CEO should be completely
willing to grant direct access to the C-suite. A CX Report
recently stated, “Knowing what’s working, where there’s
room for improvement, and why specific allocations can
improve a company’s customer experience allows for
smarter investment decisions from all stakeholders in
the C-suite.” A global study conducted by The Economist
Intelligence Unit also shows that C-suite-led customer
experience initiatives can increase revenues and customer
satisfaction while reducing costs.
A direct reporting relationship to and involvement from
the C-suite is not an option. The CEO has to make sure the
customer experience leader has unfettered access to the
highest level of the organization if customer experience
management is going to materially impact the business.
“Your whole C-suite will likely approve
of the general idea of delivering
better experiences to customers. But
actually implementing new customer-
centric processes throughout their
own departments can require a lot of
effort and reorganization. The best
executives won’t want to contribute
their teams’ limited resources to
such a project until they understand
specifically how it will help them fulfill
their responsibilities to the company.”
— Former Boston Consulting Group Consultant

8. 10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 6
4. C-Suite Involvement and Funding
The CEO should not just be asking for commitment from
the C-suite, it’s more than commitment — it’s strategic
involvement. Each member of the C-suite must play an
active role in shaping the customer experience strategy.
Finance, operations, marketing, and other functional
leaders must be held accountable for actively managing
customer experience initiatives that pertain to their area
of the business. Performance metrics and budget dollars
that pertain to C-suite areas of responsibility should also
be assigned. This is the only way the CEO can demand
accountability and the customer experience leader can
secure their time and attention. The question then comes
down to, “where will the funding come from and what
level of funding is required?”
McKinsey & Company discovered that the most successful
customer experience management initiatives are self-
funded. McKinsey states, “early wins remove costs from
the system and simplify the business. Those savings can
then fund medium-term initiatives to innovate, to change
the trajectory of the customer experience, and to support
some of the boldest actions. With a self-funding business
case, a customer-experience program can maintain
momentum and build buy-in throughout an organization.”
Funding discussions quickly help you gauge executive-
level commitment and conviction in customer experience
management. These discussions will help you determine
just how important it is to the CEO and C-suite. Anyone
who has worked in a large organization knows when
an initiative is important enough and senior leaders
are convinced it can be a difference maker, dollars will
be found. With that said, be prepared to help shape a
realistic and fiscally sound business case. Patrick Gibbons
of Walker believes the key to getting funding and the
CEO’s attention is connecting it to a “burning platform”
that already exists within the C-suite. Gibbons says, “If
you can show how customer experience management
investments will address market share losses, slowing
revenue growth, or out-of-control service costs, chances
are you’ll get an audience with those holding the
purse strings.”
5. Cross-Functional Leadership Accountability
Active C-suite involvement must go beyond the boardroom.
Executives must hold lieutenants accountable for leading
initiatives that are designed to improve the customer
experience. They must ensure leaders understand the
strategic nature of customer experience initiatives that
pertain to their area of the business. They must realize
these initiatives and the associated business results will
be visible at the highest level of the organization. Not
momentary visibility, but sustained visibility within the
C-suite. These leaders must take complete ownership for
ensuring front-line managers and workers understand the
role they play in the customer journey. They must ensure
direct reports know what customer-centricity means,
how customer experience is being measured and how it
impacts daily work activities.
“With a solid game plan to gather
support from every corner of the
C-level from CEO to CMO, customer
experience strategists will be much
better positioned for success.”
— Duff Anderson, Voice of the Customer Expert

9. “It can be tempting to think
the appointment of a customer
experience officer means the
voice of the customer has found
a home. The customer-centric
journey is, in fact, one that
everyone in the company must
take, with shared understanding
and commitment, and
accountability across leadership
and every job function. Everyone
is responsible for the customer.”
— Fortune Knowledge Group

10. 10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 8
The customer experience should be managed and
measured across all customer-facing areas of the
business. At the executive level, the focus may be on
customer retention or advocacy, and at the next level
down, it may be on phases of the customer journey within
specific areas of the business. On a department basis,
managers might look at key performance data pertaining
to specific customer touchpoints. At the employee level,
companies can measure customer interaction scores,
unacceptable customer incidents, satisfaction scores,
operational-performance indicators, and more. What’s
critical is that leaders across the organization know
what dimensions of the customer experience they are
accountable for and how they will be measured. The CEO
must commit to managing this degree of accountability
at every level of the company.
6. Organizational Change
(People, Process, Technology)
This is where customer experience leaders will find the
greatest resistance — resistance to change. It is also
where the CEO must ensure everyone in the organization
embraces the changes that are essential in delivering
a superior customer experience. The CEO must make it
absolutely clear that there are no sacred cows, political
motivations are outlawed and functional barriers are
being torn down. The CEO must remind everyone that it’s
all about the customer and about delivering a superior
experience for the customer. That’s what matters most.
The CEO must provide the customer experience leader
with complete autonomy and authority to inject change
into customer-facing areas of the business. This doesn’t
mean the customer experience leader runs through the
organization like a bull in a china shop. The customer
experience leader must respect the domain expertise that
each functional leader has in their area of the business.
However, the CEO must ensure functional leaders keep
their eye on the prize and not on their pride.
The fact is, organizational silos are the greatest barriers
to success. According to Korn Ferry, more than half of
marketing executives indicate the biggest hurdle they
face when developing an integrated customer experience
is aligning all facets of the organization. In fact, 43
percent of CMOs said aligning department strategies and
priorities was the primary challenge of working across
departments to develop a single customer experience.
More than one-quarter said the same about integrating
the customer experience across various sales channels.
According to McKinsey & Company, customer-experience
driven organizations can start to break down silos “by
making customer experience a top priority for the CEO,
“Recognizing that employees are
the driving force that can make or
break a great customer experience
is the first step. An effective change
management initiative is the second
step necessary to ensure that
employees have the knowledge and
structure to deliver.”
— JG Staal
Head of Customer Experience
Management at Tahzoo

11. 10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 9
by having senior leaders model the customer-centric
behaviors that will engage and motivate employees on the
front line, and by designing a customer-experience team
that promotes cross-functional collaboration via targets
and metrics.”
7. Crystal Clear Performance Metrics
A critical part of customer experience management is
defining and securing agreement on the metrics that
matter. What business performance improvement are we
in search of? What specific dimensions of the customer
experience do we need to improve? What metrics will we
use to measure results? The Experience Imperative Report,
published by Fortune Knowledge Group, reinforces the
fact that measurement is important, but measuring the
metrics that matter is essential. Executives interviewed
for the report said they were familiar with traditional
customer loyalty or happiness indicators, such as the
Net Promoter Score — which many management experts
consider to be a leading indicator of revenue growth.
However, the majority of executives felt that score was
insufficient. Another recent study conducted by Genesis
found 62 percent of companies that measure their
customer experience initiatives are more likely to deliver
better customer experience. Needless to say, metrics are
critical, but they have to be metrics that matter to your
CEO and the C-suite.
Once customer experience metrics have been defined,
the CEO’s job is to get every member of the C-suite to
lock arms and to communicate consistently across the
organization. These are the key performance indicators
we are going to focus on. This is the data set that we will
consistently monitor to determine what is working and
what is not.
The point is, the CEO has to commit to defining and
approving the metrics that matter most to your business.
Then it’s your job to demonstrate how changes in your
customer experience positively influence those metrics.
This means you need commitment to ensure you have the
appropriate measurement and reporting systems in place.
8. Measurement and Reporting Systems
A recent Temkin survey found that 73 percent of large
companies considered “lack of taking action based
on customer experience metrics” to be one of their
most significant roadblocks to improving the customer
experience. The inability to take action is rooted in “lack
of visibility and access” to actionable insights that
employees, managers and leaders can leverage to improve
the customer experience in their daily work activities.
Securing commitment from the CEO and C-suite on
performance metrics that matter is only half the battle.
You also have to get the CEO to commit to putting data
collection, measurement systems and reporting processes
in place so you can capture and act on those metrics.
Fortunately, with the tremendous growth in customer
experience management, there are a large number of
“A great customer experience, and
the internal ecosystem supporting it,
can deliver tremendous strategic and
economic value to a business, in a
way that’s difficult for competitors to
replicate.”
— Watermark Consulting

12. “When you have the right
tools in place, you’ll be able
to understand the customer
experience across time,
channels and devices, making
it possible to win more business
and drive loyalty.”
— Elizabeth Magill, IBM Customer Analytics

13. 10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 11
measurement and reporting systems available today. Your
task is to find systems that will provide you with visibility
and access to the metrics that matter at every level of
your organization.
The key to success is prioritizing and starting small.
Don’t overcomplicate things. Start gathering metrics that
require the least amount of lead time and disruption. This
will enable you to start surfacing meaningful customer
experience data early in the process and capture more
sophisticated metrics as time goes by.
A Chief Customer Officer in the finance industry was
recently interviewed and said that because of their
customer experience work, “We now have a roadmap as to
how we are going to get more sophisticated about what
we are measuring to improve the customer experience. It’s
long-term. We expect our measures will change and evolve
over the next three years and beyond.”
9. Realistic Timeline for Business Impact
The most critical factor in achieving success is ensuring
executives are fully aligned with respect to timing. More
specifically, when does the CEO and the C-suite expect
to see customer experience management materialize
into measurable business results? The answer to this
question will determine the degree of alignment and
level of commitment you have at the executive level of
the company. Do they expect business results to come
next quarter? Next year? Two to three years down the
road? What is the executive team’s tolerance level from
a timing perspective? Time-to-impact really depends
on the priorities you have defined in your customer
experience strategy. If some of the initiatives are tied to
increased performance in isolated or contained areas
of the business, the time to impact can be months. If
they are tied to enterprise-wide performance metrics like
improvements in customer retention, loyalty or share of
wallet, then a longer-term view may be required. Research
has shown that metrics tied to revenue per customer;
customer lifetime value; market share; marketing costs;
and customer support and service costs, typically impact
earnings per share (EPS) two or three years after the
first customer experience initiative started. What this
means is you have to set realistic expectations with the
executive team. Expectations relative to when performance
metrics will start moving in the right direction. Ensuring
alignment across the executive team is critical. When
expectations are out of alignment, uncertainty and doubt
creep in and commitment quickly becomes compromised.
10. Sustained CXM Company-Wide Cadence
The final commitment you need to secure pertains to
the cadence of communication in support of customer
experience management. What you are asking for is the
CEO’s commitment to ensuring the strategic importance
and business value of customer experience remains
“A 2% increase in retention or a
20% increase in average sale or
order size doesn’t happen in a few
months; it takes time, and that’s why
it’s so crucial to forecast eventual
increases, set longer-term strategies,
and “execute hard” while taking
heart in those quick wins.”
— Lori Carr
Former Chief Customer Officer,
Bombardier Flexjet

14. 10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 12
omnipresent. This is important because the only way
to change the corporate culture — and ultimately the
customer experience — is to ensure customer-centricity
is woven into the fabric of the company. Executives,
business unit leaders, directors and managers must have
a cadence by which they communicate, manage and drive
change throughout the customer experience.
This is one area where most executives undervalue and
underestimate the power of consistency. They wonder
why their message isn’t resonating, why lasting change
isn’t taking shape in the company’s culture and customer
experience. More often than not, it’s because they have
not remained committed to a disciplined cadence of
communication. They have not maintained visibility to
the metrics that matter. That have not showcased the
impact the initiative is having on the business. They
simply have not stayed the course. This is what happens
in organizations where the CEO is not fully committed to a
sustained customer experience cadence across
the enterprise.
To deliver lasting business results, the CEO must commit
to infusing mindset, behavior and cultural change
throughout the organization. This happens when the
management team — and eventually your entire employee
population — instinctively understand one simple truth:
their words and actions matter. The words they use and
the actions they take play a critical role in the perception
your company creates in the minds of your customers.
When their words and actions are anchored in a clearly
defined customer experience strategy and centered on
the customer’s needs, desires, expectations — positive,
sustained growth can be achieved.
Is this too much to ask?
While securing your CEO’s commitment to customer
experience management may sound like a difficult
task, it is better than the alternative. The alternative
is to not have CEO and C-suite commitment on the
front end of this journey and then deal with more costly
consequences down the road, like tarnished reputations,
damaged careers and material financial losses. Customer
experience management is not something you can do
halfway. It’s not something you can dabble in. If you plan
to invest in customer experience, get the commitment you
need up front to ensure success.
“We’ve found that organizations
able to skillfully manage the entire
experience reap enormous rewards:
enhanced customer satisfaction,
reduced churn, increased revenue,
and greater employee satisfaction.
They also discover more effective
ways to collaborate across functions
and levels, a process that delivers
gains throughout the company.”
— McKinsey & Company

15. 10 Commitments Every CEO Must Make to Realize Customer Experience Success 13
10 Commitments CEOs Must Make to
Realize Customer Experience Success.
Below is a summary of the 10 commitments you need to secure from your CEO
if customer experience is going to deliver lasting business results ...
1. Commitment to Customer-Centricity
2. Commitment to CXM Ownership
3. Commitment to a Direct C-Suite Reporting Relationship
4. Commitment to C-Suite Funding and Involvement
5. Commitment to Cross-Functional Leadership Accountability
6. Commitment to Organizational Change (People, Process, Technology)
7. Commitment to Meaningful Performance Metrics
8. Commitment to Measurement and Reporting Systems
9. Commitment to Realistic Timeline for Business Impact
10. Commitment to Sustained, Company-Wide CX Cadence

16. About OnMessage
Companies that succeed in maintaining complete
alignment between their corporate story and strategy
— win. They win because their words and actions are
consistent; creating a superior experience that increases
customer acquisition, retention, loyalty and competitive
differentiation. OnMessage specializes in helping
executives align and activate their entire organization
around a corporate strategy and story that dramatically
improves the customer experience. Leveraging our
disciplined methodology — executive teams are able
to crystalize their go-to-market strategy, formulate a
strategically aligned corporate messaging platform and
ensure every stakeholder understands how to activate the
strategy and story throughout the customer journey. In
addition, our cloud-based intelligence console provides
leaders with timely and accurate insights. Market,
customer, employee, culture, competitor and partner
insights they need to optimize their strategy, story and
customer experience overtime. We are OnMessage, the
strategy consulting firm helping executives win in the
highly competitive “experience economy” that exists today.
© Copyright OnMessage, Inc. 2016 | All rights reserved.
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James O’Gara
President and Founder
James O’Gara is the president and founder of OnMessage.
Under his leadership, OnMessage has developed a proven
model for helping companies develop a clear, compelling
and consistent message. With almost 25 years’ experience
working in business and marketing leadership positions,
O’Gara is known and respected for building collaborative
relationships with executive teams that result in highly
effective go-to-market, messaging / positioning and
demand generation strategies.