The new job at McDonald’s, Under Armour that’s all about the

On Nov 28, 2021

A customer receives an order from a drive-thru window at a McDonald’s Corp. restaurant in London, Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020 during a test of the “P.L.T.” sandwich — plant, lettuce and tomato featuring Beyond Meat’s pea-based patties.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Along with supply chain issues, the rising cost of raw materials and other lingering business challenges stemming from the pandemic, a big focus in the C-suites of many of the world’s largest corporations has been the creation of a new executive rank: Chief Customer Officer.

Over the past few quarters, companies across the economic spectrum — from McDonald’s, CVS Health, Under Armour and Walgreens to wholesale grocer United Natural Foods — have added the top job to help the boardroom better stay in touch with a rapidly changing landscape of the consumer.

Pre-pandemic, customer happiness was often tracked across talking-points lists from various internal teams passed up to the C-suite, but now it’s being seen as critical to make one senior person responsible for influencing employees across the organization to become more tuned into customer wants.

“A lot of organizations have been product-centric or channel-centric, but now there’s this growing sense that there’s this need to be more customer-centric,” says Augie Ray, vice president analyst covering customer experience at Gartner, a research and advisory firm. “Certainly the pandemic has caused a lot of organizations to realize that they weren’t in touch with their customers — they realized that they need to listen more.”

Delivering better customer experiences and developing stronger customer relationships were their top two highest priorities over the next two to three years, according to a 2021 survey of 3,000 CEOs from the IBM Institute for Business Value.

Digital’s role in driving new sales

The phenomenon isn’t exactly novel. Many companies have had a version of this role — chief consumer/customer/experience officer — over the past decade. But the extent to which people’s use of the internet skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic isn’t expected to abate. More than three-quarters of executives say changed customer behavior will continue after Covid-19, according to the IBM study. As the balance between physical and online shopping permanently shifts, customer chief roles in boardrooms are reaching critical mass.

Ninety percent of 401 companies said their company employed a chief experience officer, according to Gartner’s 2019 Customer Experience Management Study, which was up from 61% in 2017. Gartner expects the number to be higher today; results of its next survey come out in the next couple of weeks. “We’re getting into the middle of our bell-shaped curve in terms of companies creating these roles,” says Ray. “The role is a recognition in many cases of what’s already been happening — a lot of organizations that have had a V.P. of customer experience promoting someone into this new CCO…