Sometimes, the position seems defined as much by what a CCO does not do as by what he does. Though it's intuitive to think of them as ombudsmen for the customer, CCOs insist this is not the case. We're not just waiting for customers to call. Uczen organized a customer interface SWAT team that literally sat behind users at 35 customer organizations and watched them work with NuEdge's software. Cisco's Allred says organizations that grasp the importance of customer satisfaction won't hesitate to name a customer czar.
Customer satisfaction equals customer loyalty.
Allred speaks from experience. In the early 1990s, Cisco's internal surveys showed that customers were increasingly unhappy with the company's order fulfillment, which took 12 weeks on average. Customers said they wanted orders in three weeks. We knew we had to pull out all the stops to hit that. The hurried schedule resulted in upheaval and some grumbling in Cisco's finance, manufacturing and customer service organizations, all of which had grown comfortable with the 12-week lead time.