Why You Need a "Chief Listening Officer"

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 by Andy Beal

Why You Need a "Chief Listening Officer"

I love David Jackson’s suggestion that every company should have a CLO - Chief Listening Officer. He suggests that marketing shouldn’t be a one-way conversation, and you certainly shouldn’t rely on an annual survey of customers, when determining satisfaction.

In many companies, research into the customer experience is simplistic and ineffective, based on what I call the â€˜annual do you love us surveyâ€™. To be effective, experience-based research has to gather feedback at all the key stages where a customer does business with you, as well as the overall relationship. Monitoring customer interactions provides valuable information on how the company is doing; actionable data to drive continuous improvement. It is this cycle of feedback and improvement that underpins many companies’ success in building a loyal customer base.

If you’re only listening to your customers once a year, that’s the equivalent of only listening to your spouse, once every 12 months. If you told your significant other that you “cared” and “loved” them just once a year, do you think they’d still be around?

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2 comments on “Why You Need a "Chief Listening Officer"”

10,000 Marshmallows Daily Links 2007-05-16 - 10,000 Marshmallows - Marketing Accountability: How to eat 10,000 Marshmallows Says:

May 16th, 2007 at 11:30 am

[...] Marketing Pilgrim: Why You Need a “Chief Listening Officer” “If youâ€™re only listening to your customers once a year, thatâ€™s the equivalent of only listening to your spouse, once every 12 months. If you told your significant other that you ‘cared’ and ‘loved’ them just once a year, do you think theyâ€™d still be around?” [...]
Daniel R Says:

May 21st, 2007 at 1:59 am

Andy, interesting article. But I think a better context is that you need a VP of “Marketing Analytics”, who shares data with the Marketing, Sales and Product Development team.

The VP of MA would be like an “Intelligence Information” clearing house on all customer and audience data, which would feed back answer questions to “what do people want” (product development), “what are people saying?” (marketing/pr), “how are people comparing our product?” (business intelligence) etc.