Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Chief of Customer Experience

🎯 Role Definition

The Chief of Customer Experience (Chief of CX) is a senior executive responsible for defining and executing a unified, measurable customer experience strategy across all touchpoints and channels. This role leads cross-functional teams to design customer-centric processes, deliver exceptional omnichannel experiences, reduce churn, increase lifetime value, and drive consistent improvements in NPS, CSAT, and other CX metrics. The Chief of CX partners with Product, Marketing, Sales, Support, Data & Analytics, and Operations to translate customer insights into business outcomes, operational change, and profitable growth.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

VP / Head of Customer Experience or Head of CX Operations
VP / Head of Customer Success, Support, or Service
Senior Product/Marketing leader with strong CX remit and cross-functional experience

Advancement To:

Chief Customer Officer (CCO)
Chief Operating Officer (COO)
Board-level Executive / Advisor for CX and Customer Strategy

Lateral Moves:

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
Head of Product or Chief Product Officer (CPO)
Head of Revenue Operations or Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Define, own, and continuously iterate the enterprise-wide Customer Experience (CX) strategy that aligns with corporate objectives, articulating a clear vision for end-to-end customer journeys and measurable targets for NPS, CSAT, CES, churn, and customer lifetime value.
Design and maintain a comprehensive CX measurement framework and reporting cadence that synthesizes VoC (Voice of Customer), behavioral telemetry, financial metrics, and operational KPIs to inform executive decision-making and prioritize investments.
Lead cross-functional programs to map, redesign, and optimize key customer journeys across marketing, sales, onboarding, product, billing, and support, ensuring friction removal and consistent brand experiences at every touchpoint.
Build and manage a high-performing CX organization (customer insights, journey design, UX/CX research, analytics, and program management), including hiring, mentoring, performance management, and org design to scale global CX capabilities.
Operationalize VoC by creating robust feedback loops, closed-loop processes, and escalation mechanisms that convert insights into prioritized product improvements, policy changes, and training across the business.
Partner closely with Product and Engineering to drive customer-led product roadmaps, translating qualitative feedback and quantitative usage signals into backlog priorities and feature requirements that demonstrably improve retention and engagement.
Establish and run an omnichannel experience strategy — digital, mobile, in-person, contact center, and partner channels — to ensure coherent brand experiences, channel optimization, and consistent service levels globally.
Own CX governance, including SLA definitions, quality assurance, policy alignment, and cross-functional steering committees that remove organizational silos and accelerate resolution of systemic customer issues.
Create and deliver a strategic roadmap to reduce customer friction and cost-to-serve while improving satisfaction and lifetime value, leveraging automation, self-service, AI/ML, and process re-engineering where appropriate.
Drive transformational initiatives (e.g., digital transformation, CRM migrations, knowledge management, AI-powered support bots) from strategy through execution, ensuring change management, ROI measurement, and adoption across teams.
Manage CX-related P&L implications by quantifying the financial impact of CX initiatives (revenue retention, upsell, churn reduction) and setting investment priorities that maximize ROI and shareholder value.
Lead executive-level stakeholder communication and board reporting on customer health, product-market fit signals, and long-term CX investments, ensuring transparent, data-driven narratives that influence strategic direction.
Develop and institutionalize customer-centric policies and incentive structures, including incentive design for front-line employees, customer-first OKRs, and cross-functional KPIs that drive measurable improvements.
Oversee enterprise customer segmentation and experience personalization initiatives, using propensity models and segmentation to tailor communications, offers, and service levels to high-value cohorts.
Own the lifecycle of strategic customers and enterprise accounts with an escalated CX involvement model, including onboarding, adoption acceleration, renewal risk mitigation, and advocacy programs.
Build and scale customer advocacy and reference programs (case studies, reference customers, advisory boards, user communities) to drive acquisition, product feedback, and brand credibility.
Lead the development of CX training and enablement programs for revenue-facing and support teams to increase empathy, product knowledge, and consistency in customer interactions.
Ensure regulatory, privacy, and compliance considerations are embedded in CX initiatives and that customer data is handled according to legal and security requirements across jurisdictions.
Champion continuous improvement by instituting regular retrospectives, experimentation, A/B testing, and hypothesis-driven pilots to validate CX levers and scale winning initiatives.
Develop competitive benchmarking and market intelligence frameworks to track industry CX performance, emerging best practices, and new technologies to keep the company at the forefront of customer experience innovation.
Plan and coordinate crisis response and incident communication strategies to preserve trust during outages, product issues, or public-facing incidents; ensure timely, empathetic, and transparent customer communications.
Collaborate with Marketing and Sales to ensure consistent pre-sales experience, clear handoffs, and unified messaging that improve conversion rates and reduce onboarding churn.
Design and maintain operational dashboards and real-time alerts for front-line teams and executives to proactively surface at-risk customers and operational hotspots requiring immediate attention.
Cultivate a culture of customer obsession across the organization by embedding customer stories, metrics, and feedback into executive meetings, all-hands, and performance reviews.

Secondary Functions

Partner with Data & Analytics to support ad-hoc VoC data requests, exploratory customer analysis, attribution modeling, and development of advanced CX metrics for product and growth teams.
Contribute to the enterprise data strategy and CX analytics roadmap, ensuring that instrumented events, telemetry, and CRM data enable scalable CX insights and machine learning use cases.
Collaborate with IT and Engineering on CRM integrations, data pipelines, and tagging governance to ensure CX systems (CRM, analytics, CDP, ticketing) are synchronized and reliable.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies with cross-functional squads to prioritize CX-focused epics, define acceptance criteria, and unblock execution.
Manage external CX vendors, agencies, and research partners (e.g., UX agencies, VoC platforms, NPS vendors) including contracting, SLAs, and performance evaluation.
Support commercial programs such as pricing changes, packaging updates, and channel partner enablement by modeling customer impact and operational readiness.
Lead pilot programs for new CX technologies (conversational AI, digital assistants, personalization engines) and establish criteria for scale or sunset decisions.
Assist HR in developing customer-centric onboarding and competency frameworks for roles with customer interaction responsibilities.
Coordinate with Legal and Privacy teams to review customer-facing communications and consent models to ensure regulatory compliance and trust preservation.
Maintain a prioritized CX backlog, resource plan, and budget, reporting progress against strategic milestones and business outcomes to the executive leadership team.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Customer experience strategy development and execution — proven ability to build CX roadmaps tied to NPS, CSAT, retention, and revenue outcomes.
Voice of Customer (VoC) program design and operation — NPS, CSAT, CES, in-app feedback, surveys, and structured qualitative research.
Customer journey mapping and service design — expertise in journey analytics, process redesign, and touchpoint orchestration.
Omnichannel experience management — digital channels, contact center operations, in-person retail, partner ecosystems, and mobile.
CX analytics and data literacy — experience with SQL, analytics tools (Looker, Tableau, Power BI), product analytics (Mixpanel, Amplitude), and A/B testing frameworks.
CRM and customer systems expertise — Salesforce, HubSpot, Gainsight, Zendesk, ServiceNow, or equivalent platform experience and integrations.
Product partnership and roadmap influence — translating customer insights into prioritized product features and backlog items.
Operational excellence and process improvement — Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen, or equivalent methodology experience for cost-to-serve optimization.
AI/automation and digital transformation — implementing chatbots, RPA, personalization engines, and CX automation to improve scale and reduce friction.
Measurement and reporting — building executive dashboards, ROI models, and business cases that quantify CX investment impact.

Soft Skills

Strategic leadership and vision — ability to set a compelling CX vision and align the organization around measurable outcomes.
Cross-functional influence and stakeholder management — proven at driving change across Product, Marketing, Sales, Support, and Operations.
Customer empathy and storytelling — translating customer insights into compelling narratives that inspire action.
Change management and organizational design — experience leading cultural transformation and adoption of new ways of working.
Analytical mindset and problem-solving — data-driven decision-making with a balance of qualitative and quantitative evidence.
Communication skills — executive presence, clear board-level reporting, and the ability to tailor messaging to diverse audiences.
Prioritization and trade-off management — focus on high-impact initiatives and resource allocation under constraints.
Coaching and people development — mentoring senior leaders and building capability across the CX function.
Resilience and crisis leadership — calm, decisive leadership in customer-facing incidents and escalations.
Customer-obsessed orientation — passion for measuring and improving customer outcomes with relentless attention to detail.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Psychology, Engineering, Data Science, or related field.

Preferred Education:

MBA or advanced degree in Business, Design, Customer Experience, or Data Analytics is strongly preferred.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Business Administration
Marketing and Consumer Behavior
Human-Centered Design / UX
Data Science / Analytics
Operations Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

10–20+ years of progressive experience in customer-facing leadership roles, with at least 5–8 years in senior leadership or executive positions driving CX strategy at scale.

Preferred:

Demonstrated experience building and scaling CX at mid-market to enterprise organizations.
Track record of measurable results: improving NPS/CSAT, reducing churn, increasing customer lifetime value, or driving enterprise-level process transformation.
Prior experience in the company's industry (SaaS, FinTech, Retail, eCommerce, Telecom, Healthcare) is highly desirable.
Experience managing a multi-disciplinary team (researchers, analysts, designers, operations) and significant cross-functional program budgets.