Does your company need a ‘Chief CX Officer’ (CXO)?

If you’ve ever tried to line up consumer needs, customer expectations, market realities, compliance rules, and a rich universe of customer touchpoints filled with numerous versions of “approved content,” you know: orchestrating great experience is not for the faint-hearted. This is true for pharma as for every industry.

A while ago I realized that all companies successfully and impactfully running customer experience (CX) strategies and methodologies … have a dedicated C-suite position, called ‘Chief CX Officer’ (CXO or CCXO), typically reporting directly to the CEO.

I repeatedly observed a clear relation between having this central role in place and being leaders in their industry with providing business-promoting customer experiences. So, should companies elevate a Chief Customer (Experience) Officer? Short answer: it can be a powerful accelerator and driver of transformation & customer centricity. Longer answer: only if you design it right.

Quick links to …

• Let’s start with the 3(-4) striking reasons why your company needs a CXO
• When a CXO might be a less good idea
• Quick litmus test

Let’s start with the 3(-4) striking reasons why your company needs a CXO

… with a particular focus on pharma and healthcare businesses.

1. One accountable owner across the end-to-end journey

Pharma customer (patient and HCP) journeys sprawl, from first symptoms and disease awareness to diagnosis, with referrals from less specialized doctors to more specialized, including treatment decision, access and onset, treatment adherence, and ongoing disease management, involving GPs, specialists, patients, caregivers, families, and payers.

Depending on the disease and the product, those journeys can be more or less complex with multiple touchpoints in time being involved, inside the company served by various teams and functions. And even beyond, customer journeys with a pharmaceutical company typically start with early phases of drug development already. Patients and investigators being involved in clinical trials of new drug candidates will be the same once the product has been approved and is in-market a few years later. Patient associations and scientific networks involved will be the same. And what is about the Supply Chain and Technical Operations functions of a pharma company who are also engaging with customers, it might be pharmacists or doctors.

Does your company provide a consistent and seamless experience there today? Or are CX activities typically stuck in silos of different divisions and functions?

The point is, customers and patients do not care about our internal structures and functions. They want to have a great experience with our company providing them trust and confidence that the treatment and care provided is making their life better.

A CXO gives you a single executive quarterback to align Clinical Development, Medical, Commercial, Market Access, Drug Safety, and Patient Support around the whole company providing the same experiences, driven by the same corporate CX ambitions & outcomes, consistent experiences wherever and whenever doctors of patients will be in touch with the company. Fewer handoffs, less channel whiplash, and a clearer “this is how we show up” standard in every market.

2. A direct line to CEO is a clear signal of CX being a corporate priority & mission

I have written about this before. CX is not a functional thing. The responsibility for providing excellent customer experiences is with everybody, the whole company. Having a CXO on C-suite level, directly reporting to the CEO is a clear signal of priority and always resulted in a tremendous impact on corporate CX acceptance, understanding and maturity.

Vice versa, companies, where leadership for CX is located in some divisional or functional silo, do not advance and fail. There are endless examples for this, a proven failure stupid to repeat. There are some examples where corporate CX roles started somewhere in the organization, but once the CEO realized the opportunities, they were raised closer to him quickly.

Where is CX located in your company? And what is the CX maturity? See!

3. Focuses the company on outcomes that matter, not vanity metrics

NPS has a role, and some people might be already happy with showing a better NPS than their competitors. <deep-drawn sigh>

But the real power is with CX being to business outcomes. E.g. sales, patients on drug, time-to-therapy, prior-authorization cycle time, cost-to-serve, adherence and persistence proxies. A CXO standardizes corporate metrics, links them to business outcomes, and – crucially – ties them to P&L decisions so experience isn’t “someone else’s problem.” It is about the responsibility to help all levels and all layers to understand that metrics figures are not for being happy with … but for being translated into actions for even better business outcomes.

A pharma special 4. Turns “patient centricity” from slogan to operating system

Most pharma companies talk about it. Few wire it into incentives, budgets, and governance. Together with the Patient Partnership/Advocacy function, a CXO can convert values into mechanics: a corporate CX strategy, cross-functional OKRs and CX impact metrics, journey-based planning, experience design sprints, and escalation paths when experience conflicts with short-term targets. Result: a reliability and consistency patients and HCPs can feel and regulators and payers can respect. Finally building unbeatable trust and reputation in the markets.

When a CXO might be a less good idea

… being totally industry agnostic.

1. If CX is not priority for the CEO. Don’t waste your time. Providing better CX is nothing less than a corporate transformation project. This requires clear corporate prios, a powerful mandate and strong support/backing. Listen and repeat: you – can – not – change – the – company – without – the – CEO. So, if the CEO isn’t there, a discussion about a CXO role might be the wrong approach … but efforts at smartly persuading and educating the C-suite by providing eye-opening proof much better invested time.
2. It becomes another silo with a shiny title. If the role sits off to the side with no influence over brand planning, field priorities, content budgets, or data, you’ve hired a motivational speaker – not a change leader. If the CXO can’t say “no” to bad experiences, the organization will keep shipping them.
3. If accountabilities overlap. Without crisp swim lanes, the CXO can step on the CMO/CCO/CDO/CIO/CBDO/CwhatsoeverO toes. Turf wars are the enemy of speed. If you can’t draw a one-page RACI showing who owns strategy, data, content, channels, field execution, and medical engagement, you’re not ready.
4. If “CX” and “digital customer engagement” are used synonymously. Without a mature understanding across the company what CX is and how it fertilizes and boosts customer and patients experiences across touchpoints and channels, digital as well as field, a CXO role will always be in unhealthy competition with other functions. (thanks to Mike Bellis for remembering me)
5. If the plumbing isn’t there yet. No leader can out-perform broken foundations. If your data quality, identity resolution, consent management, and content factory are immature, start there. A CXO can help design the blueprint. But don’t expect miracles if the pipes are leaking.
6. If expectations are unrealistic. A CXO won’t fix brand under-positioning, pricing issues, or supply constraints. Nor will they produce quarter-over-quarter revenue spikes on their own. If your board wants fireworks by next Tuesday, protect the role from hero narratives and set a 12–24 months value roadmap, some of us call corporate CX strategy.
7. If the culture says “CX is someone else’s job”. The moment “the CXO will handle it” becomes the norm, you’ve centralized empathy and decentralized accountability. Experience must remain everyone’s job! <being blue in the face> The CXO’s job is to make it unavoidable.

Quick litmus test if you need a CXO or not

Upshot

A corporate-level CXO can turn “customer centricity” from a poster into a performance system, in all industries and especially in pharma, where trust, reputation and confidence are inseparable from growth. But the title only works if you give it teeth, tune the plumbing, and keep the whole C-suite accountable.

Create the role to simplify decisions, accelerate outcomes, and protect trust. Don’t create it to outsource empathy. If you design it right, your customers will feel the difference. And so will your results.

You can also read a more Industry Agnostic Version of this article at Medium.