House of Fraser’s Andy Harding is leaving after just a year as CCO – prompting discussion about the future of this increasingly prominent role.

Some in the industry have mooted whether the chief customer officer position, so much of the moment, may be a flash in the pan and already on its way out before it has really been established.

Clearly House of Fraser would not subscribe to that view given it has already drafted in interim replacement Alison Lancaster and has drawn up a shortlist of three candidates to fill Harding’s shoes on a permanent basis.

And others continue to recruit CCOs, including Tesco, which was the first retailer to make the move appointing Robin Terrell, and Asda which originally selected Barry Williams, and who was replaced earlier this year by Andy Murray.

At a ‘Decoding the chief customer officer’ briefing this week, organised by headhunter Oresa, retailers were mostly in agreement that the role was crucial strategically.

Research by Oresa found that 66% of c-suite executives believed that a CCO had a role to play in a business. More tellingly perhaps, 90% of those surveyed said the role would increase in importance over the next five years.

The role has emerged as ecommerce and multichannel has grown in importance. As online and offline directors sometimes competed for supremacy, it became clear that channels were becoming increasingly fractured.

Uniting those silos and gaining a holistic view of the customer journey became a priority. And so the CCO was born, charged with bringing together channels in order to have a single customer view and serve their shoppers better as a result.

The struggle to define

But while the job title has become common, defining the role and responsibilities of a CCO is more difficult. It means different things at different retailers.

”I think this role appears difficult to define as the functional responsibilities can be wide and varied, says Oresa chief executive Orlando Martins. “The reality is, if an organisation is considering hiring a CCO it is for that business to clearly define what this role looks like. Where it begins and ends will be based on their own internal needs and strategic objectives.”

While retailers may have to tailor roles to their needs, there is much more disparity between the role of a CCO at different businesses as opposed, to say, the role of a chief operating officer.

Majestic Wine managing director for new business Kate Simon was among those who contributed to the survey. She describes the CCO role as having “responsibility for the end-to-end customer journey and ensuring a maximised mutual exchange of value between customer and business”.

The role of the CCO is nebulous. Oresa has identified six types, including variants where responsibility for overall sales is down to the CCO.

However, one variant is more prevalent than others – this encompassed responsibility for marketing, ecommerce, data insight and loyalty, brand and customer proposition.

This contrasts with situations where the role also includes responsibility for sales or where the CCO was limited to marketing, brand and ecommerce.

“Someone who understands customer data, understands the journey from beginning to end, and has the strategic horsepower to influence the entire organisation”

Beth Butterwick

Beth Butterwick, the departing Bonmarche boss who is about to take over at Karen Millen, adds an important observation to Simon’s definition.

“[A CCO] is someone who understands customer data, understands the journey from beginning to end, and has the strategic horsepower to influence the entire organisation,” she says.

But individuals who possess management experience of marketing, ecommerce, data insight and loyalty, brand and customer proposition and “influential strategic horsepower” are rare, delegates agreed.

Many retailers were upfront about the fact that their CCOs were supported by staff who complemented those skills as well as brought extra abilities to the team.

While the purpose of a CCO – to bring a renewed focus on the customer in the wake of the ecomm boom – makes sense, whether one individual can really achieve that is debatable.

Clearly the need to unify channels and bring together businesses is only going to get more important. On whether the CCO represents the right way to do that, retailers’ opinions may differ.

How well those already in this fairly new role do is likely to dictate whether or not it becomes standard in retail.