If you are a frequent blog reader (and we hope you are!), you are probably very familiar with S&B’s concept of the Chief Customer Officer (CCO). Here’s a quick definition for anyone new to the blog:
At S&B, we are your Chief Customer Officers. This means we firmly believe that in order to do the best work for our clients we need to focus on their customers.
The title of Chief Customer Officer is one that each member of the S&B team proudly earns every day. And when I say “earn,” I mean it. Our focus on getting to know our client’s customers goes far beyond pouring over the latest MRI data, trend research or sales numbers. What sets S&B apart is the fact that our employees regularly take on the customer’s role in what we call customer immersions – an opportunity to spend a little time in the customer’s shoes.
These customer immersions happen frequently – not just with new business or at the beginning of a new project. Customer immersions are a regular, ongoing activity for S&B employees, something many of us do in our personal time. We view immersions as valuable opportunities to see things through the customer’s eyes, watching and listening as they interact with our client’s brand or products.
So, in a typical month, what types of customer immersions might we do? You name it, we’ve tried it! We’ve visited more cheese shops than we can count, kept a bee hive on our rooftop, scaled a 12-story building, jumped into freezing cold water in the middle of February and spent a day at a grain elevator, just to name a few.
But beyond our more exotic immersion events, we also spend time watching other customers in our everyday lives – at the grocery store, the gym, the farmers market, in restaurants. So next time you get the feeling your being watched as you make a cheese selection in the deli department, don’t be alarmed – most likely it’s just a member of the S&B team, earning our CCO title.
~ Megan
