You’ll also welcome new perspectives. If you’re the only one who makes decisions, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut, but when you have others offering their insights and opinions, you learn to see things in a new way. You can’t be good at everything—that’s why people specialize—so it’s always good to have someone take a fresh look at your business and challenge assumptions. As they say, “A fish never realizes it’s wet.”

You need to focus on the big picture. You need to see the forest for the trees, so to speak. You don’t want someone whose eyes are glued to the ground, searching for acorns and squirrel tracks.

The details matter, but they’re not your priority. What’s important is what you do with the details. As a founder or CEO, you have a vision of where you want your company to go—that’s your main job: devote yourself to growing that vision into a reality. To bring it all together, ensure that there is a concerted focus across different departments on creating an experience that aligns with this vision every single day.

A CXO’s work is always aligned with this goal of making sure customers get an excellent experience in every interaction; he or she can help maintain direction for everyone within the company and keep them focused on how their jobs contribute to achieving that goal in everything they do.

Long-term success is about repeatable success. Regardless of your intentions, your company will see its ups and downs. At the end of the day, what matters most is whether or not you can consistently deliver value to customers and employees alike.

 

When it comes to long-term success, results speak louder than intentions. The results of your customer experience strategy are what made you successful in the first place, not just the fact that you had one at all. For example, if high engagement scores among employees helped you retain customers more effectively—but then they plummeted by 20%—it would be unwise to celebrate that as a sign of consistent growth.

 

Long-term success isn’t just about making more money; it’s also about building and maintaining a loyal customer base that finds value in your brand and wants to come back again in the future. While there are many ways this can happen (such as referrals), high engagement among employees is often an indicator that people feel empowered by their work environment: They have respect for their leaders, feel connected with their colleagues, believe they’re performing well on behalf of their company’s mission, etcetera.

To summarize, instead of focusing on titles, look for their experience and how they want to use it. Your CXO hire will have a track record of effective leadership in either their past career or volunteer work. Look for examples of where they led change, solved problems, mentored others and held people accountable to results. These are the skills you need to get through most any business challenge. As long as your CXO hire is willing to leverage these experiences in a positive way for you, your team and your company, then you’ll be able to see the successes that others report from hiring one.