Meet the new chief customer officer at Macy’s and 10 other firms
This is the first in an ongoing look at executive appointments by companies with the intention of putting a greater emphasis on customer experience design. These are your new peers, industry influencers, potential mentors or perhaps clients one day.
Department store chain Macy’s has brought on former McKinsey consultant Max Magni to serve as its new chief customer and digital officer.
Magni comes to the retailer after two decades with McKinsey, where as a senor partner he co-lead its digital commerce strategy group NeXT Commerce and was the global leader of its Consumer Growth Practices division.
The appointment comes as Macy’s reported a revenue drop of 8 per cent in quarterly sales compared to last year, including both digital and bricks-and-mortar sales.
Besides overseeing its e-commerce sites, Macy’s said Magni’s role will include developing and enhancing mobile apps, loyalty and gift registry programs for both Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. Macy’s has also launched a marketplace to sell products from third-party sellers and expanding into private label branding.
Bath & Body Works Inc. said it was introducing the chief customer officer role for the first time and hired former Target vice-president of marketing Maurice Cooper to take it on. Cooper’s experience extends beyond traditional retail and includes a stint as chief growth and experience officer at Wingstop Restaurants, a publicly traded firm in the fast casual space. Bath & Body Works has also experienced a recent slowdown in sales.
As industries just as retail explore automation to help gain productivity and efficiency, intelligent automation firm ABBYY promoted its former vice-president of customer success and professional services director Chip VonBurg as its chief customer officer. The company cited VonBurg’s expertise in search, natural language processing and machine learning in announcing the move. He steps into the role as the company declares September “Intelligent Automation Month,” with a series of events and resources to better educate its customers on technology-related opportunities to improve their businesses.
Sam Loveland is also making the move from customer success to a role as chief customer officer at SalesLoft, which provides artificial intelligence (AI) software to enhance revenue workflows. Loveland comes to SalesLoft from a global customer success role with ServiceNow and has held similar positions at Salesforce and Microsoft. This is a new role at SalesLoft, and Loveland’s priorities will include helping customers make use of its generative AI capabilities, a new solution called Rhythm and the expansion of its platform into other languages.
Reputation, which offers technology to manage customer feedback from acquisition to loyalty, hired Pam Dodrill as its new chief customer officer. Dodrill comes to Reputation following a three-year stint at Zapier, where she served as vice-president of customer support and success. She replaces former chief customer officer Jason Grier, who has since become Reputation’s COO and chief product officer.
Therapy and rehab industry software provider Raintree Systems said it hired Meagan MacLean as its chief customer officer. She held the same title at Vendavo a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company offering pricing selling and configure-price-quote (CPQ) solutions.
MasterControl, whose digital platform is used within the life sciences industry, has added a chief customer officer to its C-suite with the hiring of Kiran Dhanuka. As MasterControl seeks to expand into new marketers, Dhanuka will be applying her experience as corporate vice-president with BlueYonder, which offers SaaS supply chain solutions across various industries.
Speaking of supply chain management, Montreal-based Techsys Inc. promoted its vice-president of global operations, Vito Calabretta, to chief customer officer. His previous experience includes stints at consulting firm Accenture and Techsys said customer service operations doubled under his leadership since 2017.
Strong customer relationships are just as important in commercial real estate, which is why VTS, which offers a tech platform in that space, has promoted Sachin Shah from senior vice-president of customer success to become its first chief customer officer. Shah’s expanded responsibilities will now include enhancing client satisfaction as it rolls out new offerings such as VTS Activate, an experience platform for tenants.
Navisite, an Andover, Mass.-based digital transformation firm, hired former Yext chief customer officer Mary Fratto Rowe to take on the same title. Her most recent role was with conversational AI business software provider LivePerson, where she served as executive vice-president of customer success.
And after 20 years with Blackbaud, which offers software to help firms manage their social impact, Todd Lant has been appointed its chief customer officer. Lant most recently served as the firm’s chief information officer and will now focus on customer retention, time-to-value and digital-first customer support, the company said.
