Meet the new chief customer officers at The Hershey Company, Coke Florida and more
This is the latest in a quarterly 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.
The Hershey Company has tapped seasoned confectionary industry executive Tiffany Menyhart as its chief customer officer and to oversee its sales team.
Officially announced in early March, the Hershey, Penn.-based chocolate bar maker said Menyhart will advance its vision of becoming a “snacking powerhouse.” Menyhart has previously worked at both the Kraft Heinz Company as well as Mars Wrigley in strategic growth and category leadership roles.
“For more than two decades, I’ve admired Hershey’s best-in-class commercial team and its pioneering leadership in category excellence,” said Menyhart in a statement.
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In the hospitality sector, data platform provider Otelier (formerly known as myDigitalOffice) said it had appointed Rupali Sawhney as chief customer officer, which it described as a newly-established role.
Otelier said Sawhney’s focus will be on building strong, lasting partnerships across the entire customer lifecycle. This includes onboarding and implementation through training, feature adoption, and ongoing success.
Sawhney comes to Otelier with considerable background in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) space, including Quickbase, Saama, IBM Watson (now Merative), Pegasystems, and Sovos.
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Speaking of SaaS, Zywave, an insurance technology provider based in Milwaukee said it had hired Justin Regenwether as chief customer officer following product and customer-focused leadership roles at Vertafore, which operates in the same space.
The company said Regenwether will head the Company’s customer success, professional services, and support groups. Outside of insuretech, Regenwether has had stints at major consulting firms, including both Accenture and Deloitte.
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Last month Dynatrace, which provides an AI-based observability platform, said its chief customer officer Matthias Dollentz-Scharer was retiring after a decade in the role. Replacing him will be Steve McMahon, who had been working as chief customer success officer at Zscaler, leading technical support teams.
McMahan has also spent time at CrowdStrike, Splunk and Cisco, and has served in CIO roles as well. He comes to Dynatrace with an educational background in economics from Yale University.
Dynatrace added that Dollentz-Scharer will stay on in an advisory capacity until September to ease the transition.
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Coke Florida’s chief customer officer, Andy Hill, has gotten a serious promotion to CEO of the sixth-largest bottler in the U.S. As a result, Cass Black is taking on Hill’s former role and will lead Coke Florida’s retail customer management, foodservice and on-premise, and field operations teams.
The company noted Black’s previous achievements include leading the strategic transformation of direct-store-delivery (DSD) operating model at Mondelez, where he served as customer vice-president.
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Josh Cruickshank has been promoted from chief sales officer to chief customer officer at SalesHood, a San Francisco-based firm that offers a digital sales enablement platform.
Cruickshank will now lead SalesHood’s customer success and services teams. The company said his promotion reflects marks another key milestone in SalesHood’s commitment to elevating the customer experience and accelerating revenue performance through innovation, enablement, and trusted partnerships.
Cruickshank has been with SalesHood for the past six years.
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Kapture CX, a software provider based in Bangalore, India, said it had named former Eightfold AI regional vice-president of professional services RudraPrasad Nanjundappa as its chief customer officer.
The company said will specifically oversee the implementation of its agentic AI suite as well as lead customer success programmes and support efforts to expand client engagement and global operations.
Nanjundappa has a 30-year track record in the tech sector, with stints at LinkedIn, Cognizant, and Infosys.
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Also in India, The Mahindra Group said its existing chief customer officer, Asha Kharga, will take on the same role at Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd. as of July 1st.
In announcing the move, the company said it has plans to expand its resort footprint to 10,000 keys by 2030. Kharga will be responsible for aligning its brand vision with what was described as exceptional experiences while driving brand transformation, guest experience innovation and its marketing strategy.
The company said Kharga has 30 years of experience in the sector.
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