Meet the new chief customer officers at Mars, SAP, Gong and more

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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.

CPG giant Mars Inc. has brought on Lauren Larsen (pictured) as chief customer officer for its Food and Nutrition division, a role with a North America-wide scope.

Mars described Larsen’s mandate as primarily sales oriented, focused on the growth of its rice and ready meal categories across the U.S. This includes products such as Ben’s Original, Seeds of Change and Tasty Bite, the company said.

Larsen comes to Mars with close to 20 years in the CPG sector, including stints at Procter & Gamble and Glanbia.

Next month, enterprise software behemoth SAP said it was expanding Thomas Saueressig‘s role from leading its led the Customer Services & Delivery Board to becoming chief customer officer for its newly-formed Customer Value Group.

SAP said Saueressig will oversee the full customer journey, aligning selling, delivery, services and support driving adoption, renewal and expansion of SAP’s cloud and AI-powered solutions. He originally joined SAP in 2004 and was promoted to its board in 2019.

Gong, whose platform transcribes and analyzes sales calls and is popular within B2B organizations, celebrated surpassing 5,000 customers by promoting Simon Frey as chief customer officer.

Frey previously served as Gong’s senior vice-president of customer outcomes, and his new role is aimed at helping the company stay on track as it scales to meet increased customer demand.

Gong noted that many organizations are struggling to turn AI pilots into full production projects, and Frey will be key in “helping customers operationalize Gong and the Revenue AI OS.”

Sprouts Farmers Market, a specialty retailer that focuses on organic foods, said it had hired Amanda “Mandy” Rassi as its first-ever chief customer officer.

Rassi will report directly to Sprout’s CEO, and the company said in a statement her ” extensive experience in leading strategy and growth through the customer – building insight capability, leading customer strategy and personalization and loyalty, and driving growth with target customers – will strengthen how Sprouts understands and grows our health enthusiast customer across all channels.”

The role will have Rassi oversees Sprouts’ marketing, external communications, personalization/loyalty, eCommerce and consumer insights functions. She was previously CMO at Michaels.

Alterra Mountain Company, which operates ski and snowboarding venues as well as the world’s largest heli-skiing operation, said it had brought on former Marriott executive David Flueck as its chief customer officer.

The company said Flueck will will lead Alterra’s customer engagement strategy as well as its sales, marketing, and communications functions.

At Marriott, Flueck created the Marriott Bonvoy loyalty program and served as global director of loyalty cards. He also spearheaded several of Marriott’s new ventures, including Marriott Bonvoy Outdoors and Marriott Bonvoy Boutiques.

Customer experience (CX) vendor Alchemer promoted Ryan Tamminga to chief customer officer, which will have him overseeing the firm’s customer success, support, services and experience operations.

Alchemer noted that Tamminga, who joined the company in 2019, had played a pital role in growing its customer success organization from a small group to more than 80 team members today. His work has also contributed to a Net Promoter Score of 92 for support interactions, the company added.

Premier Foods, one of the U.K.’s largest businesses in its category, hired Matt Roberts as chief customer officer following a retirement on its senior leadership team.

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Roberts comes to Premier Foods from the healthcare sector, where he lead the commercial team at Karo Healthcare. At Premier Foods, he will be focused on strengthening the firm’s partnerships with retailers and helping deliver long-term growth.

Halcyon, a company whose platform helps combat ransomware, hired Ryan Schutlz as chief customer officer, overseeing customer success, services, and long-term value realization.

Schultz, who has a computer science background, comes to Halcyon with more than 20 years’ experience across a wide range of sectors. These include chemical R&D, airlines, energy, security, sales and marketing, and data intelligence organizations, the company said.

Safety and sustainability software provider EcoOnline appointed David Orstad as its first-ever chief customer officer, where he will lead its professional services, customer success, and support teams.

Orstad, whose career has included stints at Collabrio and Epicor, will also be charged with helping EcoOnline develop a managed services offering to support its more than 11,000 customers across 70 countries.

And finally KnowBe4, which offers agentic AI risk management software, has brought on former DocuSign chief customer officer Kelly Morgan.

KnowBe4 said Morgan will will focus on delivering “a seamless outcomes-driven customer experience across every touchpoint of the lifecycle, with an emphasis on measurable risk reduction, retention, and long-term customer value.”

Besides DocuSign, Morgan previously worked in a chief customer officer role at Sykes and founded Seven Two Seven, a boutique consultancy advising SaaS and technology companies.