--- title: The CEO Should Be The Chief Experience Officer description: Why the CEO should be the Chief Experience Officer. image: https://www.onstartups.com/hs-fs/file-13148287-jpg/images/ceo-wrench.jpg --- # The CEO Should Be The Chief Experience Officer Written By: [Dharmesh Shah](https://www.onstartups.com/author/dharmesh-shah) November 15, 2011 - [strategy](https://www.onstartups.com/topic/strategy) - [management](https://www.onstartups.com/topic/management) The CEO Should Be The Chief Experience Officer Written by [Dharmesh Shah](https://www.onstartups.com/author/dharmesh-shah) on November 15, 2011 - - - - Earlier this week, I was chatting with my friend, co-founder and CEO of [HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/), Brian Halligan. We were doing one of our ad-hoc strategy sessions about the business, and working through some things. After that conversation, as I was driving to a dinner meeting, an idea occurred to me. The phrase “Chief Executive Officer” doesn't convey much, if anything. There's a better way to describe the role.![ceo wrench](https://www.onstartups.com/hs-fs/file-13148287-jpg/images/ceo-wrench.jpg) I will posit that **in a technology company, the CEO should be the Chief Experience Officer.** If the CEO can make the following set of experiences *amazing*, by definition, she will make an amazing company. 1. **Product Experience**: What is the experience like using the product and getting value from it? Does it solve the problem simply? Does it make users happy*, *productive and hopeful when they're using it, or does it make them frustrated, angry, agitated and depressed? 2. **Purchasing Experience**: What is it like to go through the sales process and buy the product? Was it easy to figure out whether the product was the right fit? Was the pricing straight-forward? Was the buying process smooth without unnecessary steps and complexity? 3. **Brand Experience**: What is it like to interact with the company's brand? Does talking about the company with others ignite passion? What kind of emotions does it evoke? When people see the logo online or offline, what's the visceral reaction? 4. **Support Experience**: What is it like to receive support from the company? Do people dread having to call in and get help? When they do make contact, do they feel like the company cares not just about appeasing and pleasing — but that the *actual problem is addressed? * 5. **Exit Experience**: What is it like to *leave* the company, return the product, or cancel the subscription and no longer be a customer? Sometimes you can tell more about a company by how it treats customers on their way out, than on their way in. 6. **Employee Experience**: What's it like being recruited by the company? Working for the company? Being let go from the company? If you have a terrible employee experience, you will not attract the kinds of people that will make the customer experience amazing. It just doesn't work. Notice that most of the above experiences are *all about the customer*. How does the *customer* experience the company? I think that's the primary set of experiences the CEO should worry about. The reason is simple, **by improving the overall customer experience, everyone wins. **Including the investors/shareholders (and yes, the CEO also needs to manage the shareholder experience too).*** *** So, **Don't just improve the product, improve the experience**. This is one of the points I made in my [Business of Software (2010)](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/54126/Video-of-Dharmesh-Shah-at-Business-of-Software-2010-Conference.aspx) presentation (I think it was one of my better ones, full video and transcript available). What do you think? Am I over-thinking the importance of the overall experience? Any lessons learned or tips on how to measure and improve the end-to-end experience? ## Related Posts [Things Entrepreneurs Never Confess To Their VCs February 22, 2012 Note: This is intended be a light-hearted piece that hits just close enough on some counts to (hopefully) be funny. Please don't take it too seriously. (Oh, and for the record, I've… Read Post ** ](https://www.onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/78506/Things-Entrepreneurs-Never-Confess-To-Their-VCs.aspx) [Why This New Chatbot Is More Likely To Get You Promoted Than Fired July 14, 2016 Confession: For the past several months I've been furiously coding away on a new project as part of HubSpot Labs. It's called GrowthBot. It's a chatbot for marketing and sales people… Read Post ** ](https://www.onstartups.com/why-this-new-chatbot-is-more-likely-to-get-you-promoted-than-fired) Subscribe ### Get OnStartup News and Updates in your Inbox. ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Dharmesh Shah", "url" : "https://www.onstartups.com/author/dharmesh-shah" }, "datePublished" : "2011-11-15T19:51:00.000Z", "headline" : "The CEO Should Be The Chief Experience Officer", "image" : [ "https://www.onstartups.com/hs-fs/file-13148287-jpg/images/ceo-wrench.jpg" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://www.onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/72404/The-CEO-Should-Be-The-Chief-Experience-Officer.aspx", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://www.onstartups.com/hubfs/mjtw-assets/logos/onstartups-logo@2x.png" }, "name" : "OnStartups" } } ```