The CCO Title Is Disappearing. The Work Isn't.
OpenText renamed its Chief Customer Officer role to Chief Client Officer this week.
The replacement carries a new title, leading global client experience, professional services, and renewals.
The company didn’t eliminate the function.
It renamed it.
The Data Confirms It
This 2026 survey of 2,350 professionals puts a number on the pattern.
Chief Growth Officers outnumbered new CCO appointments nearly three to one.
At B2C companies, the gap was even wider.
Recruitment specialist Jodie Clayton at Major Players confirmed she hasn’t seen a new CCO role come across her desk in some time.
In a companion piece, nearly one in four brands said they are creating new positions specifically to redefine who owns the customer-facing function.
The question boards are asking has shifted from “who owns the customer?” to “who owns growth?”
That answer is increasingly a CRO or CGO, not a CCO.
The Function Is Rising. The Title Is Compressing.
The work CS owns is expanding.
Renewals, retention, NRR, expansion revenue, executive trust. Every one of those is growing in strategic importance.
Boards know it. CFOs know it. That is why companies keep hiring for this mandate.
But the label is losing ground.
When boards ask “who owns growth?”, the answer is increasingly a Chief Growth Officer, a Chief Revenue Officer, or a hybrid title that folds customer, revenue, and marketing under one umbrella.
The CCO title is being absorbed into broader commercial roles faster than it is being created as a standalone seat.
If you have been following the broader shift, I wrote about the bifurcation of the CS function three weeks ago.
The C-suite is pulling CS upward. Automation is replacing the bottom.
This week’s data adds a third pressure: the title itself is being absorbed into growth and revenue roles, even when the underlying mandate stays the same.
What This Means One Level Below the C-Suite
Why does this matter if you are a CS Director, VP, or senior leader who doesn’t carry a C-suite title?
Because the reorg conversation starts without you.
When your CEO or board decides to restructure the customer function under a CGO or CRO, the people one or two levels below that shift absorb the consequences.
Your reporting line changes. Your budget authority shifts. Your access to the executive team gets rerouted through someone whose priorities may differ from yours.
By the time you hear about it, the decision is already made.
The CS leaders who survive these shifts share one pattern: their work is already wired into how the company makes revenue decisions.
The title above them can change, the org chart can shuffle, and their function stays because removing it would break something the CEO and CFO depend on.
The leaders who don’t survive built their influence on proximity to a specific executive, a specific title, or a specific org structure.
When any of those moved, their influence moved with it.
If the role you’re chasing today looks more like an account management seat than a CS leadership seat, that vulnerability is already baked in.
This post gives you the system to make your work impossible to reassign, regardless of what the org chart calls the person above you.
The System
Below is the three-step system that CS directors and VPs use to make their function survive a reorg.
You'll know exactly where your influence is exposed, which of your metrics are invisible to Finance, and how to build the executive communication rhythm that makes removing your function visibly expensive.
Plus the Influence Durability Audit (Excel) that scores your current exposure automatically.