Understanding the Chief Community Officer Role

Chief Community Officer is an uncommon title, but why? Until recently, I had never heard it. I couldn’t help but wonder, why not?

The role makes perfect sense. A strong community leader requires an entire multi-layered team accounting for every detail and uniqueness of their community members. An impactful leader will contribute and meet goals across every team of the company.

• Your product managers would love to know exactly what their customers think so they can plan the most impactful work first. Building relationships and capturing feedback is so key to a business’ success. Yet why do we infrequently hear about companies having a solid feedback loop with their communities?
• Wouldn’t it be nice to have a steady stream of qualified leads? Your community leader can build a customer advocacy program so great that your customers can’t help but sing your praises.
• Can’t quite seem to nail the messaging for your next marketing campaign? What does your community leader think? Share it with your highest trusted community members, what do they think? Your MVP community members love every opportunity they can get to work with your team and have an impact on your organization.
• Struggling to fill your recruiting pipeline? Engage your community. Bring HR and community together to build strategy around identifying potential community members that fit the team, and integrating open opportunities throughout the community.
• It could finally give a home to the team that fluctuates the most within companies, the developer relations team. A solid leader guiding their DevRel leader, all under the same purpose and mission of supporting their customers in the way they want to be supported, could make DevRel even more impactful and necessary.

Now that I think about it, there isn’t a single seat at the c-suite table that advocates on the customers behalf. Customer success or support tries to, but it’s hard to remain an advocate when you’re dealing with people at their peak frustrated point.

Imagine the impact a chief community officer could make on a company if they had a division, a seat at the key table, that solely focused on the customers needs. That captured the uniqueness of your customer and brought that back to your company to ingrain in the culture & the product itself.

Sounds dreamy to me.

This article was originally posted on Devocate, which joined the Common Room family in August 2022. For more developer relations insights and resources, check out the Common Room blog. Learn more about Common Room’s solution for DevRel teams if you're looking for an intelligent community growth platform to educate, empower, and enable your community.