Fractional CCO & CX Advisory
AI can automate almost everything — except the reason customers stay.
I help founders and executive teams build the human moat around their business: the retention, trust, and word-of-mouth that no competitor can copy-paste. Fractional leadership, hands-on consulting, and straight-talk assessments from a 20-year customer experience executive.
How I Help
Four ways to bring executive-level CX into your business
You don't always need a full-time hire to fix customer experience — you need the right depth of engagement at the right moment. And you need someone who's run the whole post-sales lifecycle, not just one slice of it.
Onboarding & Time-to-Value
Getting new customers live fast, with a process that scales past your first 10 accounts.
Adoption, Retention & Expansion
CSM structure, health scoring, and renewal motion built around real outcomes, not just check-ins.
Technical Support & Escalations
Resolution over deflection — knowledge bases, tiering, and SLAs that customers actually trust.
Fractional Chief Customer Officer
Embedded, ongoing executive leadership across the full post-sales lifecycle — Implementation, Customer Success, and Support — without the full-time price tag. I sit in your leadership meetings, own the roadmap, and build the team underneath it.
Designed for: Seed–Series B companies without a CX/CS executive yet
Ongoing · RetainerExpert CX Consulting
Focused engagements to solve a specific problem: post-merger integration, org redesign, churn diagnosis, or building a CX strategy your board will actually read.
Designed for: Start-ups, recent M&A, or any team with a specific, time-boxed problem to solve
4–12 weeks · ProjectProject-Based Assessments
A rigorous, outside-in audit of your customer experience — maturity, org design, AI risk, and retention health — with a prioritized roadmap, not just a slide deck of observations.
Designed for: ELTs, CCOs, and VPs who need an outside diagnostic or gut-check
2–4 weeks · DiagnosticKeynotes, Speaking, Coaching & Workshops
Talks and working sessions for leadership offsites, CS teams, and conferences on building human-centric CX in an AI-first world — built from the frameworks in The Moat.
Designed for: Leadership offsites, CS/CX teams, and conference organizers
Half-day · Live or virtualSome Past Results
What Leaders Say
What it’s like to have Jennifer in your corner
Jennifer is one of the strongest operators I've partnered with, someone who combines organizational scale with genuine hands on execution. She led CX across a large, multi brand structure and delivered real results, including accelerating one of our product's monthly install capacity by more than 420% during a period of high sales volume.
Jennifer brings a clear, thoughtful voice to every conversation. She offers honest perspective that helps teams make better decisions, and once a direction is set, she is fully committed to making it succeed. She is the kind of leader you can always count on to both speak up for what's right and rally behind the team.
One of the most effective and respected leaders I've worked with. Her open-door style and genuine willingness to consider new ideas helped her team grow and build confidence in their own decision-making — not just deliver results. Her negotiation skills and customer-focused mindset let her navigate even the most challenging situations, including retaining customers who were considering leaving.
Jennifer is the kind of leader you want in the room when the stakes are high: strategic, analytical, calm, and exceptionally attuned to enterprise customers. She can tackle any challenge with thoughtful judgment and a rare ability to balance what’s right for the customer with what’s right for the business.
About Jennifer
Jennifer Courchaine is the author of The Moat, a definitive guide to building human-centric businesses in the age of AI, and a Customer Experience executive with nearly 20 years scaling technology companies — from angel investment through venture funding and strategic exits — across Legal Tech, Risk Management, Automotive, and Nonprofit.
She takes great pride in serving as the voice of the customer, partnering with leaders across every level to build a unified, customer-focused vision for achieving shared business goals — backed by a deep product management background with a proven ability to deliver solutions that provide tremendous value, minimize churn, and position companies for impressive growth.
A firm believer in the talent across Oregon and SW Washington, Jennifer serves as a Venture Partner with Oregon Venture Fund alongside her software leadership work, and has chaired the industry-prestigious PREX and XChange Global conferences. A frequent speaker and startup advisor, she champions a product mindset that prioritizes relationships over efficiency — because while code can be copied, trust compounds, and the only defensible moat in the modern economy is human connection.
Based in Vancouver, WA, Jennifer lives by the same principles she teaches: build strong teams, invest in growth, stay connected to community. Off the clock, she's exploring the Pacific Northwest as a private pilot, teaching scuba as a PADI Open Water Instructor, perfecting a new dessert recipe, or planning her next trip abroad with her husband, Charles.
The Moat Framework
Every audit runs through four lenses
This is the same diagnostic structure from my book — the one I use with every fractional and consulting client before we touch a roadmap.
Is CX a board-level asset?
Whether leadership treats retention as a strategic input or a metric they glance at after churn spikes.
Can your team act without escalating?
Org design, handoffs, and whether your knowledge base solves problems or just deflects them.
Do your numbers tell the truth?
Retention, effort, and intent signals — tracked as leading indicators, not vanity dashboards.
Is the team rewarded for outcomes?
Comp design, burnout prevention, and whether "doing right by the customer" is actually safe to do.
Quick Gut-Check
Are you building a moat, or just feel-good metrics?
Three questions, straight from my Maturity Assessment. Answer honestly — this is a mirror, not a pitch.
The Book
The Moat
Human-Centric CX in the Age of AI
"Code can be copied. Features can be cloned. But relationships compound."
AI is closing the gap on price, features, and even speed. What it can't replicate is a company that customers actually trust. The Moat lays out the framework I use with every client — how to diagnose your CX maturity, define your team's "customer contract," build a 360° health dashboard, and audit where AI is helping versus quietly eroding trust.
It comes with a full set of working sessions you can run with your own team:
Praise for The Moat
What readers are saying
With The Moat, Jennifer has given humans a gift for today and well into the future. With refreshing clarity, she shows you how to use AI in ways that boost humanity and position CX for unequivocal success. For any leader who serves customers or values relationships, you cannot afford not to read this book!
For any leader facing the "existential crisis" of AI, this book throws a lifeline. It's a timely reminder that while AI can simulate a response, only humans can choose to care. AI is now part of all our lives, but The Moat is a vital guide for building a company with a soul that no algorithm can replicate.
If software ate the world, then AI is now eating software's lunch. If the commoditization of software is starting to drain the moat around your business, you need to consider Jennifer's incisive solutions for boosting defensibility and strengthening your customer retention engine. The Moat is required reading for our portfolio companies.
Keynotes & Workshops
Talks and working sessions built from the field, not theory
Every session is grounded in the same worksheets used inside real client engagements — teams leave with something filled out, not just inspired.
The Moat: Human-Centric CX in the Age of AI
Why the companies that win the next decade will be the ones AI helps get more human, not less.
Write Your Team's Customer Contract
A live working session to define the "always/never" rules your CX team operates by — and put them somewhere the team actually sees them.
The AI Audit for Customer Teams
A structured walkthrough of where AI belongs in your customer experience — and where a human safety net is non-negotiable.
Past Speaking Engagements
Pulse Gainsight· ZeroIn ChurnZero· Oregon Venture Fund· Oregon Entrepreneurs Network· K1 Capital· PREX Emcee· XChange Emcee
And More: Customer Success, SaaS, investment, and eDiscovery blogs, podcasts, and webinars.
The Blog
Fractional CCO vs. Full-Time: Which Does Your Company Actually Need?
"Do we need a full-time Chief Customer Officer, or can we get away with someone part-time?" It's one of the most common questions I get from founders and…
Read post →The First 90 Days Decide the Renewal
Most renewal problems don't start at renewal. They start a few weeks after the contract is signed, when a customer is quietly deciding whether they made a…
Read post →The Startup Advantage Trap
Somewhere in the last year or two, "we have a head start" stopped meaning much. I've sat across the table from founders who built something genuinely…
Read post →Let's Talk
Bring the moat-builder to your team
Whether it's a fractional engagement, a focused assessment, or a talk for your next offsite — tell me where you're stuck and we'll figure out the right depth together.