Auxo Brand Growth logo – fractional CXO and customer experience consulting Melissa Day · Fractional CXO
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Fractional Chief Experience Officer

Customer experience built as a growth lever, for consumer brands scaling past instinct.

Every business has a customer experience but is yours truly a growth driver? Customer experience (CX) fuels your plan like compounding interest. Done well, customer experience is what gets her to buy again, refer a friend, and cost less to keep than she cost to acquire. For most clients, the total cost of CX remains cost neutral or savings positive after our work together because effort and resources focus where they matter most – to your customer. I take a fractional seat on your leadership team to ensure that it gets done well while building Customer Experience team acumen along the way.

Let's find out how much your experience is worth.

Book a fit call → See how engagements work

Currently taking fractional CXO engagements and advisory roles.

Melissa Day, fractional Chief Experience Officer (CXO) and customer experience strategist for consumer brands
Melissa DayFounder & Principal
  • $50M-$350M
    Client Average Annual Revenue
  • +15,000
    Engaged Associates
  • Over 20%
    Comp
  • +$432M
    Incremental Revenue
  • +3000
    Location Rollout
  • +15 pts.
    Growth to Category
Where the track record comes from

Built inside the operator seat, not advised from outside it.

Headshot of Melissa Day, founder of Auxo Brand Growth and fractional CXO
“Auxo is the partner I couldn't find when I held the operator seat so I decided to build it for clients and their teams to benefit.”
Melissa Day, Founder & Principal
Brands behind the track record
  • Banfield Pet Hospital
  • barre3
  • Walmart
  • Lovesac
  • EssilorLuxottica
From Our Clients
The work we did with Auxo broke down barriers in our organization and defined our future relationship with our customer. We are clear and inspired and already seeing improvements in our retention and NPS scores.
David Sturrus
Chief Client Officer, Banfield Pet Hospital
Melissa's strong focus on the human experience also helped us develop the right integrations with technology that created a great digital experience even in physical spaces. Through Melissa's leadership at Walmart, we saw over 20% comp growth at the reimagined vision centers.
Mony Iyer
CEO, Acorn Health, formerly SVP, Walmart Vision
As a result of Auxo's work, Perfection Group now has a much stronger understanding of the factors that influence our customer decisions, the attributes our customers value most, and the opportunities available to drive future growth.
Todd Albrecht
CEO, Perfection Group
The multi-channel customer experience gap

You're past founder instinct. You're not ready for a $400K hire.

You added the second channel, then the third. Each one came with its own team and its own version of the brand — and somewhere in there, customer experience stopped being something everyone just knows how to do. But a full-time Chief Experience Officer is a line item you can't justify yet.

Customer journey map and service design framework on a wall, used to find multi-channel customer experience gaps
01

Growth is bought, not earned.

Acquisition costs climb, and nothing in the experience itself is doing any of the acquiring.

02

Every channel has an owner. The customer doesn't.

One customer, three teams, three sets of numbers — and the seams between them belong to nobody.

03

Experience is everyone's priority, no one's job.

Every leader agrees it matters; none of them owns a number for it.

Plain definition

What is a fractional CXO?

A fractional Chief Experience Officer is a tenured operational executive who works on retainer alongside your leadership to deliver value to your customer and up-level your team in a fraction of the time. The model exists for companies caught in a specific gap: too large for CX to run on founder instinct, too small to justify the full-time hire above plus a research budget and a service design team.

Capacity without the overhead

A CXO with a bench. Not a solo consultant.

Customer research photographs spread across a workshop table during a customer experience strategy session

Auxo runs a rotating team of 5–10 senior specialists — hand-picked per engagement around the problem in front of us. You pay for the specialists your problem actually needs, for the weeks you actually need them.

Specialists on the bench
  • Category insight
  • Customer segmentation
  • Customer Strategy
  • Journey mapping
  • Service design
  • Digital UX
  • CX measurement
  • Service Experience Playbook
The usual options
This model
A full-time CXO at $350–450K loaded
An operator in the seat in weeks
A solo consultant, one skill set
5–10 specialists across the full CX stack
A strategy deck and a handshake
A built function, a hired team, a playbook
From the field

Work

Customer journey mapping workshop: participant reviewing a wall-sized journey map of photos and sticky notes
Consumer brand strategy slide: The fight for dollars is real. “Competition” is now anyone that helps a consumer look and feel better, not just the “other guy”.
Customer experience workshop sticky notes reading “Not just a quick fix”, “1 is also a number”, “Supported Safety”, “Habit”, “Cadence” and “Long game, not the only game”
Customer research moodboard exercise: printed photographs, sticky notes and markers on a workshop table for brand and customer experience strategy
Category strategy slide: Think of this as a 50,000 foot view of what’s happening in your category today, with a view to what will be important in the future.
Wellness and fitness customer experience audit collage: reformer pilates room, lounge, curtained treatment room, glass-walled corridor, staff welcome and studio homepage
Facilitator leading a “How We Win” customer experience strategy workshop, writing on the board with a dry-erase marker
Wellness market research: gyms and fitness centers are 39% of US wellness spend, the US wellness market is $2.2 trillion heading to $3.7 trillion by 2034, and 84% say wellness is a top priority
“Make it happen” mug on the table at a customer experience strategy workshop with participants in the background
Customer insight slide: Never underestimate the sophistication of your customers.
The role, concretely

What a fractional CXO actually does

Not a deck. Not a quarterly workshop. I take a leadership seat and do the job, in the room every week.

01

Own the number

Acquisition cost, LTV, repeat rate, retention, NPS or comp — I build the reporting leadership actually decides from.

02

Map the journey vs. the P&L

Where customers drop off, what it costs, and which fixes to fund first.

03

Design the service model

What your brand says and does at every touchpoint — documented and trained.

04

Build the function to run without me

Hire the team, set the cadence, write the playbook.

05

Translate for the board

Insight turned into the two or three slides that fund the next phase.

06

Sit in the room

Weekly, as a member of the leadership team — not a vendor visiting quarterly.

Engagement models

Three ways to start. All scoped before you sign.

4–6 weeks · Fixed fee

CX Diagnostic

Where is experience costing you revenue, and what's the fix worth?

Best forA business case before committing budget.
6–12 months · Monthly retainer

Fractional CXO

I join your leadership team and run the experience function, with a specialist bench behind me.

Best forFounders scaling past instinct that want to make customer impact quickly while up-leveling the team.
Ongoing · Quarterly

Board & Advisory

A customer lens in the value-creation plan.

Best forPE sponsors and founder-led boards.
Melissa Day, founder and principal of Auxo Brand Growth and fractional Chief Experience Officer (CXO), smiling in a black jacket against a dark studio backdrop
About

Melissa Day Founder & Principal

I build and lead customer experience functions that move real business metrics — customer acquisition, retention, repeat rate, NPS and revenue. I started agency-side as a brand strategist, which is why I'm one part coach and one part roll-up-my-sleeves — I generate the result and the tools for your team to keep the compounding interest going.

  • Worked atWalmart, EssilorLuxottica, Lovesac and various branding agencies
  • Experience25+ years in retail & consumer
  • Trained atThe Disney Institute
Before you ask

The questions I get on the first call

What's the difference between a Chief Experience Officer and a Chief Customer Officer?

In practice, very little — both describe one executive accountable for the customer end to end. CCO is more common in DTC and ecommerce, CXO in retail and hospitality. A fractional engagement covers both.

How is this different from hiring an agency?

An agency delivers a project and leaves. I take a seat on your leadership team and am accountable for a business metric.

What size company is this built for?

Consumer brands roughly $50M–$350M that sell through more than one channel.

What does it cost?

Diagnostics are a fixed fee, quoted before we start. Retainers land well under a loaded senior executive salary.

How fast do we see something?

A diagnostic runs four to six weeks. On a fractional engagement, the first ninety days install the operating rhythm.

Do you work with private equity sponsors?

Yes — inside portfolio companies and at the sponsor level on customer diligence and CX leadership hiring.

We already have a CX team. Is there a fit?

Often, yes — the job becomes elevating the function rather than building it from zero.

Are you big enough to handle our scale?

Channel complexity is the specific problem I've solved repeatedly, not one I'd be learning on your business.

Ready, Set, Grow.

Let's find out what your experience gap is worth.

A 30-minute call, no deck.
Tell me what growth is costing you right now.

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