A new study just came out in Linked In that reveals that average CEOs spend less than 3% of their time talking to their customers. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/average-ceo-spends-3-his-time-talking-customers-now-jan-van-der-spoel/

I wonder if many CEOs avoid customer interaction because they fear what their customers will actually say.  I have found that there is frequently a triangle with the CEO and his executive team on one point, the sales team on another point, and the customer on the final point.  

Whenever you ask key questions like:
  - How much better are we than our competition?
  - How big of a problem is X?
  - What would customers be willing to pay for Y?
  - What is our reputation with our best customers?
  - What is our reputation with our other customers?

I find that in healthy organizations, the answers from these three groups are close to the same.  The bigger the discrepancy between the Executive Team, the sales team, and the Customer, the bigger the problems that the company faces.

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