Customer Satisfaction Recovery

One recent project for this consultant involved a major computer hardware manufacturer with a solid reputation of excellent customer support via use of its own global customer service organization. The issue was severe problems in implementing a service partner program, which contracted 3rd party service organizations to supplement its own organization to support low end and midrange products. Customer satisfaction scores from the partner organizations were significantly below that of the corporations own service department. Sales and Professional Services Management were in an uproar claiming that this new program was hindering their ability to sell products and services.

Note: Recovery of this program was initially estimated to take 12 - 24 months.

Key Observations of the initial evaluation :

• Fact : Partner Customer Sat scores were below 88% compared to 96%+ of the corporations own customer service department
• Fact : There were very few KPI (key performance indicators) by which to measure the effectiveness of the partner’s service techs.
• Fact : There were virtually no understanding across internal customer service, much less professional service and sales, as to the goals or processes associated with the program
• Fact : There was a great deal of finger pointing and little communications.
• Too many accusations between the partners and corporate departments were innuendos, not fact based (often a "scape goat" scenario)
• Fact : It was not clear who was responsible for interacting with or managing the partners.
• Fact : While partner hardware training was adequate, there was not post training mentoring program, no instruction on escalations, requesting assistance, and no clear understanding of processes
• Fact : Customer skills of the partner, in many cases did not meet standards, as expectations were not clearly set.
• Fact : The Surveys revealed that almost 50% of the complaints were due to problems with the company’s own support center and not a lack of effectiveness on the part of the partners.

Actions Taken to Resolve Issues

Established a transactional customer survey, which surveyed each and every customer after every service call, designed to collect data on all aspects of the call itself, from hold times, to response times, and effectiveness of the on site service technician. This consultant personally read every single survey (hundreds) for the first 6 months. This included every comment by the customers. A process was implemented to contact the customer related to every survey that had negative comments. This included working with the appropriate Service Manager to narrow down the issues so we had a very clear understanding of what the problems were, and implement an action plan to recover the customer if necessary.

A massive program "Re-Launch" which implemented, which basically was a tour of North America, meeting with Customer Service, Sales, Professional Services, and the partners to discuss issues, better understand concerns, listen to suggestions, and have people meet face to face.

• The key to this effort was a huge relationship building effort across the country with Managers from all departments from both companies involved. We discovered that in many cases, not only did corporate Managers not understand the program, the expectations, processes, etc.; they often did not even know their internal Sales and Professional Services counterparts. Misinformation and unrealistic expectations were the norm.
• During these meetings, I encouraged open, honest, and sometimes heated discussions. It was amazing however, that often; the discussions themselves and the people in the room solved the problems. Realization would often occur ( that light bulb would come on), that 1) the Partners were human too, and had the very best of intentions, and 2) some issues were not really Partner related issues.
• This effort of facilitating face to face meetings was a very major step. Once people were introduced to each other, especially meeting the Partner’s Management team, perceptions started to change. People started talking with each other and working together to resolve local issues!

Responsibility for managing the basic field processes and communications to the field itself, and held both the Corporations and Partner’s Managers accountable. Teams were formed to evaluate, enhance and / or develop more effective and efficient processes. A "Qualification / Certification" program was implemented for the Partner’s technicians.

• The partner technical field force was expanded from approx 200 in North America to over 600, with over 400 of them "Qualified and Vendor badged" within 6 months
• The "qualification" program included a process of training, mentoring, and sometimes enhanced "sandbox" / lab training.

A SPOC program was established, with District level Managers within each Region, both Internal and Partner, assigned to develop expertise as it relates to partners and associated processes. These individuals became the focal points within the Regions to pass information to their respective teams, and their peers within the region. The process continues today with regular conference calls and active involvement by each member of the team.

Corporate Relationship Managers were put in place and assigned specific geographies. Their charter was to continue to help the field work through issues and to be the focal point for escalations within their respective geographies. They were instrumental in terms of keeping the communications going between all departments.

We worked very closely with the PMO of the partners to enhance the entire program and processes.

Contracts with the partners were re-negotiated to incorporate enhanced KPI’s. Adjustments were made each quarter based on dispatch rates and call times, customer satisfaction results, just to name a few.

Results

Within 12 months, the partner program totally turned around. Customer Satisfaction scores for the partner actually exceeded those scores of the corporation’s own service team (98.2% vs. 96.4%), and in turn raised the bar to unprecedented levels. The Cost of service across all product lines that involved partner service was reduced significantly. Internally, the program was recognized by Sales and Professional Services as exceeding expectations. The success of this program resulted in the program being mirrored in EMEA, APJ, and Latin America.

To see the resume of the expert associated with this case study, see the link below.