Case Studies

Software Company, Customer Support
Manufacturing Company, Division Executive
Global Outsourced Services Provider, VP Services
Telecommunications Company, General Manager

Software Company, Customer Support

Need

• Measure, manage, and improve each customer’s experience in order to enhance customer loyalty and ensure renewals
• Identify problems with new releases early on, allowing timely corrective action so that new products are well-received and calls to Support are minimized
• Track operational Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and customer satisfaction, in order to optimize use of existing resources while ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction
• Track performance of each service rep against his/her individual goals, giving managers and the reps access to that information

Solution

• Comprehensive online customer feedback program to collect feedback from customers when their cases close
• Corporate Dashboard, which provides key results by product, call center, and region, with ability to drill down to key customer and to service rep
• Mini Desktop Dashboards that sit on all reps’ desktops, providing real-time information about their own performance
• Customer Comments automatically categorized into key themes, with comment sentiment measured (number of positive and negative comments. These can be pulled for the product, call center, region, and individual customer

Results

• Provided sales with early warning of contract cancelations
• Maintenance contract renewals increased substantially
• Scores improved significantly for overall satisfaction, loyalty, and referenceability
• Data on new releases were provided to Engineering, with resulting decrease in calls to Customer Support
• Training for new hires and continuing courses for existing employees were modified to reflect customers’ issues
• Account Management now has real-time access to information about their accounts, including total number of service calls, subject of service calls, number and severity of open cases

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Manufacturing Company, Division Executive

Need

• Identify primary and secondary metrics for each KPI, confirming source of data for each and establishing frequency of updates for each data point
• Track corporate and departmental KPIs on timely basis, delivering information to VPs of each product line and functional area
• Alert appropriate manager when metric falls outside target range
• Track revenues on daily basis for Sr. VP
• Closely monitor the experiences of key strategic customers, including purchase behavior and satisfaction levels, in order to deal with problems, build loyalty, and take advantage of opportunities
• Reduce time to produce those reports, which currently involve various individuals pulling data from various sources, including spreadsheets, CRM database, and legacy databases, then compiling them manually

Solution

• Based on input from stakeholders, for each primary and secondary metric, sources and format of the data were identified, accessibility and availability of the data was confirmed, and context determined for each metric, e.g., compared to last year, compared to goal
• Designed dashboards with:
  • Alerts (dials, traffic lights, down arrows) based on actual vs. target levels
  • Indicators showing which strategic customers were at risk (based on combination of factors), with ability to drill down for more detailed picture of problem areas
  • Certain metrics updated more frequently than monthly, based on their time sensitivity
• Set up different views of the data as a function of the responsibilities and interests of the executives
• Created Mini Desktop Dashboards that sit on executives’ and staff desktops for real-time monitoring of key corporate and departmental metrics, providing better decision support
• Showed how operational, financial, and customer satisfaction metrics tracked with each other, facilitating business decisions that will keep and grow customers, while advancing the financial health of the company

Results

• Provided key executives with daily view of revenues and shipments by product, thereby focusing needed attention on potential monthly and quarterly shortfalls early enough to fine tune sales efforts
• Visual presentation of Alerts has given senior executives immediate insight to problems along with their root causes, leading to implementation of actions needed to remedy the situations
• By showing operational, financial and customer satisfaction metrics on the same dashboard, managers were able to improve the efficiency of basic processes without sacrificing the customer experience (e.g., number of minutes when time on hold starts to negatively impact overall satisfaction with the company)
• Through automation of data collection and report creation tasks, company saved significant hours of work each month by analysts and IT personnel
• Saved at-risk customers by giving visibility to their needs and taking steps to resolve their issues on timely basis relative to their renewal dates

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Global Outsourced Services Provider, VP Services

Need

• Monitor real-time Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for each client
• Deliver key satisfaction and operational metrics in real time to executives and account managers, so they can monitor and improve performance across all the touchpoints
• Drill down to comments when there is a downward trend in performance
• Gather feedback from clients’ customers for each touchpoint
• Track low scores to specific reps for purposes of training
• Deliver new understanding of customer intelligence to corporate clients

Solution

• Designed and implemented Transactional survey program that included telephone support, deskside support, network services, and escalation process
• Delivered dashboards with real-time feedback in the aggregate and per client to executives and staff, providing highly visible Alerts pinpointing the source of problems
• Delivered dashboards with real-time feedback to each client, showing overall satisfaction, satisfaction with key drivers, and individual comments from each of their customers on a monthly basis
• Installed Mini Desktop Dashboards on service agents’ desktops, allowing them to track their daily satisfaction metrics vs. goals and monitor monthly trends
• Incorporated sophisticated text analysis tool that analyzed content and sentiment of each comment per individual customer and customer segment

Results

• Through constant focus on customer feedback, were able to meet SLA terms and saw increase in satisfaction scores
• Created scorecards for negotiating terms of renewal
• Empowered service reps to monitor their own performance and take responsibility for actions as needed, leading to better employee morale and improved customer satisfaction
• Improved efficiencies of processes, leading to reduction in costs without sacrificing quality

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Telecommunications Company, General Manager

Need

• Ensure sales goals are met
• Focus the entire organization on the key measures of success and the actions needed to drive success
• Provide ability to drill down to region, product line, sale category (new sales, renewals), and sales rep to pinpoint problem areas
• Establish targets for each measure with visual highlighting where thresholds are not met

Solution

• Created strategic dashboards that focus on key drivers of success and how customers rated their experiences in those areas
• Created dashboards that show sales shortfalls by product line, region, and type of sale (new, renewal)
• Created dashboards that focus on key accounts, highlighting those that are vulnerable, and drilling down by customer segment, region, product line, and sales rep. Provided ability to give a quick picture of account status, including products maintenance contract, renewal date, number of open cases, number of recent contacts
• Delivered Mini Desktop Dashboards to Sales management, with revenue, shipments, and pipeline by customer segment on a daily basis
• Delivered Mini Desktop Dashboards to each account manager, showing activity of each of their accounts in terms of revenues, status of open proposals, status and types of open cases, and customer satisfaction scores

Results

• Increased sales revenues
• Reduced churn, significantly improving client retention rate
• Identified total business value of each region and took action in regional business units lagging behind their revenue targets
• Established new practices and improved sales process for account managers, based on continuous feedback from customers and analysis of top deal closers’ best practices
• Through analysis of pipeline, identified best sources of new opportunities and ensured they got the attention needed Helped users with root cause analysis through improved decision support tool

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