How to Manage Customer Experience

Music

>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Hi my name is Gerhard Gschwandtner and welcome to Selling Power's daily report. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Steve Daines Vice President of Customer Delivery. Steve Welcome.

>> Steve Daines: Thanks Gerhard.

>>

Gerhard: Can you explain the title Customer Delivery.

>>

Steve: We think about deliveries about delivering for our customers and delivery really encompasses the multiple touch points that we have with a customer.

>>

Gerhard: How do you structure and manage a customer experience?

>>

Steve: Implementation and customer care is an ongoing process not a onetime event and I think where companies have failed their customers is when they view implementation as being something that happens for the first 90 days or 180 days and then they leave. We've found it's a very, very dynamic environment and it's important for us to stay very close to our customers through the life cycle of the experience and so we really believe in more the proactive care approach.

>>

Gerhard: So in most young companies there's a design phase, an implementation phase, a training phase and then the companies leave and you're staying.

>>

Steve: That last phase when the companies leave the customers are voicing loud and clear that we don't want you to leave. The greatest learning's occur after the implementation is over and the results start to come in.

>>

Gerhard: Who bears the responsibility for the success of the implementation? Is it the customer or the vendor?

Steve: We view that success is our responsibility delivered for our customers and if we are not demonstrating the value to our customers they can chose to go somewhere else and so I think that instills the right kind of accountability to the vendor, to us, to our customers, to ensure we're living the results.

>>

Gerhard: So how do you know whether the customer is utilizing your software as intended to the full capacity with high user adoption?

>>

Steve: A few years ago the light bulbs came on for us. We realized as a software as a service provider that we had great information and insight into how the customers are using the solution step because we host them and so we started digging under the covers and started seeing that we could we developed some algorithms in terms of predicting customer success in terms of how they're using solution set. So consequently we get real time, dynamic updates everyday about the way the customers are using the solution and the results they're achieving.

>>

Gerhard: So you're in effect have a dashboard on the effectiveness of your customer application.

>>

Steve: Would literally score everyone of my customers 0 to100, we call this our customer success index and we score that and we can ensure that customer, just like you get a report card from a university we get a report card and our customers see that and they have access to it and we look at it and we work together to keep driving the numbers up.

Gerhard: And see I am there's a phase where sales people begin to sort of resist the adoption. How do you help customers to get over that hump so they have 100% user adoption?

>>

Steve: Number 1 is ensuring that we are configuring it's something very intuitive user interfaces. I think the second thing too when it's time for inaudible reviews and fore catch reviews plug the essay into the in focus machine, put it on the wall.

>>

Gerhard: So make it fun to use and have management practice what they preach.

>>

Steve: Easy to use and management has got to be leading by example.

>>

Gerhard: What are some of the red flags that you see popping up when customers run into adoption problems?

>>

Steve: You can see exactly what's going on in terms of activity in the system and that's usually a pretty good proxy. Are people in the solution and using it? The second thing we look at too is inaudible practice scores is we tune up customers and we score them. We can see if their score is you know small, medium or large and I think 3rd is the engagement, the human integration with our customers. Are the customers coming to round table events? Are they coming to user conferences? Are they actively working with us here on the relationship side of CRM which is there's a human component there that we believe is also important.

>>

Gerhard: What's the number 1 secret of all the tools that you have at your disposal for truly engaging a customer?

>>

Steve: The number 1 success criteria in my view is the people. You've got to have passionate people who are competent and that at the end of the day is one of the primary drivers and then use technology as the enabler there for customer success.

>>

Gerhard: Thank you Steve for sharing all this information on how RightNow Technologies takes care of the customer experience. Tune in tomorrow J. Rising, President of RightNow Technology will share with us the global strategy that brings right now to the top of all inaudible providers.

Music

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====