When you can attribute a 20% revenue gain to a customer centric culture or program, you get noticed. And that’s exactly what happened to several Voice of the Customer thought leaders during the annual Allegiance Engage Summit 2011 in Deer Valley, Utah.
Jim Bampos, VP of Customer Quality at EMC Corporation, was one of the show stealers–and for good reason. Unlike many companies who talk a good game about putting customers first, EMC can prove it.
EMC dances on the leading edge of the Voice of the Customer (VoC) movement.
Click here to watch the 7 minute Jim Bampos EMC interview.
VoC programs emerged from the market research milieu. This term describes the in-depth process of capturing a customer’s expectations, preferences and aversions. Specifically, VoC systems produce a detailed set of customer wants and needs and prioritizes them in terms of relative importance and satisfaction with current alternatives. Highly evolved VOC program leaders also analyze and act upon free form customer comments from multiple sources, including call centers, salespeople, Twitter, etc.
VoC solution providers such as Allegiance, based in South Jordan, Utah, have flourished in response to the VoC movement. EMC became one of their early adopters out of necessity.
Although EMC was enjoying double digit growth, it was facing intense competition. They needed to think differently about the customer experience. Says Bampos, “We really did not understand the full customer life cycle from the time that they were made aware of our solutions to the end of life of our products. The professional services organization was the first to launch a pilot VOC program to bridge the gaps between the customers and the internal support organization.”
EMC’s VoC pilot program gained traction within two years. Since launching the VOC program, they have witnessed a 30 point Net Promoter Score improvement and over 20% revenue increase–representing hundreds of millions of top line revenue.
Other competitive industries are following suit. During her Summit keynote presentation, Bonny Simi of JetBlue also shared details about their Voice of the Customer program. “Our mission is to bring humanity back to travel. How can you know how you are doing without asking your customers?” Simi, an accomplished business strategist, Olympian and airline captain, described their palpable two year VOC journey. Simi and her team juggle 50,000 survey responses per month and 1.6 million Twitter followers. Gathering and analyzing customer data is a small piece of the VoC puzzle. She spends a great deal of time demonstrating the value and ROI of their program, as well as gaining sponsors across departments and locations.
Click here to watch the 5 minute Bonny Simi JetBlue interview.
The right survey tools can help smooth out the VoC journey, but should not precede solid branding, a customer-obsessed culture, and strong executive sponsorship. Bruce Temkin, founder of Temkin Group in Boston Massachusetts, emphasizes that companies need to master four customer experience competencies in order to become truly customer-centric: purposeful leadership, compelling brand Values, employee engagement, and customer connectedness. Temkin posits that “It turns out that companies are only as strong as their weakest link. VoC Programs are often an important tool in building the Customer Connectedness competency. We recently had more than 200 large companies complete our competency assessment and only 3% ended up at the highest level of customer experience management maturity, what we call a Customer-Centric Organization.”
After spending three days with over 300 VoC zealots, these statistics do not surprise me. The majority of companies attending the Engage Summit are still in the early stages of determining the ideal data collection and validation methods. VoC leaders still spend most of their time discussing the right listening posts, choosing the questions to ask, and debating ideal metrics to use.
Clearly, most B2B companies have a long way to go towards becoming truly customer-centric. Allegiance is clever enough to create an annual event that attracts fervent customer evangelists–half of whom are not yet their customers–to accelerate industry adoption.
If your company is considering a VoC program launch, beware of the rush to select a technology solution. First, invest the time in defining the purpose of your program. Executive support will take time. Tell people why you are embarking on the program, and how you will use the customer data once you have collected it. VoC programs typically provide these benefits:
- A detailed understanding of the customer’s requirements
- A common language for the sales, marketing and product development teams going forward
- Valuable, real time input to set appropriate design specifications for the new product or service
- A springboard for innovation.
VoC evangelists Bonny Simi and Jim Bampos have their work cut out for them. With only two years of VoC under their belts, the journey ahead will be met with some resistance. Let’s hope they focus their energies on the art of enchantment and influence, and leave the community building and tool making to market leaders such as Allegiance.
Lisa Nirell is the “Chief Energy Officer” of EnergizeGrowth® LLC. She advises B2B companies who aspire to create sustainable companies by attracting great customers. Companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Wells Fargo Advisors, and dozens of mid-market companies have worked with Lisa to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Visit www.energizegrowth.com and http://blog.energizegrowth.com to assess your company’s readiness to grow by downloading your complimentary Wealthy Company Scorecard.
Copyright 2010, Lisa Nirell. All rights reserved.
 Ask any decorated leader — military or business — what keeps them focused and energized. They will echo what retired U.S. General Joseph Hoar shared with me a decade ago: a daily commitment to quietly reflect and re-evaluate our course. As world citizens discuss and debate the proper way to respond to the successful capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, we face the same opportunity.
I sat next to Joe on a flight home to San Diego, California, a few months before the September 11, 2001 attacks forever changed and heightened my global views. What struck me about Joe was his calm reserve and thoughtful presence. We enjoyed discussing world politics, his career as former Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), and the good life in Southern California.
I asked Joe one question that elicited a response which will stay with me forever. When I asked him the secret to his decades of successful military service, he said, “I dedicate time every day to quietly reflect.” This week, Joe’s simple yet profound statement became even more relevant as responses to bin Laden’s death exploded across every media channel.
Over the past 27 years, I have witnessed many forms of military exercises in the business world. They certainly d o not compare in magnitude to the events witnessed this week. But the principles and lessons in the battle for market share still apply. In the business world, these “exercises” come in two flavors:
- Defeat your competition at all costs (meaning, sell products at a loss, plant traps for your competitors, spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about their viability, etc.)
- Spend as little time as possible focusing on the competition. Instead, create an entirely new playing field. This may appear by launching a game-changing product or service, developing an untapped market, or becoming obsessively effective at customer intimacy to the point where they would never dream of switching to your competitor.
It took me several days to reflect on this momentous week. My emotions vacillated from the levity of the Royal Wedding to the gravitas of the Abbottabad compound attack. After much turmoil and contemplative thought, I realized the opportunity ahead. Not just for me, but for all business owners and leaders.
This attack represents, to some degree, closure. We have defeated a major competitor. The costs are far too great to enumerate, even though some self-anointed economists and experts will try convincing you otherwise.
We have not obliterated the Taliban, but we have at least weakened their cause considerably. We are at a crossroads: As a nation, we can continue to fan the anti-terrorist flames, mindlessly expand our military complex, and feed the Homeland Security three headed dragon. Or we can channel our immense talent, resources, and passion towards education, innovation, and creating private sector jobs — the essence of what makes American business shine.
Think back at your most recent competitive or company-wide victory. Ask yourself these questions:
- What motivated us to succeed and win? Was it fear, pride, greed, or some other fleeting vice?
- What makes our company strong? How much have we strayed from those core values and strengths to get ahead or satisfy short term investor demands?
- How can we return to our core strengths and values again?
- How do our products and solutions make the world a better place? Where are we making the greatest difference?
- Where can we re-allocate resources from firefighting and competitive battling to innovation and customer focused endeavors?
- What can we commit to stop doing so that we can make white space on our calendars for these renewed efforts?
Joe Hoar contributed the earlier half of his life to fighting the bad guys in faraway places such as Yemen, Somalia, and the Persian Gulf. Since his retirement in 1994, this spry 77 year old spends his time advising global companies and staying physically active. Joe reminds me that it is never too late to re-invent yourself and leverage your natural gifts.
For the first time in ten years, I am hopeful that the era of mass fear and terrorist-driven paranoia is over. Let’s use this historical moment to re-direct our actions and resources towards purpose-driven growth planning, global understanding, and innovation.
[Photo courtesy of wikipedia.org]
[This post originally appeared in FastCompany.]
Copyright 2011, Lisa Nirell. All rights reserved.
Lisa Nirell is the Chief Energy Officer of EnergizeGrowth®. She helps companies grow customer mind share and market share. Since 1983, Lisa has worked with Trend Micro, Adobe, BMC Software, Microsoft, IBM, and hundreds of entrepreneurs in nine countries. Lisa is also an award-winning expert speaker, business columnist and the author of “EnergizeGrowth® NOW: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company.” To download your five complimentary educational bonuses and sample chapter, visit www.energizegrowth.com and register for EnergizeNews.
In my previous post, I shared the most common obstacles to implementing your business development and growth plans. Now that you have identified these saboteurs, and you have chosen to rally your most trusted advisors to keep you on track, how will you use their time wisely?
The EnergizeGrowth® Plan Review Process will help. I have led over 100 plan reviews in the past decade using this approach. Benefits far outweigh the time and effort you will invest. For example, teams have discovered vulnerabilities in their plans that they otherwise would have entirely missed. Within just a short time, the process gives you a holistic view of the company’s growth potential from the perspective of customers, adversaries, and senior management.
View and download the EnergizeGrowth® Plan Review Process by clicking here.
Business growth reviews take discipline–and they can also be highly rewarding. This process removes some of the fear and mystery. Let me know how yours progresses and post your comments here.
[Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net]
[This post originally appeared in FastCompany.]
Copyright 2011, Lisa Nirell. All rights reserved.
Lisa Nirell is the Chief Energy Officer of EnergizeGrowth®. She helps companies grow customer mind share and market share. Since 1983, Lisa has worked with Trend Micro, Zappos, BMC Software, Microsoft, IBM, and hundreds of entrepreneurs in nine countries. Lisa is also an award-winning expert speaker, business columnist and the author of “EnergizeGrowth® NOW: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company.” To download your five complimentary educational bonuses and sample chapter, visit www.energizegrowth.com and register for EnergizeNews.
As you approach the end of the first quarter of 2011, your growth plan and marketing activities are well underway. How will you keep them fresh and relevant?
Launching and implementing your growth plan entails risks. Plans often expose underlying conflicts within the organization. It may disrupt the status quo, the ways decisions are made, and strain the most established relationships among key players. How can you prevent current operating norms and B.S. (Belief Systems) from dictating, derailing, or delaying your growth plan?
The first step is to understand the main causes of plan derailment. Here are the most 9 common ones that I have observed over the past two decades:
- Lack of communication — The plan doesn’t get communicated to employees or allies who keep on working in the dark.
- Mired in the day-to-day — Managers consumed by daily operating problems lose sight of long-term goals. Today’s technical outage, employee resignation, or client emergency will happen. The question is: how well are you structured to delegate some of these emergencies to others who can handle them?
- Out of the ordinary – The plan is treated as something separate and removed from the management process.
- People perceive vision, mission and value statements as fluff. How did that limiting belief become part of your company culture?
- The plan is reviewed too infrequently to stay relevant. If you are relying on one annual retreat to review your plan, you might as well not have one. It has already become obsolete.
- Conducting business as usual after a live planning meeting. How often have you seen teams leave a
 planning session and quietly comment about “getting back to normal again?”
- Failing to make the tough choices. A solid, well thought out plan will reveal deficiencies in your team, your marketing plan, your funding, or your capacity. Are you ready to fill those gaps and relieve people who are a poor fit in the new organization? Or, do you tend to hope they will leave on their own accord? Will you need to meet with your banker and request a higher line of credit? These are challenges you must confront, not ignore.
- Lacking a scoreboard: Are you measuring what’s easy, or what is important?
- Neglecting to benchmark your company against the competition. Remember that your biggest competitors may include Inertia, Inc. and Not Invented Here.
You can overcome these common planning mishaps.
For best results, regularly share the strategic plan with other stakeholders like investors, customers, alliance partners, etc. An “open book” approach will likely generate more helpful ideas and suggestions about the future of your business.In our next post, I will show you a process to guide the reviews and turbo-charge your teams.
[Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net]
[This post originally appeared in FastCompany.]
Copyright 2011, Lisa Nirell. All rights reserved.
Lisa Nirell is the Chief Energy Officer of EnergizeGrowth®. She helps companies grow customer mind share and market share. Since 1983, Lisa has worked with Trend Micro, Zappos, BMC Software, Microsoft, IBM, and hundreds of entrepreneurs in nine countries. Lisa is also an award-winning expert speaker, business columnist and the author of “EnergizeGrowth® NOW: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company.” To download your five complimentary educational bonuses and sample chapter, visit www.energizegrowth.com and register for EnergizeNews.
Our last two posts, The Secret Life of Customer Advisory Boards, Part 1 and The Secret Life of Customer Advisory Boards, Part 2, showcased the definition and design of customer advisory boards. Let’s say you succeeded in these first two steps in your CAB strategy: Design and Recruitment. How can you keep the CAB vibrant for years to come?
Set the stage for success by creating a high-impact meeting framework and follow up strategy.
After interviewing over two dozen B2B companies who actively manage CABs, I discovered strategies they have in common that keep CAB programs vibrant:
1. Allocate ample meeting preparation time. Well-established CAB program leaders told me that it is not unusual for each executive sponsor to invest at least 15-20 hours per quarter in preparatory activity. Provide the agenda at least a week in advance to participants, and don’t be shy about requesting they complete homework in advance.
2. Select locations conducive to creative thinking and collaboration. Choose modestly upscale retreat settings over over-stimulating adult playgrounds. The managing partner of a management consulting firm based in Seattle recently chose Las Vegas for an upcoming advisory board meeting, and began to re-consider his choice of location.
3. Create a collaborative container at every meeting. Effective customer board meetings begin with a clear purpose and ground rules. Transplace, a supply chain technology firm based in Dallas, launches every meeting with the mission of “Providing a forum where Transplace customers can share ideas, discuss solutions and plan activities that achieve global supply chain excellence.” Marnie Ochs-Raleigh, CEO of Evolve Systems, says: “During the CAB, you should not complain about other clients, employees or competitors. Instead, focus on what is going well and what needs to improve. I also make a point while introducing each person to the group what the reason was they were chosen to participate and provide a 30 second commercial about their skill set and business. In all things, add value and credit where it is due.”
4. Balance structure with white space. Deb Bradley, Senior Vice President of Client Solutions at Verisk Health, adds “In the early meetings, we found that we were mainly the ‘talking heads’ and provided more of a status update. We found that by asking for topics ahead of time, assigning homework, and then scheduling dedicated time on the agenda for open discussion, we increased the value of the meetings. Also, as the client interaction grew, so did the communication outside of council meetings. Clients began using each other as support groups. Issues addressed between meetings were then shared with the group at the next session.”
5. Engage seasoned external CAB experts. According to Luc Vezina, VP of Product Management and Product Management at Kinaxis, “it really helps to have an outside facilitator. We feel uncomfortable telling a very loud customer to allow time for other members to contribute.” Luis Ramos, CEO of The Network Inc., suggests “A facilitator is seen as a neutral party. This encourages open participation and allows members to feel less pressure from the company concerning their responses.” Consider hiring companies such as The Geehan Group and Advisory Board Architects to minimize costly trial and error. Both companies have launched and managed over 100 advisory boards. (full disclosure: I have no financial ties to either firm).
6. Create positive forums for interaction. Ian Knox, VP of Worldwide Marketing for Daptiv, a privately held technology company based in Seattle Washington, suggests smaller lunch breakout groups and discussion topics. Daptiv also invites well-known industry analysts as guest speakers. Some B2B organizations have customers who are very comfortable with virtual meetings. Chris Pick, VP of Marketing for Apptio, designed the CAB to help CIOs run IT more like a business. Their audience feels comfortable using web-based collaboration tools.
7. Implement the best ideas. You want the CAB members to feel heard and valued–respond quickly to their recommendations, and implement the best ones. Every CAB host also shared meeting minutes immediately following the gatherings.
8. Maintain strong follow up systems. Betty Otter-Nickerson, President of Sage Healthcare in Tampa, Florida, recommends virtual web-based monthly meetings. Beware of becoming overzealous with technology. Depending on their learning orientation and preferences, your advisory board members may not prefer crowdsourcing tools and online forums over live face to face meetings.
9. Aim for transformation, not just conversation. The key to CAB longevity is engaging your members in different and deeper ways over time. If you are effective at adding more value to their business lives during each meeting, you will notice that they start helping you solve really tough issues. CAB members naturally begin to care as much or more about the individuals as they do the companies.
10. Conduct meaningful ROI analysis. Colin Gounden, the President and Chief Marketing Officer of Integreon, tracks the growth rate of customer advocate growth and innovation that is spawned by the group. John Fuller, Toro’s Product Manager for the Irrigation Golf Business Division, tracks both the number of individual product improvement submissions received and attainment of year to date product sales goals. By the end of Toro’s latest fiscal year, they exceeded product sales goal by twenty percent. Fuller says “we would have probably met these goals without the Council, but it would have taken significantly more time. Furthermore, our R&D costs would have been higher.” Huang Vuong, CEO of Unisfair, measures customer retention and renewals. Since they launched the Customer Advisory Board in 2009, this technology startup saw retention and renewals for their tier A accounts grow 20% year over year.
Doug Mow, Senior VP of Marketing from Virtusa, reminds us that assessing ROI extends far beyond the sponsoring company’s strategic objectives. “The real value to the participant is the opportunity to be heard.”
READER BONUS: Hear this exclusive interview with Chris Smith, Founder of Arryve Consulting, on launching and sustaining strong CABs.
www.energizegrowth.com/audio/Arryve_Chris_Smith.mp3
In this 33 minute audio, Smith shares the reasons why this 45 employee firm launched a CAB, and the powerful business results it has generated after just three years.
[Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net]
[This post originally appeared in FastCompany.]
Copyright 2011, Lisa Nirell. All rights reserved.
Lisa Nirell is the Chief Energy Officer of EnergizeGrowth®. She helps companies increase their wealth, improve their performance and attract great clients. Since 1983, Lisa has worked with Trend Micro, Zappos, BMC Software, Microsoft, IBM, and hundreds of entrepreneurs in nine countries. Lisa is also an award-winning expert speaker, business columnist and the author of “EnergizeGrowth® NOW: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company.” To download your five complimentary educational bonuses and sample chapter, visit www.energizegrowth.com and register for EnergizeNews.
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