How Oracle translates customer insight into revenue

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Christopher Brown| Leave a comment

Jeremy Whyte, director of customer feedback and reporting at Oracle, recently wrote about details of Oracle’s extensive “Voice of the Customer” research program.

“Oracle’s 300,000 customers provide a voice into how we deliver our products and services. Through collaboration with customer care and services teams across all lines of businesses, Oracle identifies customer needs and uncovers the root causes of customer issues across geographies and industries.”

At the core of Oracle’s approach is a closed loop feedback system that allows them to capture the data, prioritize, action and communicate it and then track the impact of improvement programs. It sounds simple however, most companies stop after the capture phase.

Making the data actionable

Oracle publishes the feedback via role-based dashboards to tens of thousands of employees. All of this drives a closed-loop process that results in constantly improving operational efficiency.

Connecting satisfaction and revenue

We know through our research on companies that there is a direct link between this behavior in organizations and superior performance and Oracle’s results bare this out.

This fundamental market-driven behavior is how Oracle has fueled its consistent increases in customer satisfaction year after year. This growth in overall satisfaction across Oracle’s expanding customer base has resulted in staggering top line growth from less than $14 billion in 2005 to more than $27 billion in 2010.

Oracle has grown aggressively via acquisition, with more than 50 acquisitions since 2005. Yet its culture and process is so strong these companies are absorbed without losing sight of its customer focus. In fact in a related article on the topic, Vocici’s  founder Jeffrey Henning made the point that customer satisfaction is higher for the customers of acquired companies post-acquisition than it was pre-acquisition.

What is your customer insight strategy? Do you close the loop on customer feedback?

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Customer Experience, Customer Insight, Customer Satisfaction, Voice of the Customer

Tagged

Zappos knows how to throw a party

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Christopher Brown| Leave a comment
Chris Brown and Tony Hsieh at the Zappos Party

Chris Brown and Tony Hsieh at the Zappos Party

I had the good fortune of attending the Zappos Vendor party last week in Vegas. It was a lot of fun and I met a lot of the Zappos staff and Zappos Insights customers, plus had the chance to talk with Tony Hsieh the CEO.

Tony was about to embark on an extended book tour to spread the word about connecting delighting customers, happiness and profits in business.

From speaking with many of the Zappos staff it is clear it really is a fun place to work, everyone I spoke with had great things to say and a number felt like it was the job and company they had been waiting to get for their whole lives!

So what is really different about Zappos?

Clearly it is their culture, it is a culture that has been crafted and developed carefully overtime but it is not about Tony Hsieh. Yes as CEO he has significant influence and respect but the culture has been developed and owned by all of the staff that work there. It is not a culture that is imposed but guided by core values that provide direction to policies, processes and how the organization treats people. It is maintained by the energy of the people that work there plus rigorous hiring processes that ensure that new people are a cultural fit and reinforce what Zappos represents.

Zappos has developed a “Wow” culture that inspires employees, delights customers & rewards shareholders….. which happens to be the vision of our company….

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Customer-Centricity, Employee Engagement, Market Culture in Action, market culture

Tagged

Driving increased customer focus using “Conditions of Satisfaction”

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Christopher Brown| Leave a comment

Last week we had our first webinar in the Market-Driven Leadership series and I was honored to host Jeffrey Hayzlett the former Chief Marketing Officer of Eastman Kodak.

One of the topics raised from his new book, “The Mirror Test” was the idea of “Conditions of Satisfaction”. The idea is to drive change and improvements in organizational performance by establishing the critical elements a company must deliver on to satisfy customers. Once these are established they can be used to rally people around delivering.

Jeff shared his experience during a recent McDonalds drive through where he was asked to wait to the side for his order. This action was a clear break in the McDonalds conditions of satisfaction. Many customers go to McDonalds because they are busy, they need fast service and want to get their food and get on their way. Every time McDonalds fails this test they fail to deliver on their conditions of satisfaction…

It is a nice model for thinking about how as marketers we can rally the organization around its purpose and really deliver on it.

If you are interested in seeing the full recorded webinar click here.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in CMOs, Customer Insight, Customer Satisfaction, Customer-Centricity, Market Culture in Action, Value Propositions

Tagged

New Customer Experience Research

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Christopher Brown| Leave a comment

Bruce Temkin, formerly of Forrester just released a new report on customer experience in large North American corporations. Some of the highlights are below:

Only 16% think they always or almost always delight customers getting customer service online.
95% want to improve profitability, but only 43% want to improve the work environment for employees.
37% have had a customer experience leader for at least 12 months

The biggest obstacle to improving customer experience is “other competing priorities.”
57% have a formalized voice of the customer (VoC) program
45% that have a formalized VoC program tie compensation to customer feedback scores
32% have been using Net Promoter Score (NPS) for at least 12 months; 19% are not familiar with NPS
31% analyze conversations in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter

The customer experience competency assessment showed a wide range of results across the 20 questions:

Highest scoring: Senior executives regularly communicate that customer experience is one of the company’s key strategies
Lowest scoring: Marketing does as much brand marketing inside the company as it does outside the company

Here are the number of companies that were rated as “very good” in each of the four individual competency areas in the Temkin Group competency model:
Purposeful Leadership (16%)
Customer Connectedness (16%)
Compelling Brand Values (13%)
Employee Engagement (10%)

Clearly there is a long way to go for these companies. However, the recognition that customer experience ultimately drives business performance and can create competitive advantage is gaining momentum. The competencies Bruce outlines closely relate to the areas we measure in our culture model. For companies to be successful in delivering a great customer experience they have to change the behavior and mindset across the entire organization. Everyone must buy-in and understand exactly what they can do to execute in a way that has an impact.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Customer Experience, Customer-Centricity, Uncategorized

Tagged

5 Questions you must ask to determine your company’s level of customer focus

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Christopher Brown| Leave a comment

I came across a great article today from the team at MIT Sloan Review questioning whether organizations are really customer focused.

As we know from our work many companies are delusional when it comes the real level of emphasis they place on customers. They often overestimate their level of customer focus and underestimate their competitors. Hence the reason we built an objective tool to provide a framework for this issue.

The article outlines 5 questions, I have summarized them here:

“No. 1: Can your middle managers accurately describe your customer promise?

No. 2: Can all the members of your senior executive team name the three things that most undermine trust among your existing customers?

No. 3: Is your brand really the best option for customers? Will it continue to be next month and next year?

No. 4: Have you embraced any novel ideas that have produced significant innovations beyond the familiar during the past year?

No. 5: Have front-line staffers posed any uncomfortable questions or suggested any important improvements to your offering during the last three months?”

These questions provide a good starting place to begin the discussion but to do something about these issues it is critical to have a framework that allows everyone in the organization to buy into the changes that must be made.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Customer Satisfaction, Customer-Centricity

Tagged , ,

How Zappos uses customer insight to drive better customer experience

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Christopher Brown| Leave a comment


I recently had the opportunity to ask the team at Zappos about their use of customer insights. Zappos has created the ultimate customer focused culture, they are passionate about their customers and always find new ways to create value. Below you will find the question I posed and two answers from Zappos’ers…….

“Given Zappos’s intense focus on customers and customer satisfaction, can you share some of the interesting or surprising customer insights you have gained over the years and how they have helped you improve the business?”

Shannon Roy:
“Customers love to be surprised with a WOW when they least suspect it.
This is particularly true if they called with a cantankerous attitude!
If you are able to quickly solve their issue, with a minimum of effort on their part, they are flabbergasted and very appreciative!
If you solve the issue, no matter what it might be, that alone can surprise them.
We do whatever it takes to get to YES”

Scott Klein:
“The biggest customer insights we’ve gained are by simply listening to our customers and acting on the feedback…
There are thousands of emails and calls that we’ve received over the years from customers sharing great suggestions, so we have taken this feedback and implemented many ideas. For example, our customers wanted an improved Zappos.com website with a more user friendly search option, thus an enhanced Zappos.com site was recently born. Customers asked for a Store Credit feature, instead of being refunded on their credit card, so we created a Store Credit process. Consumers in general wanted a higher level of service, so we committed ourselves to being a world class service company, providing a Personal Emotional Connection on every customer interaction.

We consider our internal employees customers as well, so we’ve implements many of their ideas. For example, with Zappos CLT Inc, we’ve added  a work from home program, updated call review process, and a different way to look at our attendance practices. All of these changes help to insure the happiness of our internal customers, which leads to super “Wow” when taking care of our external customers. BTW, the “Wow” is sort of like “The Force,” it’s what gives a Zappos’er their power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, and penetrates us. It binds the customer experience together.  :) “

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Customer Experience, Customer Insight, Customer Satisfaction

Tagged

BP’s corporate culture?

Posted on June 15, 2010 by Christopher Brown| 1 Comment

With the dramatic events of the past few weeks unfolding in the gulf of Mexico as a result of the oil spill I have been reflecting on BP and their response to this crisis. BP in recent years has been aggressively looking for new ways to grow, despite top line growth their bottom line over the past 5 years has been relatively flat. There have been some arguments that BP’s focus on cutting expenses may have lead to lapses in safety.

What ever the case what is important now is how BP responds and the message that sends to its customers. Certainly the media coverage to date has been highly critical and negative of BP and in particular BP’s CEO’s response. Judging by their actions this is probably with good reason.

Although they have a tight rope to walk between investors, customers and the community they operate in surely their priority must be to make the best of the worst possible scenario they now face.

The oil spill has devastated many thousands of people’s lives and BP have been slow to grasp the implications of the extent of the issue.

Let’s take a look at their actions so far and what a company with a strong market culture would have done instead:

1. They have consistently under estimated the size of the leak and been slow to provide information to constituents.

- A company with a strong market culture is transparent, admits the truth about problems and focuses its energy on getting them resolved ASAP.

2. The have invested heavily in gaining the top spot on google searches for the word’s oil spill, presumably in order to try and control the media story.

- A company with a strong market culture realizes it cannot control the media or customers, it controls only the actions it can take to resolve issues

3. They have been slow to pay compensation to fisherman and business directly impacted.

- This is obviously a complex issue, however, the way BP has responded has lacked the urgency necessary to send a message that the company really cares about those that have been impacted. Companies with a strong market culture quickly grasp the issues and get on the front foot in resolving them.

4. The US CEO of BP has not been to the oil spill area (50 days after the incident began).

- Another clear statement that the issue is not important enough to warrant his time seeing first hand what the impact has been. Great market culture leaders quickly get a grip on the issues facing customers and take action

Actions of any company ultimately reflect the culture of that organization. Do you think BP has responded appropriately so far?

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Market Culture Inaction, Uncategorized

Tagged

To improve customer experience take a look inside your corporate culture

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Christopher Brown| Leave a comment

A Customer Experience Culture

There is a increasing recognition of the fact that a customer’s experience with your company plays a significant role in customer satisfaction, retention and profitability.

So where do you start with a customer experience initiative?

In our experience the best place to start is by defining a vision and goal for a customer experience initiative that inspires people to want to get involved. This creates a reason for change, a compelling vision of the new customer experience that will be created and delivered by the company over time.

While customer experience is a process that can be mapped, refined and improved over time what is important in the beginning is to capture the hearts and minds of the people that are going to have to deliver the new experience. Why should they do things differently, how will changes in their behavior benefit them?

A good place to start an initiative is to gain a sense of the organization’s current culture as it relates to customer experience. Is the company’s culture already customer focused? Meaning there will be less resistance to changes that will clearly benefit customers. Or is the culture an internally focused one that sees the customer as a necessary evil?

The Market Responsiveness Index and the Customer Responsiveness Index are two tools we use to gain a sense of where the culture lies against a benchmark. This provides a great rallying point for company’s to self diagnose just how big a journey they need to undertake.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Customer Experience, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Value, Customer-Centricity, Employee Engagement, Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

The surprising truth about what motivates us..

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Christopher Brown| Leave a comment

One of the team recently shared a really great presentation about what really motivates us. The talk, by Dan Pink explores the real drivers of motivation for knowledge workers, that is, people in roles that require them to think critically and creatively about how to get things done.

He gives a number of examples from research. One surprising conclusion is that financial rewards work well for “mechanical tasks” but not for tasks that require more than “rudimentary” thinking. In fact when rewards were provided for more complex tasks, teams provided with the largest reward to succeed performed worse than those with little incentive!

It sounds counter intuitive but in my experience it really does rings true.

If we think about organizations that are really successful, they are not focused on massive financial rewards, they are focused on providing something that is really valuable for their customers. In fact many of today’s really successful firms are still trying to work out their business models, think Facebook and twitter…. they are still only focused on delivering value for customers.

Dan identified three factors were found to drive individual performance:

  1. Automony/Self Direction – the ability to choose how you spend your time
  2. Mastery – the satisfaction that comes with mastering a skill, developing an expertise
  3. Purpose – understanding the broader purpose and how your work contributes to that purpose.

There are parallels with our research into organizational culture. We have found 7 core behaviors that drive business performance and separate average firms from really great organizations.

I can relate them to Dan’s model for individual motivational drivers as follows:

  1. Autonomy is really about empowerment in an organizational culture setting
  2. Mastery – this is really about getting better, getting better requires feedback and insight. In our case getting better is faciliated by gaining customer, competitor and business environment insights
  3. Purpose – again in an organizational setting this is about vision, why do we exist and what do we want to be when we grow up as an organization? This is the factor we call strategic alignment.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Collaboration, Customer Insight, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Value, Customer-Centricity, Peripheral Vision, Strategic Alignment, Uncategorized

Tagged

How Milky Way used customer insight to profit

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Christopher Brown| Leave a comment

We recently put together our first newsletter with a focus on the importance of the customer insight dimension in our market culture model. It brought back some great examples of how really customer focused companies can use insights to create more value for customers and the profits that follow.

During the 1990s in Australia the candy bar market began declining.  Most producers reacted by increasing their candy bar size and lowered their prices. They thought customers wanted more for less and acted accordingly.

Milky Way’s Customer Insight

In the case of Milky Way bars they decided to dig a little deeper. They found that most candy bar consumption was by 8-10 year-olds at about 4.00pm in the afternoon when with a parent shopping.  Parents resisted buying it for their kids because they would not want to eat their meal at night as a result.

Taking Insight to Action

So, the company reduced the size of the bar, kept the price the same, repositioned it as a snack “that will not fill you up” and they sold an extra 10 million bars.

That’s how and why deeper insight leads to profit….

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Customer Insight, Customer Satisfaction, Marketing ROI, Uncategorized

Tagged , ,