High-tech focus on customer loyalty
Sure, when you're the only game in town, customer service and the experience don't matter much. But how many companies are the only game in town anymore? Even B2B companies need to work on customer loyalty, as tech company EMC recently discovered.
In today's issue of 1to1 Weekly, EMC shares details of its "Total Customer Experience" program. Basically, the company forced everyone -- even engineers and other employees normally locked away in R&D -- to think of customers, and be responsible for resolving customer issues. The company found that money talks.
It altered its compensation structure, tying a quarterly bonus to a 10 percent increase in system availability from quarter to quarter. It's the percentage of time that the systems are working properly for customers. EMC judges everyone on this one to spur anyone in the customer-service chain to address problems as soon as they happen. Since almost every employee has a role in keeping systems available, it made sense to measure that metric as part of the TCE program.The first few quarters, the company met its goals. The fourth saw only a 9.7 percent increase, which EMC didn't round up, meaning that nobody got paid. From that moment onward, the few people who weren't taking TCE seriously started doing so.
EMC found that a culture shift toward one of customer loyalty had bottom-line impact and long-term customers. What are you doing at your company to improve customer loyalty? And if you're a B2B, how is the internal effort going?
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