Alexsandra Alfonso, Senior Global Manager of Customer Experience Programs at Symantec, began her session by discussing the past 3 years of tracking Net Promoter at Symantec.  What was particularly interesting was the significant amount of change and transition that has happened in Symantec as a result of merger acquisitions, the largest of which was Veritas.  Alex compared and contrasted the before and after view of what this meant by revenue, acquisitions, employee portfolio, customer locations, and values.  Throughout these major transitions, Symantec was able to keep their core company values -- innovation, action, trust, and a customer driven philosophy -- intact.

Alex articulated Symantec's mission, which was to enable and empower individuals to create change in the business, to improve customer experience. I like this mission as it really brings together two key components in one mission statement, the employee and the customer.

Alex outlined the history of NPS at Symantec. She indicated that the primary concern early in 2005 was to establish a sound baseline, and from there, to look at key drivers and what impact these were having on the customer.

There were several program elements that Symantec focused on initially. One of these was a customer loyalty champion program. Employees from various business units who were passionate about customers were selected to participate. Their role evolved over time, but initially they focused on aligning products and process (not surprising given the amount of change through the merger process). Also, they focused on creating quarterly executive summaries of the results (these also transformed over time).  Finally, they realized that all employees needed to be aware of the individual role they played in customer loyalty.  Throughout this time, Alex mentioned that Symantec was more focused on operational issues and less focused on loyalty (meaning there were many competing priorities). They tended to operate from an internal point of view and perhaps lower executive involvement than they would have liked.

Today this has changed; Symantec has launched efforts around the "power of one, the power of the individual."

One of their biggest learnings from their early program was the importance of making individual business units accountable for the results.  Alex showed how their process has changed in terms of key improvement steps, which include insight, inform, action, and measure model. This happens in all areas of their complex key stakeholder relationships -- B2B, employee, B2C, and partner.

Symantec also realized that the customer loyalty champion was critical to making NPS success real.  The role has changed, though -- they are putting more structure, framework, and definition around the role, for ultimate success.  They've also reframed the executive summary process -- these now take place at the highest level and issues are really owned by the business.

Finally, employee awareness education has gone though huge change, by communicating through multiple mechanisms, including webcasts and online training, giving employees the power to make change and take action locally.  These awareness enhancements have enabled employees to participate in generating creative ideas to improve how Symantec operates.

Alex noted that now Symantec is focused more on business change and less on operational actions.  They rely on root cause analysis to really understand business change.

Their latest stage of improvement is now focused on named account surveys. This requires a very mature sales organization that has really bought in to the program. Symantec is using this feedback as part of an integrated account review process. Although there were some associated changes that had to be made, she said the benefits were huge.

Symantec has also implemented the Customer First Award. Employees are nominated quarterly, which helps drive attention around customer loyalty. I believe it is these grass root efforts that really motivate employees to focus on the customer.

NPS is now included as part of the executive compensation package at Symantec. Alex said that this action really helped solidify the belief that this was "serious." It made executives think that perhaps their staff was out of alignment with their goals, potentially pushing ownership of NPS downwards in the organization.

I thought one thing that was interesting was the clarity the company Chairman has on communicating what's important. There are 3 metrics -- NPS, market share, and ENPS (Employee Net Promoter Score).  The Chairman and COO recently delivered this message to all 5000 sales and marketing employees.

Some critical learnings from Alex:

1. It is vital that employees understand the impact they have on the customer. To do so, you must connect individual behavior to the impact on the customer.
2. The program must be owned by and driven from the top.
3. Make it actionable and make it positive; both of which are critical to NPS
4. Accountability and Reward; Compensation, if used appropriately, can help steer people in the right direction.
5. Communicate -- This is perhaps the most critical. Communication cannot just be internal, customers need to understand this as well.

I thought this was a great presentation that connected the dots between customer and employee behavior.  As well, it was an honest look at a very complex organization that has gone through dramatic changes and has managed to keep the focus. I'm looking forward to seeing Symantec's future progression on this journey.

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