Martyn Christian, Director, Demand Programs Marketing & Communications, IBM UK & Ireland

Martyn began the presentation focused on FileNet, a company acquired by IBM in which he ran the customer loyalty program. Some of the challenges faced by FileNet was that customers were becoming increasingly concentrated – meaning this was a business based 75% on renewals, sales teams were hunters, not farmers, and likewise their enterprise solutions did not have good brand image and packaging.

Martyn discussed the types of survey processes they followed, but more importantly he also focused on the commitment of executives that really drove the program. While in the beginning their goals were specific to increased revenue and profitability, the NP became a critical business metric as well, showing over approximately a 4 year timeframe an improvement from -6 to +20%. For those of you tracking your own NPS, you realize this shift is hard to do without a great deal of focus.

Martyn attributes this great success in which they created a community of positively focused customers as a key differentiator and most likely made them an attractive acquisition target for IBM.

All was not rosey, however, Martyn also depicted some of the trials and tributions – a few of these:

• That people generally dissent at first
• That you have to actively engage the organization, not just hope that it happens,
• That you have to have a lot of patience.

While FileNet collected customer feedback through surveys, they also followed a multi-pronged strategy for customer experience improvement – including customer case studies, internal evangelism, creating a loyalty council, creating sales tools for distribution to prospects about their focus on the customer.

In addition, FileNet focused as well on making customer feedback part of the organizational scorecard, especially for organizations that did not seem as committed to the customer.

Some of the biggest wins, Martyn attributed to their program . . .

1. When you have high net promoters score and customers willing to talk for you, there are huge sideline benefits.  They were able to significantly increase the number of customers who would speak on your behalf.
2. They tied compensation for everyone to the program.
3. In terms of funding, the CFO owns the budget (now this one was really innovative!!).  Martyn wisely pointed out that having the CFO own budget meant that the budget was less likely to be cut and that the CFO looked carefully at ways that would enhance customer focused efforts that also had positive business impact.
4. Recognizing people internally for superior customer service

In transitioning from the FileNet story, Martyn spoke about IBM as a company that has acquired over 100 companies since 1995. Of course this can create dramatic confusion in terms of customer relationships.  One of the first moves in understanding the FileNet customer experience vs. the IBM customer experience was to understand the core overlapping customers. They found that 75% of FileNet customers were not in a relationship with IBM.

One of their strategies, therefore, was to introduce educational marketing documents referred to as CALM (customer acquisition loyalty marketing.)  With these documents, they could begin to communicate the values, expectations, etc. which opened the communication channels.  As a result, those customers that overlapped had an increase in their positive perception of the combined companies by 200%, while the neutral perceptions decreased by 400%.

The latter half of the presentation was a story of how a company that was acquired tries to get out in front of customer communications. The end result is that active dialogue can in fact create positive perception.  While some companies would use a wait and see strategy, clearly FileNet and IBM did not fall into this camp.

Marc Anné, Vice President, Customer Insight & Advocacy, Orange Business Services

While some of you may now Orange as one of the 50 most recognized brands in the world, perhaps you didn’t know the breadth and depth of Orange Business Services (OBS).

Marc began the presentation highlighting the complexity of Orange Business Services (global telecommunication services) serving over 3750 multinational companies around the globe.

Starting in 2006, one of the benefits that OBS has was a CEO who was a great visionary, who also believed that outstanding customer experience should be central to everything they did. As well, Marc highlighted that they focused on other core cornerstones such as profitable growth, people development and competitive advantage.

One are that Marc noted that OBS performed extremely well at was its agility in times of change. He noted as a telecommunications company, change was something they expected which had made them an extremely flexible organization. This undoubtedly makes Orange a nimble organization for any time and place.

Marc then detailed their customer journey. When they started, he said they did not have a deep understanding of the customer experience. This was in part due to the mergers, which lost some of the “heart of the customer”. This phenomenon does not seem unique to OBS as organizations sometimes lose sight the customer at this very crucial time. In addition, due to the complexity of the relationships with the customers, there was a lack of understanding of who owned the customer relationship -- they had silos of ownership. He also noted that there was a lack of executive ownership at the time, and there were more spectators than doers. As well, there was little link between the customer data and core operations of the business.

So why change? One of the reasons was that they saw a clear difference in revenue growth between loyal vs. non loyal accounts so they realized that customer intimacy was critical to their growth strategy. So they launched a program called “Outstanding Customer Experience” as a transformational program for the business, not a quick fix.

Some of the core tenets of the program were that it helped them improve weak areas, yet also build on their strengths. In addition, it was a pragmatic prioritization – allowing them to focus their actions on areas that were customer priorities.

Marc also outlined two areas that the customer feedback was used for:

1. To focus at the individual customer level – addressing very specific customer issues – by business unit managers, end users etc. This focus was therefore at the account level. He noted that now more than ever in the recession, customers want reassurance and security. Therefore, it was very important to integrate the feedback into the account management rhythm and review process. In addition, OBS monitors this closed loop process very closely, making sure that the service improvement plans get the right people involved. Marc also mentioned the importance of understanding and measuring feedback from various account relationships – decision maker, end user etc – how important it was to get a “representative voice”. OBS also launched a series of initiatives around customer teaming – meaning how a global team can better serve the customer. They found by training employees on these skills, they were able to therefore have better focus on the customer, and hence improved loyalty compared to those teams that had not received this training.
2. A second area OBS is working on is improving overall end to end customer experience. In this area they are taking a broader view incorporating industry analysts, customer boards, as well as loyalty surveys. Through this focus they are making process improvements that will become part of the “natural life” of the company. By increasing efficiency, Marc emphasized that this allowed service managers more time to spend with the customer, which had an impact on customer intimacy.

Finally, Marc also showed some industry benchmarking noting that they are very good against the competition but are part of a “bad industry.” Therefore their comparison should be against ICT providers like IBM, HP, etc.

In summing up, Marc said that the key to an outstanding customer experience requires the following:

• Long term vision
• A structured approach
• Operational buy-in and focus
• Clear communication to employees to help mobilize them
• A focus on continued improvement

In terms of key takeaways, I think OBS has been able to be very focused on their customer intimacy strategy, despite complicated B2B relationships, mergers, economic changes. The story is a great one for all B2B businesses.