Stefan Osthaus,  Vice President Worldwide Customer Support, Symantec

Stefan Osthaus presented a compelling story about NPS for product innovation that I wish all product engineers could hear. Perhaps Symantec has found a new breed of engineer that realizes customer driven innovation is a way to differentiate your company from others.

Stefan began the presentation painting the dire picture of the product – Norton Antivirus. The problem was the product had several severe issues.

In June 2006 Symantec found that their product in fact had very low loyalty scores. They also saw a direct connection between loyalty and the number of prizes they had won for their product. Their story was one of irate customers, 18% intallation rate failures, high call-ins to customer support and a product they knew they had to overhaul to make it something that customers would tell their friends about.

From 2006 to 2007 they began the journey to address installed program failure. For those of you in the software industry, you realize how many interconnecting parts there are to make software really work. At first, Symantec focused on the installed failure rate, but even with this focus it only dropped to 10% failure. More importantly they still had negative impact on support centers, and their NPS was also not improving dramatically. They realized, probably through much self-examination, that this meant they would have to rebuild the product and focus on multiple dimensions, not just installation.

Their turnaround approach is a lesson in cultural transformation for their product team. Like all good motivational goals, Symantec also articulated one for their engineers:

Internal rallying cry was--

1 by 10 by 100 . . . which means

Install in less than 1 minute

Boot time less than 10 seconds

Less than 100 MB

Interestingly, many leaders in the company (particularly in engineering) said it was an unrealistic expectation – Stefan noted that those employees not behind the initiative left the company. Stefan also proceeded to go through the 5 core innovation areas they tackled to bring the leading edge.

Needless to say, this is a happy ending in which Symantec was able to have a turnaround product story. Installed failure rate is now 0.5% and their NPS has gone up dramatically in the past 4 quarters.

Perhaps very important from a financial perspective, customer service inquiries have also gone down from 10 to 2 percent. In a dramatic shift for the company, they are now able to make tech support free of charge.

Interestingly, Stefan finished the presentation understanding that product and support are only 2 but 2 very critical touchpoints. They now need to focus on the total customer experience – the end-to-end journey. Their aspiration is to be like Apple or Google in terms of their customer attitude -- to achieve a dramatically different level of engagement with their customers.

While not disparaging the former two companies, I believe Symantec is well on its way to achieve that vision.