Olivier Mourrieras – Customer Insight & Advocacy
Building a customer loyalty program is about business transformation. Building the right strategy, access to resources and obtaining buy-in from across the organization are just a few of the many challenges that most executives and program managers face when building out (or expanding) a customer loyalty program. This afternoon Olivier Mourrieras of Orange Business Services shared with us their journey to build stronger relationships within their strategic top accounts.
Orange Business Services is a leading global telecommunications provider. Orange employs over 30,000 within their B2B segment and service over 6,000,000 business customers. Over 90% of OBS’ annual revenues come from approximately 300 strategic accounts.
While Orange has had a customer loyalty program in place for 6 years, the first couple of years with the program were not without their challenges. Some of the initial challenges highlighted by Olivier included:
- No understanding or insight into the end-to-end customer lifecycle
- A fragmented and siloed business organization
- Fragmented and siloed approach
- Limited employee mobilization
- More “spectators” than “doers”
- Lack of executive sponsorship and leadership around the customer experience
Through Orange’s partnership with Satmetrix, they have embarked on a journey which has taken over four years to implement but has reaped considerable benefit to not only Orange customers, but to Orange’s bottom line. By using principles of the Net Promoter Operating Model (NPS model), Orange had developed a transformation program which consisted of the following themes:
- Development of a transformational program which has taken advantage of Orange’s global business strengths while improving upon weak areas that have had a negative impact on customer loyalty
- Development of a customer centric approach based on a variety of satisfaction feedback surveys and other listening posts including customer loyalty boards and user groups.
- Pragmatic prioritization which drives actions prioritized on root causes and loyalty drivers
- The tying of customer loyalty results to variable compensation. CLI accounts for 20% of all variable compensation!
In order to align the right level of support to spearhead these themes, Orange needed to obtain proper executive sponsorship. With the proper positioning and diligence, the program team was successfully able to enlist the support of their CEO. Having this level of advocacy has been critically instrumental in the adoption and growth of the Orange program. Since Orange’s core program team consists of only 5 full time individuals, a “top-down” strategy was necessary to ensure success.
As the program has taken root and built critical mass, Orange has integrated the Net Promoter Operating model within their sales and account management organization through the development of the following key initiatives:
1. (One to One) - Development of an integrative closed loop process which includes individual customer service improvement plans to be established and reviewed periodically. This process includes an initial internal review meeting, development of individual action plans and an account team meeting with the customer to review feedback results and agree to a documented action plan.
2. (One to Many) – Use of feedback in aggregate to analyze the varying needs across Orange’s broad base of customer segments. Given the diversity across Orange’s business, this process mitigates from “one size fits most” approaches to improving customer experiences. After all, not every customer or customer segment can be treated identically.
3. Development of a Customer Management Model (CMM) based on key components of the Net Promoter Operating Model. This included the establishment of:
- A clear governance and communication structure
- Clearly defined and documented escalation paths along with effective coordination to manage the Orange/Client relationship
- To ensure trustworthy data and to mitigate against gaming, requiring the Customer’s validation of the survey sample. This process required that all survey contacts must be validated by the most senior customer interface so that optimal penetration has occurred.
So now that Orange has spent 4+ years and considerable effort in rebuilding and strengthening their program, what’s the ROI? The ultimate test was the development of a close linkage and positive correlation between sales pipeline and CLI trends within their top 200 strategic accounts. Through this study, Orange has identified a 6-month lag between CLI and pipeline revenue growth. In one particular customer account the CMM process identified service management issues, dissatisfaction with delivery expectations and a lack of a strategic approach. This insight was instrumental in developing an action plan with the client which consisted of quarterly strategic reviews and more proactive expectations setting. CLI scores with this client improved from 6.5 to 8.5 in one year while pipeline revenues increase 300% in this same period. From 1H09 to 2H09 Orange also saw 42% total revenue growth with this client. Now that’s putting money where your mouth is!
