David Henry, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer; Rory Dooley, General Manager, Control Devices; Glenn Rogers, Director of Customer Experience; Moderated by Fred Reichheld, Author, The Ultimate Question
Logitech closed the day and the conference with an excellent discussion of using NPS in product innovation.
CMO David Henry introduced the company and their customer experience approach to us. This is a company with strong (very strong) roots in both product development and interaction design. David summed it up for me when he said, “we are focused on the interaction between the technical platform on the one hand and the human being.”
They are using NPS as a key measure to understand how they are doing with us humans that use their products. And it seems to be working pretty well so far, 18 months into their journey.
They started by creating a new approach and organization within the company…putting together under one group the following functions: marketing, quality, customer support, and (a new one) customer experience. The common denominator is the customer, and NPS is the metric that helps them know how they are doing with each new product release.
As David described the Customer Experience (CX) vision, I jotted down a few words on a scribble sheet…
…attitude…promoters…love…share…long-term relationship
For a company focused on making great product, they certainly seem to know what emotions they want to engender from their product users. But how do they plan to get there?
One very practical, and meaningful, process change stood out. They have introduced a new step in their product development and release process, called “Gate X”. Gate X happens when the product is basically done, but not yet approved for mass production. And they couple Gate X with final consumer acceptance testing. They ask consumers for feedback using the recommend question and have threshold Net Promoter Scores as part of this signoff process.
What’s a good score in the Logitech world? They would like to see all products one day scoring in the range of 75% NPS. But the relative scores also tell them something. They showed for major product categories and explained that the products ranked #1 by NPS in each category were also #1 in revenue for each category.
David told the story of their first product that didn’t pass. It was a multi-million dollar delay to get it right, but the entire panel was in agreement that the additional investment was worth the delay. And, perhaps more important, it sent a signal to the organization that customer experience was truly important, and management was prepared to act on it in major decisions like this.
It was clear to me as we went through the discussion that customer feedback was not the only source of innovation. The company’s engineers and product teams also play a critical role. Rory Dooley, who runs the Control Devices group, elaborated on the importance of using the customer feedback to overcome strong, often differing, internal perspectives. That’s the best of both worlds from my perspective…leveraging your internal creativity and ingenuity, with the voice of the customer front and center to focus the discussion.
The good news is that most of their products pass Gate X and hit the mark with consumers. But I don’t think these guys are ready to rest on their laurels.
Footnote: I’d like to personally thank our audience member who requested free giveaways of Logitech products on the Oprah show. Feel free to write in to Oprah and suggest she have Logitech on the show to talk about their cool stuff and NPS. My personal vote goes for the illuminated keyboard (cool idea, I work late all the time!). While you’re at it, let’s ask Oprah if she uses Logitech webcams for her Skype interviews? Maybe the eBay folks in attendance (thank you eBay for your involvement!) can get us an in there!
That’s my final post for the conference. I learned more than ever this year, and want to thank Logitech and all the great speakers for being part of it.
