How To Win The Customer Experience Challenge with Teams & Technology

Carolyn Muise

“Three-quarters of companies want to improve their customer experience (CX) in 2015”. This is what Forrester Research shares based on its recent US Customer Experience Index, Q1 2015 report.

So, clearly companies care about CX. But how do you continue to win with customers if the bar keeps moving higher and higher?

Well, I believe companies who truly prioritize customer experience will focus on two key areas—teams and technology.

TEAMS

Creating meaningful customer experiences require a corporate culture that puts customers at the heart of every decision. And to make these decisions quickly and holistically requires great teams—teams who are willing to break across organizational silos to exchange information and ideas to help customers succeed. The best teams will always ask what is in the best interest of the customer and then only proceed to act.

Just a few weeks ago at EMC World (our premier customer event), I witnessed the relentless passion of EMC teams to rally around the customer, including:

• The use of EMC’s robust online community to drive awareness of key customer service capabilities that help customers prevent and resolve issues and advancements in predictive analytics to reduce customer “survey fatigue” through the first-ever dual gamification mission sponsored by EMC’s Global Services and Total Customer Experience teams.
• How EMC’s product engineering, Total Customer Experience and User Experience teams work closely together to identify customer pain points in the product experience and solicit feedback to drive new features and functionality in one of the company’s largest product lines (VMAX) used by some of the world’s most prominent companies.

Speaking with Director of Engineering Christopher Grondin at EMC World

• And the most important lesson on teams may have been the need to expand what the definition of “team” really means. Teams are not just the internal people working in a given company. For many organizations, especially those in the B-to-B space, it is our global partners that play a critical role in defining the customer experience. A special opportunity to connect with Raphael Meyerowitz from EMC partner, Presidio, underscored the significance of the extended partner team.  Raphael explained to me why Presidio is so proud to continue their partnership with EMC. He told us that in the 12 years that he has worked with EMC the product and solution offerings have changed dramatically but through all the changes EMC stays committed to the customer experience.  He also emphasized the importance of transparency y in our shared relationship and CX commitment in his latest blog.

Director of EMC Customer Advocacy Jenny Beazley shows Presidio AVP Raphael Meyerowitz the Experience Analytics Bridge at EMC World

TECHNOLOGY

Equally important to an enduring customer experience is innovative and robust technology. This includes the adoption of mobile capabilities, advanced analytics and user-friendly tools that allow both customers and employees to collect, access and share and relevant information.

At EMC, our CX approach has always centered on technology, however we have been pushing ourselves to think more creatively about how we employ it to help our customers and teams:

• Walker Information representative Shawn Hochstetler interviews EMC customers to capture insights in the new Voice Insight Action (VIA) tool

  As Walker, one of EMC’s CX vendors, shares in this blog, the Voice Insight Action tool represents a new wave of customer feedback through a mobile application. Our pilot initiative at EMC World suggests high potential for this tool, with 250 customers actively sharing their perspectives on multiple facets of the EMC experience. The real opportunity with this tool will come as we identify common trends and close the loop with individual customers based on their feedback.

Director of Total Customer Experience – Analytics and Reporting, Shawn Murphy shows customers how EMC is leveraging customer data through the End to End Dashboard.

• Another interesting opportunity resides with our ability to gain a true 360-degree of a given customer and use multiple data sources to identify risks, strengths and competitive benchmarks for that account. We had tremendous feedback from customers at EMC World when we walked through our End-to-End Account Dashboard (hosted on Tableau visualization software). Customers were excited to see how EMC teams are working together to understand their unique environment and needs. Analysts also commented on the quality of EMC’s analytics capabilities:“EMC…actually holds several patents in using analytics to analyze customers. It knows which are the most loyal, which are in sales cycles, and which prospects are most likely to want to buy an EMC solution. This gives its sales force a huge competitive advantage and allows the company to improve its NPS (Net Promoter Score) year over year. The organization inside of EMC that does this is called Total Customer Experience (TCE) and while it has peers in other firms, its aggressive and early use of analytics was unique in the technology industry, mirroring President Obama’s similar use during both of his elections.” – Rob Enderle, IT Business Edge (US)

The CX bar continues to rise—customers expect more and companies need to deliver. There is not a single strategy  or a secret formula, but I do believe that investment in teams and technology are part of the equation and have proven to have real customer returns for EMC.

How To Win The Customer Experience Challenge with Teams & Technology
Carolyn Muise