Monthly Archives: October 2015

Converting Satisfied Customers into Loyal Ones

Just because a customer is satisfied with the technical support and customer service they receive from your organization does not necessarily mean that it will be loyal to you in the long run. Moreover, even “great” service does not necessarily result in customer loyalty. Customers have a large number of service options available to them, from a large and diverse variety of sources. They can use the manufacturer’s or dealer’s services to support their business systems and equipment; they can use the services of a third-party maintenance provider; they can support some of the equipment themselves; or any combination thereof. The choice is theirs – not yours. And they know it!

Not only are there many options for each of your customers to consider, they are constantly being “bombarded” with information about alternative sources of products, services and support from many of these sources. They go to industry trade shows; they read industry trade publications; they read Blogs, posts and tweets; they talk to their peers, both within their own organizations, and at other organizations in the area; and they surf the Internet. As a result, customers are more knowledgeable today than just about ever before with respect to the various options that are available to them.

Using the business imaging systems segment as an example, the service technician may find that for many of his or her accounts, the company’s products and services are not the only ones used to provide equipment service and support solutions. For example, when the technician arrives on-site to perform a preventive maintenance call, and they get off the elevator at the customer’s floor, there may be some comfort in knowing that when they get to the copy room, all they will see is their company’s machines – all up and running, all in heavy usage, and all clearly valued by the end users who use them. However, in some cases, if they were to get off of the elevator at any other floor in the building, they may be just as likely to see a similar configuration of equipment – however, all with another company’s brand name and logo on each of the machines.

Even if your company has already sold and installed all of the business imaging systems and equipment on one floor (or one department) at a particular customer’s facility, and has provided satisfactory technical support and customer service since “day one”, there may still be another company doing exactly the same thing for the customer on another floor (or for another department) at the same facility.

You can assume that the various end-users of this equipment probably talk to one another, compare notes, and ask each other for recommendations regarding new equipment, upgrades, or customer support on an ongoing basis – perhaps over lunch, or at interdepartmental meetings, or with regard to companywide budgeting purposes. In situations where companies move to consolidate their many equipment vendors, someone ultimately has to go – regardless of the level of service and support they have historically been providing – and that someone may be your organization!

From these examples, you can see that even high levels of customer service and corresponding high levels of satisfaction do not necessarily lead to a high level of customer loyalty. Many services managers mistakenly use “customer satisfaction” and “customer loyalty” as interchangeable terms; however, they are two entirely separate and distinct things.

Customer satisfaction is, basically, “keeping your customers happy”. However, even satisfied customers may consider switching providers for better prices, greater coverage, or just because “it’s time”, etc. As a result, the best way to define customer loyalty is essentially as “keeping your customers – customers”.

So what does this all mean, and how can you use these examples to ensure that you are best able to convert as many of your “satisfied” customers into “loyal” ones? What it means is that we, as an industry, continually need to provide our services to our customers even better, faster, and more efficiently than before. And we will probably need to embrace – and embed – new technology into all of our customer-facing processes and offerings (e.g., Cloud technology, remote services, the Internet of Things/IoT, etc.).

You will also need to follow-up with your customers after the call is completed to make sure that everything has been completed fully, and to their total satisfaction. The marketplace – and your customers – have no tolerance for anything less than superior service and support, anymore; and if your organization does not already provide it, they will find another organization that does!

But, how do we do this? How can we move our customers all the way across the “satisfaction” continuum to “customer loyalty”? There are many ways – but it will take a great deal of work, and it will have to be a company-wide effort.

First, you will need to take a hard look at exactly what your customers require – and expect – from the organization, matched against your current and evolving services capabilities, and addressing such questions as:

  • What are our customers’ specific product, service and support needs and requirements? How do they differ from one type of customer to another? How well are we able to meet these specific needs?
  • Does our organization’s current service and support portfolio match its customers’ needs? All of their needs? Their real needs? How can we make sure we are able to design, promote and deliver the right services to meet their specific needs?
  • Where are there gaps, or disconnects, between what we are presently able to do on behalf of our customers, what they truly expect to receive from us?
  • What vendor options and alternatives do our customers presently have? And, how many? What do some of our competitors do better than we do, and how can we best compete against them in the eyes of our customers?
  • What do our customers believe are our greatest strengths and weaknesses? Are we doing everything necessary to promote our strengths while we attempt to improve our weaknesses? Are we providing our customers with all of the information they need to make a fair assessment of our service capabilities and performance? Are we successfully getting our message across?
  • Why does a customer choose us in the first place? Are they getting from us what they were expecting when they first purchased our products? Or signed their original service level agreement? Where do they think there are gaps? Do we know where they are? And how can we best fill them?
  • At the end of the day, how do we want our customers to think of us, our services, and our capabilities? Are we there yet? If not, what do we need to do in the eyes of our customers to get there?
  • Are we using all of the data, information, tools and technologies available to provide our customers with the levels of service they expect? Are there any additional tools or technologies that we should also be using?
  • Are we focused enough on our customers’ needs? Is our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) training good enough – or do we require more training in this area?
  • Do we have our customer service “act” together? How can we ensure that everything we do in behalf of our customers yields a well-defined, positive and measurable outcome (i.e., one that our customers will both recognize, and appreciate)?

These are critical times in the global economic community, and the services segment has never been more serious about its choices – nor more educated in its ability to distinguish between the customer service leaders and the numerous “wannabes”. More end users are getting more information – faster – about your company, and your competitors’ – than ever before. Your ability to gain “true” customer loyalty will be greatly dependent on the ability to live up to the promises your company makes at the original point of sale. If you do not live up to those promises in the eyes of your customers, you will never be able to gain their loyalty, let alone attain high enough levels of customer satisfaction.

The true test of customer loyalty is the ability to keep your customers as customers for the long haul, even if your prices are not always competitive, or your marketing campaigns are not necessarily the most “glamorous”. What the customer ultimately wants is for its systems and equipment to work uninterrupted, and rarely break down. However, when it does break down, they want to have the confidence that its services provider (i.e., your organization) can get things back up and running as quickly as possible (or prevent them from breaking down in the first place via remote monitoring and predictive diagnostics, etc.) – all while continuing to handle high volumes of throughput with ease, minimal interruptions, and little need for human intervention.

If your organization can provide its customers with these high levels of service and support, you just may have a chance at keeping them both satisfied – and loyal.

PTC’s SLM Market Strategy – Built Solidly on the Intersection of SLM and the IoT (and Its Partnership with ServiceMax Doesn’t Hurt, Either!)

[With permission; excerpted transcript from an internal PTC Podcast, recorded on October 9, 2015, by Bill Pollock, President & Principal Consulting Analyst, Strategies For GrowthSM (SFGSM).]

Foundation of PTC’s SLM/IoT Strategy

The most important component of PTC’s evolving strategy is that it is built on a foundation of powerful technology as well as its existing base of more than 28,000 customers. And upon this foundation, PTC provides a full suite of solutions to an expanding global marketplace. As a result, I believe that PTC has been able to leapfrog the competition in a number of ways:

  • First, through the early recognition that the adoption and use of the Internet of Things, or the IoT, will be pervasive and ubiquitous;
  • Second, that it will need to actually guide and help the industry understand the potential of the IoT. And by that, I mean, using a consultative sales approach to tell customers how to begin their IoT journey, as the customers may not actually know their respective needs themselves; and
  • Third, by continuing to build its portfolio of IoT-supported Service Lifecycle Management, or SLM, solutions to provide total support for its global customer base.

However, the success of PTC’s vision will ultimately lie in the execution. That is, its ability to build such an all-encompassing strategy on a solid footing to ensure homogeneity, consistency and, ultimately, acceptance by the global marketplace.

Early on, PTC recognized that the IoT would have the most significant impact on, and fastest adoption in, Service Lifecycle Management (or SLM). In fact, PTC CEO, James Heppelmann has repeatedly said that the first use case for IoT is SLM. Why would a manufacturer/OEM want to embrace an IoT strategy? The answer is to better serve its products – and, by doing so, its customers.

Accordingly, the company took several ground-breaking initiatives to prepare itself – and its customers –through a well-planned, and highly orchestrated, mix of internal development and external acquisitions.

PTC recognized that the pervasive adoption of the IoT in SLM would lead to a succession of sea changes that would ultimately change the industry forever – quickly, completely, and with little tolerance for laggards, late bloomers or followers. Further, based on the extensive analysis of market research conducted both internally, as well as by us at Strategies For GrowthSM, PTC foresaw the coming disruptive change, and took concrete steps to prepare itself, as well as its partners, and its customers.

For example, one shining moment for PTC in the SLM space was its January, 2013, acquisition of Servigisitics.

Acquisitions of Servigistics, ThingWorx and Axeda Systems

The Servigistics acquisition, in retrospect, was a critical component of PTC’s strategy to help manufacturing companies capture the enormous revenue potential in after-market services. It also set the stage for PTC’s vision in building out a technological infrastructure, based on the IoT, to enable these firms to transition to, and realize the big opportunities coming from, an outcome-based services strategy. This is generally referred to as “Servitization”.

Over the past year or so, the main message that the market is hearing from PTC is that it is “extremely serious about the importance of the IoT” – and that it is driven to strengthen its continuing leadership role by integrating the IoT into all aspects of service.

While PTC may have surprised many industry observers by acquiring ThingWorx back in December of 2013, in retrospect, that was the move that propelled PTC into the forefront of the IoT – and all of its numerous lifecycle management applications. The IoT is extremely important, not only to the company’s SLM solutions, but also to its PLM and ALM solutions. This acquisition, more than any other, served to communicate the following two messages to the services community in a big way:

  • First, it solidly positioned PTC as the global leader in each of its respective sectors within the Enterprise Lifecycle Management world (that is, Product/PLM, Service/SLM and Application/ALM, ).
  • Second, it clearly put the global business community on notice that PTC was placing the future of its entire solution portfolio in the connected hands of the IoT.

The acquisition of Axeda Systems in June of 2014, further bolstered PTC’s IoT hold on the marketplace by filling in one of the few remaining gaps in the company’s ability to support connected products, people and technology – that is, the software solution vehicle by which its IoT offerings can make their way into the marketplace.

Together, the ThingWorx and Axeda acquisitions have paved the way for PTC to execute on its pervasive IoT- based strategy. But there’s more to it that finally cements everything together – namely, the partnership that PTC has just forged with ServiceMax in April of this year. I believe this partnership represents the capstone of what provides PTC with the ability to fully support the global SLM marketplace.

The PTC-ServiceMax Partnership

ServiceMax and PTC share a common vision for changing the relationship that companies have with their customers by shifting service delivery from reactive, to proactive and predictive. The two companies have highly complementary technology offerings, and the combination of ServiceMax’s innovative service execution capabilities with the proven technical information, parts management and revenue optimization solutions from PTC stand to be unparalleled in the industry.

PTC’s Heppelmann has said that “Empowering the entire portfolio with Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity, will revolutionize service. Service organizations will now be able to capture new business, increase revenue and heighten customer loyalty faster, more effectively and with more ease than ever before.” And I believe that its partnership with ServiceMax will make that happen – not only sooner, but better, as well!

What the partnership brings to PTC and its customers is both a powerful and modern cloud-based field service management solution, fully supported throughout the implementation, management and delivery of services. For ServiceMax, the partnership broadens its portfolio with the addition of service information and parts management functionalities, extends its market reach to a global base of more than 28,000 PTC customers, expands its distribution channels multifold and, most importantly, empowers its entire portfolio through PTC’s state-of-the-art ThingWorx IoT platform.

But, why ServiceMax? ServiceMax was the first complete field service software solution to help companies of all sizes manage workforce scheduling, while also providing solutions for social, portals, and analytics – all delivered in the cloud, to any mobile device. And PTC offers the “book ends” to that critically important scheduling function: that is, technical information on one end; and parts management on the other end.

This combined functionality now allows customers to directly leverage product information to ultimately transform service from a reactive product repair function, to a proactive and predictive customer success function – all IOT-enabled, with the prospects of blowing everyone else out of the water. As a result, the company’s customers can expect to fully realize the promise of predictive service – as well as the lofty goals of Servitization.

With its corporate strategy built on the solid foundation of the intersection of SLM and the IoT, we can only expect PTC – and its customers – to continue to evolve as quickly as the IoT itself!