The 7th Annual 1to1 Impact Award winners are on the move. These forward-thinking organizations are headed toward every company's favorite place to be: ahead of the competition. The road they're taking to get there? A profitable, customer-focused business strategy.
In today's increasingly customer-centric economy the organizations that will have the greatest success are those that foster a customer-centric culture, engage and empower employees, integrate information and operations, and capitalize on the technologies that support these efforts—all in a way that builds customer value. The 1to1 Impact Awards honor organizations that have recently implemented a successful customer strategy with resulting business impact.
To emphasize the importance of the many elements that comprise an effective customer-centric business strategy, 1to1 Magazine presents the awards in seven categories: Customer Strategy, Full-Suite CRM Optimization, Marketing Optimization, Sales Optimization, Customer Service Optimization, New Media, and Organizational Transformation. Our distinguished panel of independent judges reviews the nominations and selects the finalists in each category. All winners—Gold, Silver, and Bronze—have demonstrated the positive effect their initiative has had on the customer experience and bottom line; Gold winners have shown the strongest outcomes as a result of those efforts, like Honeywell's double-digit increase in customer satisfaction, Travelocity's 35 percent boost in bookings, and US Bank's 400 percent jump in branch credit card sales.
As the 1to1 Impact Award winners have found, although competitive markets may take them down a long and winding road, customer centricity will keep them ahead of the competition along their journey to success. Turn the page and come along for the ride…
THE WINNERS
CUSTOMER STRATEGY:
Gold: Travelocity
Silver: WaterColor Inn & Resort
Bronze: Big River Telephone
FULL-SUITE CRM:
Gold: Westpac Banking Corp.
Silver: Voices.com
Bronze: ESET Software
MARKETING:
Gold: AT&T
Silver: TD Bank Financial Group
Bronze: Sylvan Learning
SALES:
Gold: U.S. Bank
Silver: DirecTV
Bronze: The Berry Company
CUSTOMER SERVICE:
Gold: A.O. Smith Water Products
Silver: Virgin Atlantic Airways
Bronze: EarthLink
NEW MEDIA:
Gold: Procter & Gamble
Silver: Subway Buffalo SFAFT
Bronze: La Redoute
ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION:
Gold: Honeywell Aerospace
Silver: Canada Post
CUSTOMER STRATEGY
Travelocity's Proactive Service Strategy Takes Flight
Since introducing its $20 million Customer Championship program in 2005,
Travelocity and its Roaming Gnome have been busy.
In addition to the travel site's Customer Bill of Rights, a document that explains what customers should expect from its travel agents, and the Travelocity Guarantee, which guarantees the Bill of Rights, the company launched the Proactive Customer Care program in February 2006. The program involves a dedicated customer care team responsible for identifying and investigating issues that may occur during customers' trips.
The system is significant in that most travel updates don't go beyond alerts on flight delays and schedule changes. Proactive Customer Care seeks out issues that have not been part of the traditional process and aren't typically reported to agencies, such as hotel policy changes or airport construction.
Here's how it works: When Travelocity learns about a potential problem, whether by a customer or supplier, the dedicated customer care group investigates and determines if the issue will impact other customer trips as well.
"Travelocity's Proactive Customer Care program was launched really to make a difference in the end-to-end service and the experience that customers were having," says Ginny Mahl, Travelocity's vice president of sales and customer service. "This was the key piece—finding a way to learn and listen to customers and take information and ensure that it prevents problems."
Mahl says some of the problems are less obvious than, say, a cruise that changes ports at the last minute. She cites an incident where a customer misread his calendar and accidentally booked a flight a month later than he intended. The dedicated customer care team resolved this without tacking on fees, and then identified and alerted other customers who had made similar errors. "[Customers] love knowing that we're looking out for them and communicating with them frequently," Mahl says.
But getting the customer care team to respond in a proactive way with such immediacy didn't come easy. Launching the Proactive Customer Care program involved retraining agents and designing new processes—a course that spanned 18 months. "The training was pretty extensive and completely overhauled," she says. "They needed to know they were empowered in a way to deal with customer issues."
The customer service team wasn't the only thing to get revamped. Travelocity's Roaming Gnome in ad spots now also appears as the "Proactive Enforcer," working behind the scenes as a customer care representative contacting travelers prior to their trips. "It's important to the public perception. One unhappy customer has an impact on the bottom line," Mahl says.
Travelocity's return on investment is evident by its global gross travel booked for 2006, totaling $10.1 billion, a 35 percent increase from 2005 and an incentive to stay customer focused. "It's very important that we're not just selling trips," Mahl says, "but supporting customers throughout the culture."
WaterColor Illustrates the Impact of A Memorable Customer Experience
The
WaterColor Inn & Resort in Santa Rosa Beach, FL, is not in the leisure business; it's in the memory building business.
Guests go home with memories, so according to Stephen Hilliard, vice president of WaterColor's resort and club operations, "we work hard at building relationships with customers so they come back year after year."
With a focus on repeat business, or customer loyalty, the company implemented a training program in March 2006 for its 250 employees to elevate its service. Called Customer Experience Edge, the program aims to teach employees how to view their jobs from the customers' perspectives, to help them gain awareness of how they impact each customer, and to take ownership of delivering legendary service.
The company took a multistep approach to create the program that stretched over several weeks and included an assessment period, a stakeholder meeting to discuss cultural changes, a supervisor orientation, a kick-off rally to build excitement, as well as manager training, employee training, experience training (applying the awareness, building relationships, and taking ownership principles), and finally leadership training and coaching.
Customer Experience Edge recharged the culture and boosted customer service levels. The average daily rate saw a 20 percent increase and occupancy increased 25 percent. In addition, WaterColor had an award-winning year. After receiving AAA's four diamond award, Travel + Leisure, Forbes Traveler, and Golf for Women included it on their best resorts lists.
According to Hilliard, the accolades stem from the company's customer-centric philosophy, which he says translates into increased business. "[Customers] are not hearing about us because we have a great beach. They hear about us because we have great service and great folks," he says. "My advice is it does pay off to work really hard on being customer centric and I think you'll see quickly that your return on investment is dramatic."
Big River Walks the Walk With Customers
If any company walks the walk and talks the talk, it's
Big River Telephone. Its tag line, "Real people, real service, real simple," is not just words—it's part of a customer-centric philosophy that permeates the culture, from the employees right down to their paychecks, with each check bearing the saying "A customer makes this happen."
The organization-wide strategy, called Customer First, started when the company launched in 2001 and, in the most stripped down explanation, aims to provide a platform for employees to do what's best for customers. "We're not in a fight with employees; it's all of us working together to be successful," says Kevin Cantwell, CEO of Big River and a 1to1 Customer Champion. "The customer is why we are in business."
Cantwell says companies can't just build a strategy and not provide the tools for employees to succeed. "You can say you're customer focused, but if you don't have information or records…all you're doing is talking the talk," he says.
Last year Big River put its money where its mouth is and upgraded the company's Sage SalesLogix solution to automate all account management processes. The system allows customer service reps and salespeople to immediately know customers' histories when they call.
As a result, Big River was able to allocate 21 percent of its customer service resources to higher-revenue-generating activities like cross-selling. "My goal is to keep customers online as long as possible and talk with them," Cantwell says. Additionally the company has calculated a 1,110 percent return on its technology investment. Cantwell adds that the company is growing between 4 and 5 percent every month (from a base of fewer than 100,000 residential and business customers), with a target of being bigger every Friday than the previous Friday.
"We're rapidly growing," he says. "We think we can do it; we believe it. The reason is we live that [customer-centric] philosophy."
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