1to1 Magazine Demo

EXPERT INSIGHT customer advocate Siisi Adu-Gyamfi, Senior Vice President, International and Marketing, Textron Inc. Textron’s Business Soars by Tracking Customer Loyalty The customer loyalty index has become one of the global manufacturer’s most important strategic measures. Our customer loyalty index represents one of the top four metrics…used to manage the overall company. helps us identify best practices that we share across our businesses. We conduct the surveys in each business segment because customers in our different segments have unique needs. Our single-engine Cessna customers may have different requirements than our Cessna business jet or CitationShares customers. We limit the 20 interviews that we conduct within a customer company to no more than 60 minutes. We conduct shorter interviews with individuals who have less contact with our products and services than those who have extensive contact. t extron’s unique businesses are united by a common approach to serving customers. Its success hinges on how we tailor that approach to meet the individual needs of customers in our numerous different businesses and business segments. With revenues of $13.2 billion, Textron is one of the world’s largest multi-industry corporations. Our manufacturing businesses include Cessna Aircraft Company, Bell Helicopter, E-Z-GO, and Greenlee and Jacobsen, among others. In 2001 we launched an enterprisewide transformation effort that included the introduction of Six Sigma methodology. One of the top objectives of our customer strategy, which complements our Six Sigma efforts, is to measure both customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. We define loyalty as the customer’s willingness to recommend our products and services to others. We conduct this ongoing measurement through our customer loyalty index (CLI), which is applied through a process we developed called LAPS. This acronym describes four key areas of customer contact that we evaluate using our CLI: Learning: How did the customer learn about our product? Acquire: Who were all of the decision-makers within the customer company involved in acquisition of our product? Product: Everyone who touches our product within the customer company. Support: Customer employees who interact with our support services. LAPS ensures that we get feedback from all of the people who are involved in customer experience. We may end up talking to as many as 20 different people within a customer company. This process helps us understand where in our processes we need to improve. It also Diverse, yet consistent Although we are a highly diversified corporation, our approach to improving customer service and enhancing loyalty is consistent. We achieve that consistency through mechanisms like our customer leadership council, which comprises the company’s top sales and marketing people for each business. The council’s members meet in-person and via telephone at least 10 times a year to discuss best practices for enhancing customer service and loyalty. For example, a past CLI indicated that while our Jacobsen customers were extremely happy with our golf course mowers, they also felt that the repair turnaround time could be improved. Since we sell through channel partners, we sent several of our Six Sigma–certified process improvement experts into our dealers’ shops. They spent a week rolling up their sleeves and working with the dealers to identify what was causing repair delays and then mapping new processes and devising new workflow diagrams. Our very next customer loyalty index survey showed that the repair turnaround time was no longer a concern among Jacobsen customers. And, since the repair process improvements worked so well, we shared those insights with our Bell Helicopter business, which has since implemented a similar equipment-repair process. Through this approach, we strive to ensure that an enterprisewide commitment to customer loyalty becomes part of our organizational DNA. Our executive leadership deserves credit for supporting this effort in a highly visible way: Our customer loyalty index represents one of the top four metrics—along with employee engagement, our Six Sigma–related operational measure, and our financial performance—used to manage the overall company. Contact Adu-Gyamfi at siisi@textron.com ONLINE EXTRA: Listen to the full interview with Adu-Gyamfi to get more inside information about the inner workings of Textron’s customer loyalty index. Go to www.1to1media.com/links/textron.html Keys to Success Textron has elevated customer experience to a strategic performance driver by: Measuring satisfaction and loyalty: Customers’ willingness to recommend Textron businesses to others is constantly measured and managed through a customer loyalty index (CLI). Applying the CLI with precision: Textron individually applies its CLI to different businesses and business segments. Doing so fleshes out unique customer issues in these different areas. Sharing best practices: The company’s customer leadership council ensures that best practices in customer service are shared across business segments and businesses. 44 1to1 magazine www.1to1media.com http://www.1to1media.com/links/textron.html http://www.1to1media.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of 1to1 Magazine Demo

1to1 Magazine Demo Contents 1to1media.com Editor's Note Feedback Putting Care in Patients' Hands Loyalty at Work Redefining the Contact Center Agent Introducing Enterprise 2.0 Cigna Dental Drills for Loyal Customers On the Beat 19 Ways to Succeed Miami Heat Schools Its Staff on Sales and Service Marketing Lends a Helping Hand More Than Meets the Eye Customer Service by Committiee Textron's Business Soars by Tracking Customer Loyalty Resources Contact Center Agent as Trusted Advisor Mastering Global CRM Face to Face with Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.

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