What many successful companies and leaders have revealed is that good leadership isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about asking the right questions. With mounting competition and the ongoing battle to differentiate, successful services organizations need to be humble. You also need to be constantly assessing yourself. Most importantly, you must seek out the Voice of your Customers. Only by keeping on top of their needs can you ensure you’re aligned to meet them.

Customers all have special needs, regardless of their size
What we’re learning is that the way we address customer needs can no longer be achieved with a ‘one size fits all’ model. Xerox Services has traditionally offered a high touch services model to give copier customers the most out of their equipment investment. We historically had relationships with larger customers, and many of them could be served leveraging a similar way we did business. For our smaller customers, we also had a particular way we managed that market as well, but it too was one size. We’ve found that this method no longer adds value to the customer relationship reliably, as everything evolves and changes in both the customer environment, as well as in our business environment. Customers all have special needs, regardless of their size. What we needed to do was identify them and assemble a response to those needs in a way that promotes satisfaction and loyalty, as well as enables us to meet our business objectives.

Listening and understanding are key!
One of the first things we did in an effort to evolve our support offerings was to actively listen to our customers, and to clearly identify and understand what their requirements are. Novel concept, but even if you think you know, it’s always good to test for understanding, because you never know what you’ll find by doing this on a regular basis.

Moving from relationships with facilities and purchasing to C-level executive and IT relationships, we’ve learned that our equipment is not the center of the universe, but a tool that enables our customers to be productive, enhance communication, or deliver a service to their customers. This has been, and continues to be a significant realization for our company.

Another breakthrough is that customers really appreciate it when we can understand their situation, and occasionally bend the rules to help them. The lesson we’re learning as a company is that it’s actually OK to occasionally step outside the box and help the customer through a problem, even it they don’t always pay for it. It sounds like a sacrilege for a services organization, but if you use this wisely it’s a powerful thing.

Keep it simple
Customers told us that they want assurance that we’re focused on helping them to be productive. They said don’t bog things down with process and procedure and inflexibility, but rather get to the root of the problem, be proactive, and make sure we do what we say. It should all make sense. Simplicity, ease of use and reliability are key as well.

We also continue to learn that if we can drive a positive customer experience in every way we touch a customer, it has a huge positive impact. You may have seen statistics similar to this in industry studies—customers who are likely to recommend are 2.5 times more likely to repurchase. However, if a customer has a problem, and you resolve the problem in a way that satisfies them, they are 8 times more likely to recommend you than those that are dissatisfied! It gets even more interesting, in that if you satisfy the problem in a reasonable cycle time, they are 14 times more likely to be satisfied with problem resolution, and with you as a vendor. What’s the acceptable cycle time in today’s market? It’s about 1 day.

Xerox Services handles over 22,000 interactions per day. Consistently, our support center customer scores come out to be about 92% satisfied, and about 70% very satisfied. We’ve got a good sized opportunity in front of us, because there’s room for improvement with a pretty sizeable number of interactions we manage every day. We do not need to complicate managing the customer experience. It can be simple. Make sure you are helpful to the customer. Re-evaluate policies and procedures to determine how helpful you are. Infuse a culture to, above all else, care for the customer. Train your people to listen, offer the customer options, then act – with confidence. We constantly strive for consistency and long term sustainability. It’s our biggest challenge and opportunity.

Case Studies
In the following Case Studies we share our experiences with two specific categories of special needs customers. These examples are to help illustrate what Xerox Services has done for them, and the difference it has made so far.

Case #1: Graphic Superstores

The Challenge
Our first case study showcases several major print services vendors. These are big, national accounts that you might use, let’s say to make multiple copies of your work. They are highly demanding customers, where down equipment means they aren’t generating revenues. These companies can tell us quite precisely how much money they lose per minute of downtime.

This customer base represents some of our largest, highest revenue generating customers. We treated them as high touch customers, however as we grew, they received nothing different than our other large clients.

By listening to their concerns and taking a deeper dive assessment into our support offerings, we learned that we were failing in some fundamental areas—like helping them reliably and consistently install or move equipment. Granted, the problem was on both sides, but on a regular basis, we would get taken to the proverbial woodshed with theses customers, get our beatings, react, and move on. We needed to find a way to get in front of this if we were to keep this set of clients long term.

The Xerox Solution
We wanted to come up with ways to help these customers by working with them to make them successful. This had to be accomplished without adding expense to our operation. We needed to internalize that we had to be more flexible with our top tier customers if we were to sustain the relationships required to drive future business. At the same time, we wanted to leverage what we could do with these customers as a competitive advantage, which would in turn, pave the way for getting invited to the table for new business.

The over arching goal for this set of customers, was to provide a high level of service through a one stop shopping model for this set of customers. No longer would these customers come in the same way other customers did. We would treat these customers in a way that they would come away feeling like Xerox cared about them and their business, and we would respond in a way that showed them that we cared.

We created a dedicated support team as a single point of contact for these customers. For the accounts in this program, our Graphic Communications solution offers comprehensive support for all product types, and includes remote solutions, service calls, service escalations, and complete Customer Relations support. By combining the Customer Solution and Customer Relations roles, customers receive a wider range of support on the first contact, and avoid being transferred for various needs. In addition, by customizing our support for these customers, we guarantee that they will speak with someone knowledgeable on their company’s special needs and unique requirements. Over time, there would literally be name familiarity with some of them, along with strong knowledge of the account. The team knows the terms and conditions of the Service Level Agreements, but more importantly, we trained the CSR’s to handle the situations towards a positive outcome, vs. following a strict process.

The Results
It’s all geared towards creating a positive customer experience.

By empowering the CSR’s to manage issues to closure, there is a renewed sense of ownership to ensure the customer is satisfied. The relationship with the clients improves, and we are more sensitive to customers’ business cycles.

By acting as a single point of contact, we can ensure issues get resolved in a timely fashion, or escalated appropriately. There’s additional piece of mind that someone is here inside of the services team representing the customer needs.

So far, the results have been positive.

Improved speed to response
18 second Average Speed of Answer

Improved resolutions
82% of benchmark for point of contact solutions
30% Solution Rate
60% of all customer issues are resolved in < 1-business day
81% of all customer issues resolved in 24 business hours (includes previous)

Case #2: Xerox Global Services Accounts

The Challenge
There are approximately 16 key customers in the Xerox Global Services portfolio. These are large IT relationships with many networked print devices. Some are national and/or global installations. The opportunities in this segment are a bit different. Since the customers are IT based, they demand higher service levels, and are very savvy, from the experience of working with other systems and technology vendors. We are challenged with tighter SLA’s penalty clauses and other demands that drive increased costs in a typical break fix service model.

As our customers move to digital technology and network printing, you can manage the assets in more effective ways than with standalone, walkup copiers. Also, some customers are not taking advantage of the full set of capabilities to leverage these products as a productivity tool that can enhance their business. The challenge we faced was how can we implement a high touch service delivery model that enables us to achieve higher levels of service and at the same time allows us to reduce service costs? Also, how do we ensure our own organization and the customer clearly understand the value proposition? Lastly, how do we deliver this in a multi-brand multi-location environment?

With the issues facing us we needed to implement a solution to drive out costs while increasing service delivery across the accounts. In analyzing what was needed to combat the two major issues, we realized the normal process changes were not going to make the difference the business needed to recognize. The business growth forecast also required a solution that was scaleable.

We could not be successful and scalable by implementing the traditional field centric services model. We had to implement a new services model due to national implementations and third party products in the mix. This was and is a major hurdle to cross inside of our company.

The Xerox Solution
The approach we used for this model is a bit of a change from traditional thinking. We assembled the team to set a game plan for working with the customer. We took a customer in view and worked to understand their requirements, and got an end-to-end view on how the whole value chain worked (from how products get installed, to how the end users use them, how they get help, what the customer infrastructure is, key processes, etc.). This allowed us to work to integrate our solution inside the customer environment, vs. shipping a product and waiting for the phone to ring or the website to get hit.

We organized and built from the center, only adding field resources to meet the requirements. We organized a structured approach to planning, implementation and change management in a much more professional manner, including the support center and the field in communication. We also built a technical competency in the support centers to maximize remote solutions capabilities.

The Results
In our first year, the results are showing good promise. We’re increasing our service levels, which is a direct contributor to customer satisfaction. We’re also seeing our cost base improve in these accounts, which drives gross margin improvement.

	Baseline	Current	Improvement (%)
Dispatch Rate	87%	70%	20%
Blended Service Costs	$101	$84	16%

The power of alignment & communication
The first thing to note is that alignment doesn’t come without pain. While the stories sound good from a historical perspective, there is a lot of blood sweat and tears that go in to making this work. One of the fundamentally important aspects in a large company that you can’t overlook is to ensure there is good alignment in the company. Ideally, you want the CEO and the rest of the company aligned at the right levels. This may not always happen though.

At a minimum, on an account by account basis, make sure your sales and service teams are aligned, and make sure your marketing efforts are set up as enablers. In addition, make sure you know who the key stakeholders and decision makers are on the customer side as well as the company, and stay close through communication and listening.

Earn quick wins by delivering what you promise, and then show what you’re delivering. Even if you have bad news, show that you are in control, and you have plans to close the gap. In any case, show the customer you are on top of it and make sure you can show positive results.

Make sure there is a long range strategy for growth with your account team, as the role players may change through the relationship, but the strategy should be consistent, and everything you are doing should be moving you towards realizing your strategy. The power of alignment is an amazing thing!

Communication is also essential. Once you’re aligned, then you need to communicate. Identify the team, and identify a communication plan. At Xerox, we use Lean Six Sigma, so we have tools to document who is responsible for what, and what level of communication we plan on for each role. Do not underestimate the power of getting this right. Demonstrate a bias for action through communication. If something is not moving forward, then take action and make it move.

Some of the main insights we’ve taken away from all of this are that you need to understand the customer environment better than they do, establish a solid value proposition with sales and the customer, keep focused on mapping your solutions to address your customer’s pain points, deliver consistently, and be sure to act quickly when you do not. If you keep this in the forefront and align your service offerings with your customer’s needs, the benefits will also come in many sizes.

About Dan Walkowski………………………………………………….

Dan Walkowski is Vice President of Enterprise Operations for Xerox Services in North America. He has responsibility for the Xerox North America Customer Support Centers, with locations in Saint John, New Brunswick, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and offshore partnerships in Montego Bay, Jamaica, St Lucia and Manila, Philippines. His organization delivers customer assistance, remote solutions and technical support across all Xerox products and services, covering general markets, major accounts, managed services and special account services. Dan has over 23 years of experience in the service industry, and has held service and marketing management positions at Hewlett Packard, Sequent Computer Systems, Tektronix, and Clarity Software. Dan resides in Portland, Oregon. Outside of work and business travel, Dan enjoys competing in vintage sports car racing.