Managing Customer Frustrations With Information

Managing Customer Frustrations With Information Technologies At Cincom Systems The key to Cincom's profitability is to get customers on maintenance contracts and keep them satisfied for years, many for decades, to turn their annual contract renewals into an annuity revenue stream. This strategy works extremely well because the continual revenue stream of renewals and contract extensions funds new market and product development. Critical to this entire business model however is ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction.

As a result, Cincom uses a variety of technologies for minimizing and alleviating customer frustration and post-purchase dissonance. Minimizing Frustration by Hearing the Voice of the Customer The internal culture of Cincom Systems is heavily focused on measuring performance and continual quality and process improving. As a result, the company relies on Six Sigma methodologies to continually get the Voice of the Customer into each process area including escalation of customer service calls.

There are knowledge bases, password protected portals with updates and download fixes, and secured Facebook groups for customers to share their fixes and experiences. Cincom Support Directors moderate these forums and provide support when needed. All of these electronic means of support however are secondary to the approach Cincom takes with its enterprise customers, many of which spend an average of $200,000 or more per software application. The company has its service directors on a 24/7 paging and Blackberry alert system that is networked globally.

For their largest customers including section of the U.S. government, if a server goes down or there is a major problem with a given system the network immediately goes into effect and alerts Cincom support managers immediately. Cincom has segmented their support services so that the largest and most profitable customers get immediate personalized support for director-level staff. These service directors have the authority to ship software updates immediately if necessary and can get approvals for contract modifications very rapidly.

The use of alert-based technologies in conjunction with an internal network of telecommunications systems to route the most urgent calls to the best possible product directors has resulted in Cincom having a 99% renewal rate of contracts. For accounts that have not purchased this level of service, Cincom relies on its own Socrates constraint engine technology to deliver the most possible patches and product fixes electronically based on remote analysis of the customers' problem.

This remote diagnostics analysis, which the customer can turn on at any time, is also responsible for the high renewal rate as well. Third, there are escalation paths through customer service to also solve customers' problems, and a hot line for all customers directly to the General Manager of each Cincom division if they are not getting their problems solved. Managing post-purchase dissonance is managed using a completely different series of processes and technologies.

As the annuity revenue stream from new customers is crucial for Cincom's business, customer satisfaction is critically important. Post-purchase dissonance is often managed through intensive face-time with customers, where the sales, service, software engineering and professional services will often visit a customer in person to troubleshoot a problem,. In addition, there is a strong focus on personal accountability to the sales representative level for all factors relating to customer satisfaction in a given account.

Monitoring technologies can be used if the customer agrees to them where the actual performance of the applications can be logged on.