Living through a Perfect Customer Experience

By Dale Wolf

This posting is taking a slightly different direction than I originally intended. That's because before I opened Typepad, I was out scouring some of the blogs that I most enjoy. One of these is Bruce Temkin's Customer Experience Matters.

So my original post was going to be about something happening where I work -- Cincom Systems. We recently selected Eloqua as our new marketing automation systems. Eloqua partners with Astadia, a services firm that does a lot of their deployments.

At Cincom, we sell enterprise software.

This includes contact center software, document automation software, manufacturing software, product configuration software, healthcare software, database management software and application development software.

We know, first-hand, how a great deployment of this software brings value to our clients and how this helps create a "perfect customer experience."

When you deliver a great customer experience, you demand it of others.

So our marketing team responsible for purchasing the Eloqua Marketing Automation technology knew upfront that deployment was just as critical as was the technology itself. So we put Keith Phillips, our sales rep at Eloqua, through the drill to make sure our deployment of Eloqua would go perfectly.

That's when Keith introduced their deployment partner -- Astadia. We had many meetings with the people at Eloqua and Astadia to get the assurance that this deployment would go as well as when Cincom deploys its own software.

To cut to the chase, we were convinced and we made the purchase.

Hang in here with me, because this story (while a bit longer than most of my posts) has a surprise twist that helps clarify what a perfect customer experience is.

That's when the Astadia people took over.

Brian Reilly and Kara Balmer went to work for us on the deployment. We all agreed on a process and schedule. And the process has been smooth as silk and actually ahead of schedule. We are getting value from our investment even before we thought we would. We were more than satisfied.

This past week it was time for our hands-on training. So Astadia sent in a trainer from Texas -- Heather Foeh. She took us step-by-step deep into the bowels of Eloqua and showed us how to use it. For two days, she was magnificent.

And then on the third day, we brought in all the various product marketing managers, our creative team and sales process management in for a day of “best practices” that made Eloqua more relevant to everyone in the company who was going to be impacted by this technology. Again Heather had us eating out of her hands. She made it all make sense and showed us how to become better at our jobs. She handled fear, uncertainty and doubt with a calmness and grace that convinced even the skeptical that we had made a brilliant purchase.

I sent her entire senior management team a note of appreciation, and I told everyone in hearing distance about our experience -- not to forget also the incredible experience we were already having with Kara in the actual deployment.

The Surprise Twist

I was getting ready to blog about Kara and Heather on my blog, when I came across a dialogue on Bruce Temkin's Customer Experience Matters where, of all things, they were discussing my definition of the perfect customer experience. Check out the dialogue where they have a different take on how to define a perfect customer experience than I have ... go here.

Eloqua and Astadia are now a perfect and personal example of what I mean when I define the perfect customer experience as I have on my blog. The perfect customer experience, for me, is one that changes the rules because it is beyond expectation. Because it surprised me! It was not delivered with perfection, but it sure as hell was a perfect customer experience because by my definition ... it is not perfection that we demand, but a level of quality that is so surprising that we tell our friends and colleagues about it.

I am an advocate now for Astadia and Eloqua. That's a perfect customer experience!

Comments

[Bruce Temkin]

Sounds like a perfect experience to me as well. Now all we have to do is figure out how to clone Brian, Kara, and Heather.