Amanda Sachs, Senior Director, WW Customer and Partner Experience, Microsoft Corporation, will be a speaker at the marcus evans Customer Experience Management and Retention Conference on 15-17 September, 2010 in San Francisco, CA.

She explains why - at the core of any strategy - there should be a constant focus on customers and partners.

What are the key components to building and driving a customer-centric culture in a global company?

AS: There are a number of things that go into building a customer centric culture. At Microsoft we call it customer-partner experience (CPE). CPE includes having broad customer listening systems in place to help us identify key trends and customer feedback and figuring out issues we may need to resolve to prevent them from reoccurring. Microsoft has a number of listening systems across the company..

The second key focus areas are measurement systems and planning processes that helps us align on accountability across the company. We know how important it is to use the survey results and other metrics to benchmark how we’re doing and set those goals to help us to move forward in our journey. Our executive bonus plans are heavily influenced by the net satisfaction of our customers and partners. This then cascades down into organizational, product and geography performance, which influences business scorecards and plans.

All of our performance ratings, our promotions and HR processes can be tied to our performance on those particular metrics and goals.

CPE also requires strong participation from leadership – company executives and leaders really have to walk the walk, show they are prioritizing CPE as a top business priority, hold their teams and individuals accountable and continually reinforce the importance of customer feedback.

How can a mature customer experience strategy deliver significant results and impact a company’s bottom line?

AS: We really see these as having very strong ties. We know that having a strong, joint planning processes with our customers, with clear conditions of satisfaction and regular reviews of feedback is critical to a successful partnership. And when the process is done with quality, it means there are no surprises when it come to renewing agreements and the value of our business has been reinforced for the entire duration of the agreement. Ensuring customer voice mechanisms are in place helps us build better products to satisfy our customers and of course ensure we are competitive and meeting market needs. One recent, well-known example is Windows 7. It was built with input from over 10 million customers. This feedback improved our ability to deliver a better experience. The American Customer Satisfaction Index reported that our satisfaction score rose by 8.6 per cent in 2010. As of today, Windows 7 is running on more than 16 per cent of all PCs worldwide and is the fastest selling operating system in history. We believe much of that success comes from the feedback we received and the customer centric design implemented throughout the entire product life cycle.

In your opinion are there strategic differences between building satisfaction and building loyalty?

AS: Building satisfaction is about delievering great experiences, anticipating issues, and mitigating those issues as they arise. Loyalty is about a much deeper relationship. It means that you earn customer trust over a longer period of time. It means you are exceeding their expectations as opposed to just meeting them. When you are consistently providing customers with offerings that add value to their business and give them an edge to competition they choose to do business with you.

How can companies design and develop a customer loyalty strategy that will hold during an economic downturn?

AS: A CPE strategy should be pursued in times of economic growth as well as downturn because at the core of the strategy is the constant attention to the voice of the customer. If you have strong voice of customer systems, they will allow you to adjust to new situations as they arise and issues being faced by your partners and customers. For us, customer feedback drives our daily decisions about our products, programs and services so we are better able to respond to customer needs whatever the needs and condition of the market may be. For example, when the economy got tough we knew we needed to make adjustments to our approach and the way we sell to and service our customers. Examples of this approach are laptop hunter ads which highlighted the price of PCs, virtualisation offerings with a focus on helping customers save time and money and of course Windows 7 offering value and productivity.

What have been the recession lessons learned by Microsoft?

AS: The customer continues to be a critical component to how we do business and providing value in the face of economic uncertainty is the absolute key to help customers and partners save money and ensure business stability. Building trust through great account management and great programs helps make a difference. Customers are looking for trusted advisers and if we can do that and offer that service to them they’ll be loyal to you. It’s an ongoing journey of continuous improvement and we believe that not only has our CPE focus strengthened but it has helped us to pull through some of these difficult times together with our customers and partners.

The marcus evans Customer Experience Management and Retention Conference will be held on 15-17 September in San Francisco, CA.

To view the interview as a PDF, visit: bit.ly/a5Se2a