Sprint's Palm Pre Experience

On June 6, 2009, Sprint proudly launched their latest flagship product - the Palm Pre. While numerous reports have lauded the success of the launch and the phone itself, a more important storyline is the strides that Sprint has made in their overall customer experience. Sprint's customer experience problems have been well documented. Their ability to effectively address those problems may be the one thing that will make or break the company. Although Sprint's recent performance with the Palm Pre had its pro's and con's, Sprint appears to have done this one right.

Sprint obviously has a lot riding on the Palm Pre. Over the past few years, Sprint's customer satisfaction woes have been well documented and new CEO Dan Hesse has made it clear that improving customer satisfaction is priority number one. While Sprint has been making strides on fixing their problems, no one seemed to notice. Sprint needed to grab the stage - even if for just a short period - to demonstrate that things had changed. The Palm Pre has provided that stage and Sprint's performance is sure to be closely scrutinized. Dan Hesse went so far as to refer to last weekend's launch as a "coming out party" for Sprint.

THE TOTAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

While some may look only at the launch day to determine if Sprint is truly different, a more important barometer should be the overall customer experience. The experience began when Palm and Sprint unveiled the Pre at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. There had obviously been a lot of pre-work done (pun intended); Sprint had established an exclusive arrangement with Palm to create the most innovative new device since the iPhone. This exclusive partnership alone highlighted Sprint's innovative roots and placed it squarely in the spotlight to deliver something special.

The pre-launch buzz began to build from that point forward. Special blogs were created, tweeters were tweeting, and rumors abound. If Sprint and Palm wanted the spotlight, they surely got it.

How Sprint and Palm would perform in the spotlight would be an important part of the overall customer experience. Fortunately for Sprint and Palm, they performed admirably.

ATTRACT

Building upon the success of the CES event and the subsequent interest in the Palm Pre, Sprint and Palm responded by launching special web pages to try and quench a seemingly unending thirst for Palm Pre news. While Sprint and Palm web sites offered little to any additional information regarding the Pre, the blogosphere was kicking into overdrive.

Hundreds of smart phone enthusiasts began to sleuth every possible angle to learn more about the Palm Pre and its eventual launch date. It became almost a game; the dearth of information from Sprint and Palm only fueled more speculation about pricing, features, and availability. Most companies would pay dearly for such successful viral marketing.

Eventually Sprint launched its own series of 'Now Network' ads that seemed to tease the audience even more by showcasing the Palm Pre at the end of each ad. Even though the phone had not yet been released, the ads whipped up even more anticipation for the eventual launch.

QUALIFY

With the bait firmly set, it was now up to Sprint to determine how to best land as many prospects as possible. In a very smart move, Sprint launched a Palm Pre landing page that contained a simple prompt: "Sign up to be notified when the Palm Pre is available."

It was a simple and brilliant way to allow prospective customers to self qualify themselves for Sprint. As a result, Sprint was able to collect a highly qualified list of prospects that could be used for target marketing to ensure that the prospects were converted to customers when the Pre became available.

That's exactly what they did.

INTERACT

Prospects that self-qualified themselves, as well as existing Sprint customers, received regular email newsletters that informed them of special offers, accessories, new plans, and other products. This simple but effective interaction helped to keep prospects engaged during the waiting period between the CES product announcement and the eventual product launch on June 6.

Unfortunately, the majority of these email newsletters provided few additional details about the Palm Pre. Perhaps the lack of Palm Pre related information was part of their strategy of secrecy, but this is one big opportunity that Sprint may have missed. If they had provided more juicy tidbits through this channel, perhaps they could have significantly grown their prospect list as more and more people were clamoring for information.

Although many people get annoyed with companies that overload their email inboxes, this is a case where I believe that additional and more timely communications would have been welcomed.

SPECIAL TREATMENT

As part of Sprint's drive to improve customer satisfaction, they also have begun to more actively utilize a loyalty program called Sprint Premier, which rolled out in February of this year. Once again, Sprint did this right. Long time Sprint customers were automatically enrolled in the program and notified via email and or direct mail that they were being recognized for their loyalty.

The loyalty program includes perks and privileges like most programs of its kind. For example, one direct mailing included a special $25.00 coupon that could be used to purchase any accessory. Unfortunately, this excluded Palm Pre accessories - at least during the launch weekend.

Perhaps most important to the customer experience, Sprint sent a special notification to Premier members that invited them into stores one hour before opening time on launch day to demo and purchase the Palm Pre. While others were planning overnight camp-outs to be the first in line to get the Pre, Premier customers got special treatment.

Overall, it was a nice touch and a great way to reward some of Sprint's most loyal customers.

BUY

June 6th was an anxious day for everyone. Sprint and Palm were nervous for obvious reasons. Prospective customers were also anxious in light of the rumored short supplies of the Palm Pre. Although some out of stock situations were reported, the supply situation over the launch weekend did not appear to rain on the parade.

Personally, I arrived at a local Sprint store around 10:30am, nearly 2 and a half hours into the launch day feeding frenzy. I arrived with low expectations; I had resigned myself to the fact that I would probably be greeted by long lines and news of inventory outages.

However, my experience was surprising. Upon arriving at the store, I entered my name into a customer waiting queue. If you haven't been in a Sprint store in a while, they've revamped the store environment as well, capped with a large flat screen monitor that shows your place in the waiting queue in real time.

Overall, the in-store experience was good. I waited only 20 minutes to be greeted by a Retail Consultant, who quickly started the purchase and activation process. While the activation process was underway, he successfully up-sold me on a few accessories for my new Pre. The sales and activation process was lengthy, but largely overshadowed by the anticipation of getting my hands on the shiny new Palm Pre.

SUMMARY

The new phone has worked almost flawlessly on the Sprint Network. Although I have experienced a few glitches, the overall experience has been fantastic. The experience started with growing anticipation since the January 8th introduction at the Consumer Electronics Show and has culminated with the launch of the Palm Pre on June 6th. Daily usage of the Palm Pre, which so far has been great, will only expand upon the overall experience.

While many people will look only at the launch day or even certain characteristics of the phone itself to gauge the experience, Sprint and Palm have done a great job of managing the total customer experience over the past 6 months. Although not everything went perfectly, I give the overall customer experience at grade of 3.75 out of a possible 4.0 experience.

Business Intelligence and Super Bowl 43: What Can We Learn?

Just about totally overlooked amidst the down-to-the-wire excitement of Super Bowl 43 was the fact that during the game the Arizona Cardinals successfully challenged two on-the-field calls that were reversed in the Cardinals’ favor, expertly using the NFL’s rules for challenging on-the-field calls along with the instant replay infrastructure dedicated to quickly and definitively resolving those challenges.

Most business intelligence environments are subjected to one “challenge” after another from departmental executives and managers who dispute report results and analytics produced from the data warehouse, but these rarely go as smoothly as those that occurred in Super Bowl 43. Learn how to equip your BI environment with architectural components, formal rules, and accepted best practices functionally equivalent to those of the National Football League to prevent these challenges from compromising your mission of providing timely, actionable insights.

Visit http://www.precisionbusinessintelligence.com/Papers to download and read.

BI and the 1972 Pittsburgh Steelers Draft: White Paper and Book Excerpt

Visit http://www.precisionbusinessintelligence.com/Papers to download and read.

Why do so many companies continue to misapply and underutilize their business intelligence (BI) capabilities?

Alan Simon takes a look at essential BI best practices against a backdrop of the 1972 National Football League draft. Why did the Pittsburgh Steelers make the surprise selection of future Hall-of-Famer Franco Harris in the first round, even though at the time Harris was overshadowed by his own college teammate? And what can we learn about world-class business intelligence from what the Steelers did and how it turned out?

Inside Jobs, February 24, 2009

Can Big Be Beautiful?

When it comes to delivering a truly differentiated customer experience, small companies have a distinct edge. In a small business environment where a handful of employees personally serve every customer, know every product or service, and have the authority and responsibility to do the right thing, delivering a unique and personalized customer experience comes naturally.

As companies get larger, however, they often lose that personalized touch. Being big does not preclude the creation of great experiences; it only means that they just have to work a little harder to achieve and maintain it.

Smaller companies have a distinct advantage when it comes to customer experience management. Their very survival depends on managing each and every customer relationship; therefore a customer-centric mindset comes naturally. They are not unencumbered by politics or corporate policies that can get in the way of delivering great customer service. In addition, a handful of employees know every customer and every aspect of the business, which makes them nearly omnipotent when it comes to serving customers. Clearly, sometimes small is truly beautiful when it comes to delivering a great customer experience.

Does that mean that larger companies have no chance of cashing in on customer experience management? Not necessarily; big businesses can overcome many of the barriers that are presented by size and scale. In fact, some large companies have relied on a customer experience differentiation to rise to the very top of their industry.

Being big isn’t always easy. As companies grow, they add channels, markets, products, employees, and thousands of other touch points. They may also add new layers of hierarchy in an attempt to manage new offerings. Each addition can contribute to the exponential growth in the overall complexity of the customer experience. As a result, large corporations can begin to lose touch with their customer’s needs and expectations.

However, being big doesn’t preclude companies from being a leader in customer satisfaction.

Consider the most recent results of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) for the Internet Retail industry. The overall king of customer satisfaction in this group is none other that the largest company in the sector - Amazon.com:

Internet Retail
American Customer Satisfaction Index - 2008
Scaled of 1-100, 100 being the best

ACSI Score by Company (Scale=1-100)

• 88 Amazon.com, Inc.
• 87 Newegg Inc.
• 84 Netflix, Inc.
• 83 Internet Retail Average
• 81 eBay Inc.
• 80 Overstock.com, Inc.

Source: American Customer Satisfaction Index. Retrieved from www.theacsi.org on February 12, 2009.

Indeed, big can be beautiful as demonstrated by Amazon.com. Amazon is the oft-mentioned benchmark for customer personalization. Their focus on customer experience has been well documented and discussed. They have utilized technology to provide personalization on a broad scale to provide each and every customer with a sense of familiarity and insight. By leading in customer satisfaction, they are on track to exceed $19B in Net Sales for 2008 according to available 2008 quarterly earnings reports.

Amazon has avoided many complexities that plague other large businesses. They predominantly operate within the on-line channel, which reduces the number of physical locations or markets that they must coordinate. As a fairly young company, they have yet to experience the bureaucracy and paralyzing politics that can build up over decades of growth. And the company still embodies the spirit and vision of its founder, Jeff Bezos, who still runs the company.

Companies like Amazon are proof that large businesses in any industry can indeed compete with a differentiated customer experience. If businesses can overcome the complexities that are presented by size and scale, they can excel at customer satisfaction. By doing so, big can indeed be beautiful.

Inside Jobs, February 6, 2009

Can A Strong Brand Beat a Recession?

Despite dismal economic and business conditions, two companies with strong brands seem to be oblivious to the chaos that surrounds them. In an environment that seems to have no silver lining, Colgate Palmolive and Apple Computer have posted results recently that would make any business envious. How did they do it? Good management and a strong brand appear to be the magical combination to beat even the worst of recessionary conditions.

The current economic environment over the past 12 months has been anything but encouraging. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and NASDAQ Indices are down over 35% since this time last year. The U.S. unemployment rate has risen by 2.3 percentage points - to 7.2 percent - since the start of the recession in December 2007, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Consumer Sentiment Index reached a 28-year low in 2008, according to the University of Michigan.

Needless to say, the past 12 months have not been conducive to profitable business growth. Yet two companies with strong brands have managed to weather the storm quite well. The strength of their brands has instilled deep customer loyalty that appears to be unbreakable, even when consumer spending is under tremendous pressure.

As economic prognosticators continue to predict doom and gloom, consumers appear willing to spend their hard-earned and well-guarded cash on the brands that they love and trust the most. Consider the recent earnings reports from two brands that lead their respective product categories: Colgate Palmolive and Apple.

Colgate’s (CL) 2008 fourth quarter earnings jumped 11%. Their net income rose to $401.2 million, or 73 cents a share, from $361.2 million, or 65 cents a share, a year earlier. The company, whose brands include Colgate toothpaste, Irish Spring soap and Ajax cleaner, said sales rose to $3.21 billion from $2.9 billion a year earlier. Colgate achieved this stellar performance despite the reduction of worldwide advertising costs by 140 basis points.

Apple (AAPL) recently reported the best quarterly revenue and earnings in the company’s prestigious history. The company posted record revenue of $10.17 billion and record net quarterly profit of $1.61 billion. All of Apple’s key brands showed strong growth: Apple Macintosh® sales grew 9%, iPod sales grew 3%, and iPhones sales grew 88% over the year-ago quarter.

These companies were able to achieve outstanding results in a recessionary environment by establishing and managing a strong brand. That is good news for businesses and economists that are seeking a path to success through the fog of recession.

Apparently, a strong brand can beat a recession. Establishing a strong brand just may be the most critical strategy for any company looking to weather the current – or future – economic storms.

Establishing a strong brand, however, does not happen overnight. A brand is not simply a logo, a tag line, nor a snappy ad campaign. The brand, in fact, is not even defined by the company – but rather the perception that is created in the minds of the consumer. Establishing such a strong and differentiated brand perception takes time and an outstanding customer experience.

As a sign of hope in tough times, companies that have successfully built a strong brand have shown that they can indeed beat the recession.