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Internal Customer Engagement – Overview & Process

Table of Contents

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Overview & Key Definitions1

Internal Customer Engagement Cycle2

Key Methodologies3

Engagement Phases4

Summary5

Overview & Key DefinitionsWhat is Customer Engagement?

– Customer Engagement is the process of fostering and optimizing the relationship between consumer needs and a company or group’s objectives to produce the most viable deliverable.

Why is Customer Engagement important?– Allows the team to ensure that they are providing the best possible overall solution most

suited to the customer’s expectations

– Increases satisfaction scores and gives the customer the impression of a more professional and user-centric mindset

– Ensures a much higher likelihood of brand loyalty and advocacy

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Overview & Key DefinitionsType of Customers

– External Customer – Individual or individuals that are not employees or affiliates of the existing company who purchase products or services from the company

– Internal Customer – Individual or teams that are paid employees of the company but are still consumers of your product or service

***Note: It is important to draw a distinction between external and internal customer types; the methods of engagement and policies of interaction will differ

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Overview & Key DefinitionsHow are Internal and External Customers Different?

– External Customer• Is a purchaser of a product or service, but has no vested interest in the company itself• Has their own agenda outside of the company’s strategy or goals• Is solely focused on their needs and is not interested in the needs or wants of other customers

– Internal Customer• Is a consumer of internal components or solutions, but also a producer of products or services that are purchased by

the external customer• May have a particular product level agenda, but is in line with company strategy and goals• Has focus on their needs but is mindful of need for collaboration with other company colleagues

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Overview & Key DefinitionsWhat are some of the difficulties in engaging with Internal Customers?

– Internal customers have their own external customers to please; their actions in adopting your solutions directly affect their customer outcomes

– Internal customers have release schedules and timetables to consider; disruptions to those schedules can directly affect company profit and end-user satisfaction

– Internal customers may be comfortable with existing technologies or solutions and will likely be hesitant in adopting a new component or change to their software products as this may have adverse and unexpected consequences for their deliverables

**Note: Recognize that internal customers are ultimately responsible for THEIR solutions, even when adopting another group’s technology

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Internal Customer Engagement CycleWhat is the best strategy for engaging with Internal Customers?

– The graphic on the following slide provides the high level process of customer engagement, broken down into three regions and six sections

– The main premise behind Customer Engagement is that when it is performed effectively, it becomes cyclical; i.e. self-driving when word of mouth and strong advocacy by previous adopters begins to spread to other potential customers

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Internal Customer Engagement Cycle

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CustomerEngagement

LEGEND

Internal Customer Engagement CycleSectional Breakdowns

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Awareness

1.Internal Customer becomes aware of new component or solution, through direct communication or through advocacy

2.Team provides information and insight into new solution, explaining the merits of adopting it

3.Team provides demo and/or documentation of new solution to target internal customer(s)

Knowledge of New Solution

INITIAL ENGAGEMENT

Internal Customer Engagement CycleSectional Breakdowns

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1.Internal Customer begins evaluation process of new solution

2.Team provides best practices and samples as needed to Internal Customer during evaluation process

3.Team ropes in previous Internal Customers to discussion as needed to provide frames of reference and additional guidance

Scrutiny of New Solution

INITIAL ENGAGEMENT

Consideration

Internal Customer Engagement CycleSectional Breakdowns

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1.Internal Customer begins migration of existing products to begin leveraging new component/solution provided by Team

2.Team monitors engagement and facilitates active response as needed for any issues encountered during implementation process

3.Active fixes or updates provided to Internal Customer are also immediately available to previously migrated implementations

Migration Process to New Solution

DURING ENGAGEMENT

Internal Customer Engagement CycleSectional Breakdowns

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1.Internal Customer has completed integration/migration to new solution

2.Team provides continued support and facilitates effective escalation process for new implementation

3.Issues raised or discovered in this phase are immediately addressed and any fixes or work-arounds are communicated both to the current Internal Customer going through initial adoption as well as existing customers who are already adopted to the new solution/component

Active Support Phase

DURING ENGAGEMENT

Internal Customer Engagement CycleSectional Breakdowns

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1.Internal Customer has completed migration to new solution and is satisfied with the outcome

2.Internal Customer begins to ask for new features or functionality as needed

3.Team provides ease of updates and quick response to inquiries and requirement requests from customer(s)

Adherence to New Solution

AFTER ENGAGEMENT

Loyalty

Internal Customer Engagement CycleSectional Breakdowns

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1.Internal Customer becomes reliant on new solution or component

2.Internal Customer becomes advocate of new solution or component, communicating with other teams about the merits of migrating

3.Customer advocacy fuels additional inquiries into solution from other potential customers and the cycle repeats

Devotion and Ardor to New Solution

AFTER ENGAGEMENT

Advocacy

Internal Customer Engagement CycleSummary of Engagement Cycle

– Active engagement is a continuous cycle

– Effective engagement is cyclical: good customer interaction leads to more customers and positive feedback

– Engagement never stops; customers are always kept informed and up to date on new versions of your solutions and are actively encouraged to provide feedback

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Key MethodologiesHow Should Engagement be Achieved?

– In order to facilitate proper engagement with customers and ensure re-usability and uniformity to your engagement model, the following should be part of your overall engagement strategy

• A Communication Plan• A Migration Plan• A Support Plan• Standards and Practices documentation• Well defined points of contact• An in-place Escalation Plan

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Key MethodologiesBreakdowns

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Communication Plan

How primary lines of communication are handled (email, wikis, SharePoint, etc)

Primary points of reference within product teams is defined

Migration Plan

Standard checklist of primary migration milestones

Available references to previous migrations

Support Plan

How to deal with issues during and post migration/implementation

Well defined turn-around and response for issues

Escalation Plan

Available mechanism to deal with issues that arise from external sources

Coordination with product team escalation mechanism

*Primary Contacts*

*Uniform Standards*

*Documentation*

*Best Practices*

*Primary Contacts*

*Uniform Standards*

*Documentation*

*Best Practices*

Main Team

Key MethodologiesWho Should be Targeted for Engagement?

– Depending on maturity of the project and the current position in the engagement cycle, different individuals will likely be targeted at different times

– How and when should certain people at various levels in the corporate hierarchy be targeted depends on various factors, including the internal dynamics of the product team

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Key MethodologiesEngagement Breakdowns

– The organizational breakdown of a company, business unit or team will usually function as the main contact reference for engagement

– Generally speaking, as engagement moves forward in the cycle, the movement through the organizational hierarchy will go from senior level individuals to mid-level and finally to individual contributors

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Implementation &Support

Awareness & Consideration

Key Methodologies

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High LevelVP

Mid LevelDirector

Mid LevelDirector

Mid LevelManager

IndividualQA

IndividualDevelopment

Mid LevelProduct Manager

IndividualProject Manager

Loyalty & Advocacy

Engagement Grid

Key MethodologiesEngagement Grid Summary

– Ultimately, those at the top will make the decision of whether or not to adopt your solution and/or process

– Those in the middle and lower tiers will be tasked with implementing your solution and/or process

– Conclusions:• Engagement at higher levels is more of a marketing or sales pitch, explaining the benefits of your

solution and what problems it will solve for the business• Engagement at mid and lower levels is more technically focused, concentrating on

the granular particulars of how to implement your solution into the broader product offering(s)

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Engagement PhasesHow Does Engagement Change as Product Matures?

– As indicated earlier, customer engagement is an on-going process

– Initial engagement will be more sparse, with a small number of customers to deal with and more technical challenges to solve

– As the number of customer adopters of your solution grow, customer engagement will become more complex, with more emphasis on new features and functionality and a smaller emphasis on problems to solve

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Engagement PhasesEngagement Timeline

– Customer interaction and engagement as component/solution matures and is adopted by more and more people

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Customers engaged on an individual basis

Engagement logs created for reference and future engagements (to become part of migration plan)

Migration plan leveraged for engagements

Customer focus groups formed and surveys leveraged on need basis to determine fixes/enhancements

Migration plan is now mature

Collaborative entity of customers formed to meet regularly regarding new features/enhancements

Engagement PhasesKey Takeaways

– An early engagement process will be more individually based, with less emphasis on cross product team communication (to ensure any early issues are dealt with quickly and response time on a per customer basis is high)

– As component/process adoption moves forward, customers can be brought together on a need basis for focus groups and surveys to get a broader sentiment and begin early stages of collaborative engagement

– At the mature phase, customers should be engaged regularly on a group basis, so that any new ideas or enhancement requests are brought to a forum for review

**Note that collaborative engagement becomes important as more customers come on board since enhancement requests by individuals may now impact customers as a whole

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SummaryEngagement Cycle

– A properly implemented customer engagement mechanism becomes self-driving; loyalty and advocacy will fuel a push towards your solution

– Engagement with customers needs to be maintained at all times in the cycle; customers should not be left out in the cold once they have adopted your solution

Engagement Phases– Initial engagement will be more individual, bringing customers on board in stages– Mature engagement will require more collaboration between customers as they push for

new features and functionality; forum-based engagement will occur at this stage

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SummaryConclusion

– Customers make or break your solution (including internal customers)

– Be mindful of the types of jobs customers are attempting to solve and how one customer’s request may impact others

– Stay engaged in all three areas of the engagement cycle (Initial, During, After)

– Ensure your engagement plans are in place so that customers have plenty of reference material and a unified strategy in place when they are considering your solution

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