For Command Alkon, gathering customer feedback on the direction of the company and its efforts for delivering an A+ customer experience is a top priority.
To keep the focus on customers, the company partnered with Satrix Solutions to manage its Voice of the Customer (VoC) program. Here’s our interview with Leo Marthe, Director of Customer Success, on how the company has been able to achieve VoC success.
Evan Klein: Command Alkon is intensely focused on creating a customer-centric culture. What impact has this had on the company?
Leo Marthe: Customers notice and appreciate it when you’re taking steps to improve their experience with your products and services.
We sat down originally with Satrix Solutions to learn the ways Command Alkon can use customer feedback to focus on the software features that are most important to our customers. Satrix helped us to develop a custom Voice of the Customer program to determine the drivers of customer loyalty associated with: customizability, comprehensive solutions, customer relationships, and rapport.
With the detailed reporting we receive, the leadership team has been able to prioritize our outreach efforts and effectively communicate across the core company and recent acquisitions on how we are viewed in the industry. This has had a significant impact on the customer experience and employee engagement at Command Alkon.
How is Command Alkon communicating its customer-centric mission to customers?
Our goal is deliver an A+ Customer Experience. Therefore, we’ve taken the necessary steps to align our entire organization around the activities that promote a customer-centric culture.
In seeking our customers’ feedback, we in turn use their feedback to inform product roadmap decisions and create an action plan for overall platform and team service improvements. The actionable feedback helps make short and long-term business decisions.
Customer’s see this through our closed-loop process, company trainings and events, and the current rebranding of the company.
Command Alkon truly “walks the walk” when it comes to acting on customer feedback. Can you share some of the changes you have made based on the results of your Customer Satisfaction Survey?
Through the feedback received from our Customer Satisfaction Survey and the guidance of Satrix Solutions’ consultants, we have been able to undertake several key company-wide initiatives to improve customer relationships across the globe.
The first was to create a new resources hub to house Command Alkon product content, documentation, and training videos, which now allow our customers better information accessibility.
Next, we evaluated our agile process – from the feedback we discovered that our customers wanted to be involved in our product direction, and now we are going through an agile transformation and evaluating different ways to more involve our customers in our product roadmaps.
Finally, customers also shared detailed feedback on our project implementations, which inspired us to create a Project Management Office (PMO) Community of Practice. We believe this will better streamline the implementation process and the consistency of the deliveries.
You have had several acquisitions in the last few years, how has your Voice of the Customer program aided in developing a single organizational approach for all entities under Command Alkon’s umbrella of products and services?
Satrix Solutions is highly trained in this process and advised us of best practices in all aspects of utilizing the Net Promoter methodology to assist us in understanding where we were with our customers, their sentiment, and the likelihood of them buying additional services from Command Alkon in the future.
Satrix Solutions developed a program that would uncover gaps that existed between different acquired entities within Command Alkon; and create detailed action items to remove the gaps in our customers’ experiences between products and services. Satrix Solutions does this through the NPS survey process, from the customer list, communication to customers, internal reporting, closed-loop process, etc.
What advice do you have for other professionals involved in their company’s Voice of the Customer strategy?
Don’t overlook the importance of a well-documented closed-loop follow up process. This helps convey to customers that their feedback was heard and is being acted upon.
With Satrix’s support, we’ve defined our closed-loop process so that everyone understands their role in following up on customer feedback as well as ensure they deliver a clear and consistent message.
Specifically, Satrix crafted a comprehensive plan and trained our staff to expertly conduct and document the closed-loop conversations with our customers. The training equipped our employees with new techniques that allow them to adeptly recognize touchpoints, which are pivotal to the customer experience.
About Command Alkon
Command Alkon is a global innovator of software and technology solutions for producers, suppliers, contractors and haulers of ready-mixed concrete, concrete products, aggregate, asphalt, and cement.