It’s a widely accepted business and leadership premise that in general, you get what you pay for or reward people to do. While in theory, everyone in the SaaS vendor organization should be focused on preserving customer relationships, the actuality can be quite different. The “relationship” may have many definitions. To the Support and/or Training personnel, whose job performance metrics tend to be very specific and incident/result related, the relationship that counts is the human connection between individuals rather than the economic one between the companies. This can easily result in a scenario where the employees of the customer company are very pleased with the day to day relationship they’re receiving from their SaaS vendor even as their senior management is making the decision to end it. How did this happen? Assumptions were made, went unquestioned and the result was neglect. The only people that had a connection to the customer’s senior management were the Sales team — who have long since turned their attention elsewhere in pursuit of new sales.
But isn’t Sales measured on renewals, and therefore incented to keep relationships fresh in anticipation of the day when the contract comes up again? Although technically correct in theory, in actuality there is often an assumption that Support will be looking after the customer from day to day and that all Sales will have to do is to come back into the picture to finalize the renewal. The stage is set for failure, because the crucial message to the customer’s Management about the value they are receiving from their relationship with the SaaS vendor is simply not being addressed. When the anticipated renewal doesn’t happen, when the customer declares their intention to leave, the pressure is suddenly on to Re-Sell The Sale. And, of course, to pay the Customer Acquisition Cost all over again.
When the customer’s intention/decision to leave has been announced or discovered, it’s necessarily time to play catch-up, with all of the increased customer re-acquisition costs of that game. Send in the Sales pros, perhaps assigning talent by amount of revenue potential, and hope for the best — while watching very closely to learn every possible lesson you can from the exercise.
Don’t, however, let a disaster take you by surprise by assuming that it can’t happen to you — it can. It will. The sooner you design and implement corrective action, the less it will cost and the more effective it may be. The first step is to identify the at-risk companies and relationships. For each and every customer on your list, ask yourself: “If a renewal contract was submitted today, how likely would they be to sign it?” Pay close attention to how the answer is justified. How do you 
The following project descriptions and case studies are drawn from real projects done over the years for various kinds of organizations facing some common problems. (The names of the companies, except for SkillSoft, have been changed; MB&A is committed to respecting the confidentiality of our clients.) Access to the full content of specific case studies is free, but requires subscriber members to be logged-in before reading. To become a subscriber, you’ll need to enter your name, company name and a valid e-mail address here.
Customer Contact Center Sector
Any significant work towards improving customer retention rates and overall sustainable profitability levels will necessarily involve the company’s customer contact center resources. The following examples show the range of expertise and experience that MB&A brings to its client engagements:
[Strategic Assessment.] VolterCo is a Fortune 500 electrical systems and components manufacturer. Over the years, the company had grown by acquisition to where it had over 27 different support centers across the USA and internationally. Retained to do a Current-State assessment and strategic recommendations study, MB&A drew up a plan for consolidating all of Level 1 support into a common location to be based upon a commercial grade call tracking system and assisted with the vendor/product selection process. The plan remained as an active document at the executive management level of the company for more than 3 years, and became the foundation for the company’s complete re-engineering of its support offerings. (Various eastern states, USA)
[Process Re-engineering of Customer Technical Support.] GoodSoft is a large financial software company. Faced with rising customer dissatisfaction over an existing service level state wherein approximately 60% of incoming calls were delayed for 4-5 minutes and the balance for as long as 12 minutes, the company retained MB&A to find a workable solution. After the re-engineering of the center’s organizational structure and process, the group was able to consistently pick up 99.9% of all incoming calls in less than 60 seconds with no increase in headcount. (Tampa, FL)
[Support Technology Design.] China-Electric. A provincial electric company had 16 regional sub-stations and a central headquarters. Each substation had a different data-set format for customer records, and the company wanted to be able to monitor and back-up all of them at the HQ center for disaster recovery purposes. MB&A consultants assisted with the research and preparation of the system requirements document and implementation project plan. (People’s Republic of China)
[Call Center Assessment.] MedClaim is a well-established physician-owned medical claims processing company. Concerned about the operation of its call center and the quality of service being provided to its member physicians and their patients in terms of accuracy and courtesy, MedClaim retained MB&A to do an assessment of the group. After confirming that Management’s concerns were well-founded, we recommended significant augmentation of the center’s support technology suite, soft-skills training for all reps and adoption of a new workflow and organizational design. California, USA.
[Support Technology Tool Design.] VirtualCSR: A major telephone manufacturer commissioned a web design firm to create a prototype artificial intelligence Virtual Customer Service Agent as an aspect of an overall support/service diversion strategy. The design firm retained MB&A to help design the service functionality for the agent and to assist with identifying and contracting with appropriate knowledgebase manufacturer partners. (Iceland; California, USA)
[Call Center Design.] Oregon Dept. of Corrections. After a state law was passed requiring all inmates of the correctional system to be put to work, the Corrections Department wanted a plan for potentially utilizing the inmates to staff a customer support/service outsourcing call center. MB&A was retained to research and design a written report and implementation project plan, and to present our findings and recommendations directly to members of the State Legislature. (Oregon, USA)
[Course Content Design.] SkillSoft is an online training company that wanted to create a web-based training program for customer service/support associates, supervisors, managers and executives. MB&A was brought in to provide subject matter expertise and course content, and to appear in video segments of the program. (Dublin, Ireland / Scottsdale, AZ / Redwood City, CA)
[Vendor/Product Selection for CRM Call-Tracker and Telephone ACD System.] Abselon, a major pipe and fittings manufacturer, had consolidated a number of regional centers into a central Support/Service Contact Center at its headquarters in rural Pennsylvania. Recognizing that their existing computer and phone infrastructure was insufficient to support the new center, Abselon retained MB&A to assess the operation, prepare the system requirements documentation, to identify potential product and vendor candidates and to manage the project through the RFP and demonstration phases. In the process, we helped Abselon to realize savings of over $750,000 USD. (Pennsylvania, USA)
[Assessment of Business-Partner Support Capabilities.] Responding to substantial levels of complaints from its business partners and allied consultants and demands for a separate, dedicated support team, TreeTop asked MB&A to do an assessment of the current support center’s capabilities. We found that creating a separate support center for the Business Partners & Consultants was not warranted because the desired increase in responsiveness could more easily be produced faster by optimizing the call-flow of the existing center. (Oregon, USA)
[Assessment of Support Department Scalability.] Clean-Mail is a hosted-solution provider for e-mail control functionality that was growing exceptionally fast. Concerned about the ability of their customer support group to stay ahead of the skyrocketing customer demand, the company asked MB&A to do a strategic assessment and future-state blueprint. The project Report recommended clarification of CM’s profits-realization strategy, redefinition of the product, restructuring the support organization and enhancement of the support technology resources. (California, USA)
[CRM Technology Product Design Review.] After building a Customer Interaction Management System, Challenger-CRM, a major offshore software manufacturer and provider of outsourced contact center services, wanted a deep level head-to-head comparison of the design, features and functionality of its new product against the leading industry competitors. MB&A was retained to design and manage the project through to presentation of a written Report and a satellite video conference session with Challenger-CRM’s executive and development teams. (California, USA; Bangalore, India)
Revised: July 18, 2010