At the core of every repeat sale or product upgrade is a satisfied customer – the ultimate driver of most successful business ventures. Satisfied customers turn into loyal customers who buy more software and services and recommend and promote your offerings to other prospects. Conversely, businesses whose software products and post-sales service continually fall short of meeting customer needs – and repeatedly register low customer satisfaction – will eventually go out of business. In addition to providing a high quality product or service, one of the most strategic ways to increase end-customer satisfaction is to develop and leverage effective channel and alliance partnerships to deliver high quality service both during and after the initial sale.

It is widely understood that indirect channels can increase a company’s sales and reduce service costs, if harvested and managed well. But not as prevalent is the understanding that the way a company supports its indirect channels can also dramatically impact end-customer satisfaction. In order to increase customer satisfaction through strategic use of channels and alliances, organizations must focus on making it easy for these external partners – such as system integrators, solution providers, resellers, developers, consultants and software and hardware alliances – to build, market, sell and support products and solutions. The skills, professionalism and knowledge of your channel partners can directly impact your customers’ experience and ultimately, their satisfaction with your products and services.

For example, when we re-designed our backyard, we purchased a fountain from a local retail outlet. We visited the store and looked at various models and options from different manufacturers. After deciding on a granite piece, we arranged for delivery with the retailer. Three days later, the 700-pound granite fountain was sitting in our driveway. This was definitely not the service we expected for our delivery fee. After trying to install the fountain ourselves, we realized we needed a plastic tub, some tubing and a pump! We were very frustrated – not only with the retail outlet, but also with our new fountain. The manufacturer was relying on its retail partner to sell us a complete solution that included all the parts and services we needed to make our fountain usable. Instead, we ended up dissatisfied with the whole experience and would not recommend either the retailer or the manufacturer to our friends. In our mind, the “fountain” didn’t work because of poor service and our dissatisfaction transferred to the manufacturer, even though we had no interaction with that company throughout this process.

Unfortunately, this situation happens every day in the sale of high technology products and services. Companies rely on system integrators, resellers, consultants and retail stores to provide a “total solution” that provides everything the customer needs to be up and running with the software. Relying on these channels to be the interface to the customer means they can make or break your customer satisfaction.

There are three primary ways solution providers can affect your customer satisfaction and reputation:
1. By positioning the product correctly within the sales process
2. Implementing or installing it correctly after the purchase
3. Maintaining expertise on new products through ongoing training

If a solution provider incorrectly positions a product or service to an end-customer, one of two things typically happens. One, the customer doesn’t purchase the product because they don’t believe the product fits their needs, i.e. you lose the sale. Losing the sale opportunity because a solution provider didn’t position the product correct is unfortunate, but not as threatening to a businesses’ success as the second possibility. In this second scenario, solution providers mistakenly “oversell” the product’s capabilities by communicating features or benefits that the product or service actually doesn’t have.

This second scenario is more dangerous to a manufacturer because when the customer tries to use the product that was improperly described by the solution provider, the typical response is “this stupid product doesn’t work!” Rarely does the customer hold the solution provider responsible for misrepresenting product functionality. The manufacturer gets all the blame. Thus, customer satisfaction can disappear without the vendor causing or even knowing about the problem.

With proper sales training, experience and vendor support, solution provider partners should be able to correctly position your product’s value proposition, without under- or over-representing the functionality. However, sales training alone doesn’t mean a company that relies on an indirect channel can feel secure about customer satisfaction. Most companies that leverage an indirect channel not only rely on partners for sales opportunities, but also expect partners to help implement the product, typically as part of an overall solution, and provide ongoing service and maintenance. A solution provider can affect your customer satisfaction before, during and after a sale.

Hypothetically, let’s call this company that sells enterprise software for business intelligence, ESC, as I don’t want to offend anyone this week. ESC relies on a network of system integrators, resellers and consultants to not only position their software to potential customers, but also to install the software and integrate it with other data sources, as part of a full solution. If one of their solution provider partners does a poor job of implementing and integrating the ESC software, customer satisfaction will suffer. Whether the problem is poor implementation methodologies, taking too long to implement, or even overcharging for a project, the customer experience will reflect poorly on ESC. The customer might say that “ESC software just never worked right” or “it took forever to get that ESC software implemented” or “we spent $3 million on getting that ESC software implemented and I still can’t get the information I want out of it.” Rarely does the customer blame the solution provider for not knowing how to implement the software.

In order to avoid these customer satisfaction pitfalls, and still leverage channel partners for increased sales and full solution capabilities, organizations should choose their solution partners carefully and train them well, in both pre-sales and post-sales competencies.

First, in choosing partners, ensure that they are capable of effectively positioning your products and also implementing the full solution. All companies engaging channels and alliance partners need a rigorous screening process that reviews potential partners’ technical knowledge, sales capabilities, service reputation and customer satisfaction. Interview a few of their regular customers to understand the capabilities of potential partners. All too often organizations contract and engage partners that seek them out. We’re seeing more forward thinking companies actively targeting appropriate partners.

Second, after carefully choosing the partners to position the products and services, ensure they are trained to do so accurately. This is an investment by both parties to ensure that the solution provider’s sales team adequately understands the features and functionality and its services organization can properly install, implement and support the solution in a customer’s environment. Requiring partners to pay for the needed training puts the burden of knowing your solution on them. However, it is often the manufacturer that is burdened with unsatisfied customers if the partner doesn’t know the products. Innovative companies help bear the burden of training expenses by offering online and e-learning courses and certification training.

Third, given today’s short product lifecycles and the critical importance of speed to market, even the best chosen and best trained partners need continuous re-training around selling and servicing new products in order to meet your end-customers’ needs. Introducing a new product or enhanced feature set to an existing channel is a constant challenge. Businesses should ensure they a schedule for “delta” training to get partner representatives up to speed on the delta between the old products/features and the new functionality.

It is in the best interest of all companies leveraging indirect channels for increased sales to ensure that partners are well trained in pre- and post-sales capabilities, to deliver the highest possible customer satisfaction, leading to loyal customers, repeat sales and referrals.

Diane Krakora is the president and CEO of Amazon Consulting, LLC, a firm dedicated to helping high technology companies develop effective partnerships and design programs to support channels and alliances.

Mercury Interactive — Our client spotlight this quarter is on Mercury Interactive. Mercury is a global leader in business technology optimization (BTO) software solutions headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA with offices in 26 countries.

Amazon Consulting recently worked with Mercury on a variety of channel related projects designed to effectively engage their partners and provide them with the tools and resources they need to be successful. Their objectives included substantially increasing sales through partners and supporting a larger number of partners with limited internal resources. To learn more about the work that Amazon Consulting has done with Mercury, click here to download a copy of the Mercury Customer Spotlight.

Support Chain Management: Turning your Service Channels into Profit Centers

By Dan Housman, Co-Founder and Director of Product Strategy, ChannelWave, Inc.

Because manufacturing and service-oriented businesses must reach customers through customers’ preferred sales channels and face increasing margin pressure, selling through multi-tiered channels has become a strategic imperative. Delivering a consistent and positive customer care experience is challenging amid the complexity of combining multiple channels, including field sales, e-commerce, dealers, agents, distributors, VARs and retailers.

With eroding margins and diminishing returns from supply chain efficiencies, businesses are focusing their quest to improve profitability on reducing product repair liabilities and increasing aftermarket service and parts sales. To accomplish these goals, manufacturers must extend their customer care solutions to partners who are responsible for the overall customer experience. Read more>>

^MDFMarketPro – A new approach to maximizing the ROI from your Market Development Fund (MDF) program by enabling your partners to leverage MDF dollars to create new opportunities and increase revenues.

By offering your channel partners the ^MDFMarketPro service from Amazon Consulting you can provide them with an approved, centralized, MDF-funded source for the marketing help they need. Our seasoned channel marketing consultants will work hand-in-hand with your channel partners to create and execute effective lead generation activities based on proven templates and customized to their specific needs, including...

• Direct Marketing Campaigns (Mail & Email)
• Collateral Development
• Telemarketing Programs
• Event Production (Seminars and Webinars)
• Sales Incentive program execution

To evaluate the ROI realized from your current MDF program or discuss ways in which Amazon Consulting can help you implement the MarketPro service for your partners as part of launching a new MDF program in your organization, call us to schedule an MDF Evaluation. For more information on the program, click here