"The customer support experience is unquestionably a major differentiator, especially among digital products," said Cathleen Combs. As Senior Manager of Support Planning in Canon U.S.A.'s Customer Support Operation, she and her team take customer satisfaction very seriously. It's a key driver of business decisions, and customer satisfaction metrics are tied to the "Balanced Scorecard", a well-recognized methodology, used by Canon U.S.A. and many other Fortune 500 companies, for articulating strategy and measuring performance.

"The market for Digital products is so competitive that a company cannot distinguish itself just by what it sells anymore," Combs continued. Providing a valuable product experience is just as important as providing great products. To thrive, a company must find a way to forge a genuine emotional connection with customers, she said, "and that emotional connection must be reinforced with every customer interaction."

When a company realizes that its customers judge it by the entire product experience, the nature of support changes. It's no longer enough to fix the problem, Combs said. "Our customer feedback tells us that not only do we have to be there when they need us, but we have to provide added value that enriches the overall customer experience."

Accurate customer feedback helps Canon U.S.A. keep its fingers on the pulse of its customers' ever-changing needs, wants and expectations. That's how Canon U.S.A. has emerged as the reigning champion of Customer Support in its field, winning PC Magazine's prestigious Readers' Choice Award in both the digital camera and printer space for three years in a row: 2004, 2005 and 2006.

But it wasn’t always this way. Before Canon U.S.A. began mining the rich vein of customer intelligence, satisfaction ratings were "totally unacceptable," Combs remembered. "That motivated us to get very serious, very quickly, about discovering the driving factors behind those ratings and how to improve our customers' satisfaction."

Canon Surveys: Then And Now

Originally Canon U.S.A. measured customer satisfaction via telephone surveys conducted by an outside vendor. But they proved steadily less effective for several reasons, including low response rates due to the adoption of voice mail/answering machines, the length of time live Q&A sessions require, and the risk of alienating customers by interrupting them at inconvenient times.

In late 2002, Canon U.S.A. began evaluating potential survey and analysis partners, looking for the one that could best help it take customer satisfaction to the next level. Its requirements included:

• Web-based surveys so that respondents could share their thoughts and feelings whenever it was most convenient
• Ability to harvest detailed customer information at a variety of touch-points
• Web-accessible interface that was clear and easy to use
• Comprehensive survey and analysis functionality that clearly points the way to effective action
• Measurable ROI that justifies its cost

In March 2003, Canon U.S.A. first deployed CustomerSat Enterprise™ to measure customers’ satisfaction with Canon U.S.A.'s two primary channels of support delivery at the time: phone and e-mail. CustomerSat's analytics allowed Canon U.S.A.'s customer support contact center to quickly target particular action items and efficiently follow up. Survey data, delivered in easy-to-understand quad charts, trendlines and other graphical tools, Combs said, "clearly showed us where to go and what to do."

Targeted action driven by customer feedback helped Canon U.S.A. quickly elevate its rating in the Reader’s Choice survey to an "A", earning it the 2004 Reader's Choice Award for both printers and cameras — an honor that Canon U.S.A. repeated in 2005 and 2006.

"Because we had so much success with our phone and e-mail surveys, and knew it was an effective vehicle for managing our business, we immediately had CustomerSat begin an Online Support Survey," Combs said. Canon U.S.A. later added Repair Service, Order Fulfillment and Customer Relations surveys.

"The CustomerSat team is incredibly responsive. They were just fabulous working with us through all the changes." Combs said her team is especially delighted with the user interface, which makes it very easy to spot variations in satisfaction levels. "We can drill down, zero-in and take effective action that helps increase scores by accommodating the needs of every customer segment."

Online Support Survey

Like most large enterprises, Canon U.S.A. wants to migrate its customers toward more convenient and cost-effective support channels. Using CustomerSat data, they identify key opportunities for enhancements to their web support programs weaning more customers away from costly "direct support" with live support reps, and encouraging them to use so-called indirect support channels, primarily the Internet.

Combs feels web-based support offers customers many benefits, including:

• Convenience: They can log on and find answers 24/7/365.
• Efficiency: No waiting on hold; just click and go.
• Speed: It’s instant...Online support is much faster than waiting for a call center agent to listen to your question, diagnose the problem, identify the solution and then walk you through the procedure.

Another important benefit is financial. Web-based support costs a fraction of a call to a live support agent. So it's win-win for both the customer and Canon U.S.A.

However, online support can be risky. If poorly delivered, it can negatively impact the customer experience. Imagine a customer who simply cannot find the information he or she needs. That customer becomes frustrated and dissatisfied, and must then take an additional step — making a phone call — to get the answer. As a result, the company not only pays the financial cost of the support call, it must also expend additional resources to somehow remedy the emotional dissatisfaction of that customer.

Discovering ways to improve their ability to answer customers' questions online — without having to escalate — is the Online Support survey's primary purpose. "CustomerSat quad charts clearly identify and target the areas that are most important to our end users," Combs explained.

Updating the KnowledgeBase

Customer needs change quickly, so a top priority for Canon U.S.A. was the ability to easily analyze survey data, determine what improvements were needed, then make quick, responsive updates to the KnowledgeBase. Their existing KnowledgeBase platform couldn't accommodate changes quickly enough, however, so Canon U.S.A. spent almost a year choosing and deploying a new platform, which went live in December, 2006.

Meanwhile, the questions included in the Online Support Survey were further refined and targeted. Three critical questions were:

• Why did you come to the support site?
• Were you able to answer your question/resolve your issue?
• If not, what specifically were you looking for that you couldn’t find?

Follow-up questions pursued specifically which content needed to be enhanced. "Tuning into the 'Voice of the Customer' allows us to focus our efforts in very specific areas," said Combs, "and then go in and quickly create useful content to address those particular needs."

Results, Lessons and Challenges

The results clearly show that Canon U.S.A.’s efforts have paid dividends. Resolution rates for support issues have improved steadily as a result of the December, 2006 KnowledgeBase implementation.

• Issues not resolved have dropped over ten percent.
• Resolved issues have increased by nearly fifteen percent.

Canon U.S.A. tracks support resolution rates by visit type (installation, how-to, troubleshooting), then cross-tabulates that data by product type (digital camera, camcorder, printer). "This is a solid incremental progress, and we expect it to continue as we update and expand our KnowledgeBase content," Combs said.

Challenges remain, of course. For example, customers remain generally more comfortable with "direct" support experiences (those involving a live support representative) than indirect/online, so finding ways to migrate more traffic to Canon U.S.A.'s support site remains a priority.

An "Indispensable" Tool

"The use of CustomerSat in our customer satisfaction process is a key component in our strategy," Combs said. "The power of their system and responsiveness of their research consultants help us to more easily manage the activity and identify the right areas to invest our efforts. Canon U.S.A. has been very satisfied with CustomerSat, as our expanding relationship indicates."

Canon U.S.A. added three more surveys in 2005 and 2006. An Order Fulfillment Satisfaction survey probes the customer purchasing experience, while a Repair Service Satisfaction survey focuses on turnaround time and repair quality of cameras and camcorders. Combs believes this is another big opportunity for customer segmentation. "A professional photographer shooting a sporting event or wedding needs fast repairs wherever they are. These are mission-critical situations with serious professional accounts. It's another place where we can shine."

In 2006, a Customer Relations survey was launched for callers with actual complaints. "Most people who call Canon U.S.A. are not upset with us. They just want information. But our Customer Relations group handles the small percentage of customers that do have a complaint." After they're directed to Canon U.S.A.'s Customer Relations Group, the customers are surveyed to see if the Customer Support Operation was able to improve the relationship.

And there's still more to come.

"Our Online Survey has been so successful, and everyone's been so satisfied with it, that the Customer Support Operation is now working with Canon U.S.A.'s Internet Marketing Division to expand it and to make it more holistic, to discover how our customers feel about our entire web site, not just the support areas." Once implemented, Canon U.S.A. will be able capture satisfaction levels in much broader areas throughout their consumer web site.

"CustomerSat Enterprise is a complete solution, and yet very user-friendly," Combs said. "I can't tell you how thrilled we are with the interface, the account management tools, and most importantly, the results. It’s so easy to use, and it really delivers."

About Canon U.S.A.

A leader in Professional, Business, and Consumer Imaging Equipment and Information Systems, Canon U.S.A. is listed by Fortune as one of the "Most Admired Companies in America" and is #35 on Business Week’s "Top 100 Brands" of 2006. Canon products include printers, copiers, cameras and lenses, camcorders, flatbed scanners as well as a host of specialized industrial products for the semiconductor, broadcast and optical industries, among others. Parent company Canon, Inc. is one of the world’s top technology patent holders, boasting global revenues of nearly $35 billion.