Eaton Corporation is a multinational corporation that offers a wide range of products–including electrical products, vehicles, hydraulic products, and more. Not only does Eaton have divisions all over the world; it also works with multiple layers of customers in a B2B and B2C context.
That being said, customer support, feedback, and follow-up look more complex at Eaton than they do at other organizations.
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But that doesn’t mean that Eaton neglects the process of customer experience–far from it. In fact, by using CustomerGauge’s Account Experience Program, Eaton has been able to develop an approach that helps them successfully tackle the challenges of multi-layered customer support…and collect and act on feedback to create a stronger, better customer experience.
In Episode 32 of The Account Experience Podcast, Cary and Ian interview Renan Cardoso, the Senior Customer Experience Marketing Analyst at Eaton–and learn how Renan has used CG to deliver an awesome CX across multiple divisions, all over the world.
The Challenge: Gaining Customer Insight in a Multi-Division, International Corporation
One of the most significant challenges that Renan faces at Eaton is actually understanding how customers are feeling.
“Due to the complexity of the company and how large it is, it's quite unique for us to be able to understand how satisfied customers are, and where we can actually improve,” explains Renan.
That challenge is only exacerbated by the fact that Eaton works with multiple customer personas in a range of contexts.
“The work that we do is not just a simple route to the market,” explains Renan. “We work with wholesalers and resellers. We need to ensure that every part of the value chain is satisfied. They all have different needs, issues, and problems.”
That being said, customer feedback looks like more than surveying consumers. All involved parties should be having the best possible experience.
“Having highly satisfied end-users is not sufficient,” says Renan. “We still need to make sure that our distributors and our resellers are satisfied. We need to make sure that we are providing the right materials and the right support so that they can actually bring the product to the end-user.”
"The way that CustomerGauge is built up helps us to standardize the process,” explains Renan. “We were able to bring everyone into one single program, and standardize the surveys with standard templates, which are applicable in all the different countries, regions, and product units.”
Renan continues, “This standard survey automatically generates easy-to-read results and transforms them into a visualization.”
Finally, using CustomerGauge sends short, quick surveys that are more convenient–and enjoyable–for customers.
“We used to have very long surveys, which sometimes took half an hour or even longer for the customer to read,” says Renan. “I feel embarrassed even thinking about that!”
CustomerGauge’s surveys, on the other hand, are quick and simple–making the process easier for Eaton and their customers.
“Using CustomerGauge’s methodology makes it much easier for us to work with survey results,” says Renan. “And our customers are happier because our surveys take two to three minutes compared to more than half an hour.”
Getting Buy-In Across Cultures
Because Eaton is a multinational company, Renan has to consider a variety of cultures–and even languages–when seeking buy-in for CustomerGauge’s Account Experience program.
Given that factor, Renan chooses to focus on what his manager calls the “coalition of the willing”–countries that are already open to the program.
“We decided to start working with countries that were already open to the process, or the ones who had current processes that were easy to adapt to CustomerGauge,” says Renan. “To quote my manager, we’re looking for ‘the coalition of the willing.’ Who are the departments and the managers who are willing to work with us?”
Standardization Across Different Countries
A final challenge that Eaton faces is creating a compliant process for divisions with different country rules and regulations.
“In some parts of the organization–especially in Europe–we have certain countries that work in a different way, or have different legislation,” says Renan. “There are some very important points that we have to think about when installing the program.”
To tackle this challenge, Renan doesn’t bend over backward or deviate from the playbook–but instead seeks to find ways to bring countries into the program while remaining compliant.
“We try to understand how we can actually bring them into the program without having any issues on the legal side,” says Renan.
A Closed Loop System for Effective Follow-Up
Finally, Eaton relies on CustomerGauge’s strategic closed-loop system to ensure that they don’t just collect feedback...they act on it.
“The closed-loop system from CustomerGauge is basically case management directly coupled into customer surveys,” explains Renan. “That way, the customers can directly say, ‘I want to be contacted, I still want my case to stay open.’”
They’ve also divided their closed-loop system into two loops–a “hot loop” and “cold loop”–to tailor responses to different types of problems.
“We use the ‘hot loop’ when a customer has a problem and somebody in the organization can solve it right away or can solve it alone,” says Renan. “The ‘cold loop’ is when the problem is so complicated that one person cannot solve it. You might need the whole department, or additional resources, sponsorship, or support to get the problem solved.”
To ensure that there’s an improvement, they’ve created a structured system for following up, based on drivers of success.
“After a specific period of time, we go around to different areas of the organization and come up with up to three actions to respond to feedback results,” explains Renan. “All those actions are built up into a single overview, structured off of drivers from the customer survey.”
The final result? A system that allows for strategic follow-up….and overall improvement of company processes and customer experience.
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