Customers know best—especially when it comes to making improvements to a product they use every day. This case study explains why and how Symantec solicits customer feedback to constantly improve its Backup Exec software.
One of the most effective ways to improve a product is to ask those who use it what they like and don’t like. Symantec employs the Customer Experience Program survey to do just that. “On recent surveys,” said a Product Manager for the Backup Exec (BE) Group, “those who responded wrote comments about the installation process. We looked more closely at the issue and found that the success rate for installing Backup Exec the first time was only 70 percent.”
Telemetry Feature Improves Customer Experience
The BE Product Manager works as a customer advocate to improve the customer experience. “I act as a liaison between customers with issues and the people within Symantec who can fix those issues,” he said. “It can be as simple as emailing a customer a technical document or working with the development team to make a change in the BE software. One issue that we wanted to improve was the 70 percent success rate. We embedded a telemetry tool in the application—a feature that customers voluntarily activate and which automatically and anonymously sends us data on how they use the product. With the feedback, we made enhancements that increased our customers’ success rate to 92 percent.”
Rapid-Response Team Delivers Answers
The surveys also indicated that customers wanted faster responses to their support questions. “To address that issue,” said the Product Manager, “the BE Product Team created a cross-functional team that includes members from support, sales, marketing and engineering. This rapid-response group can quickly call on people at any level within Symantec to assist a customer. For example, a customer recently wanted a price quote for renewing their maintenance contract. The cross-functional group’s sales member immediately sent this person a quote. Listening to customer concerns and taking quick action to resolve them is our number one priority.”
Tell Us What You Think
Symantec puts customers first every day across every area of our company, products and services. If you receive a customer experience survey from us, we encourage you to provide your insights, experiences, preferences and priorities. We read every survey and take action on your feedback, so you can receive the best possible experience, value and business results from our products and services.
