Resellers: When quality of experience counts

For dealers, resellers and others in the channel, a major source of value in today`s economy is to be found in the quality of the relationships they have built with their customers - the end-users.

Graham Vorster, chief technology officer at Duxbury Networking, looks at the factors that contribute towards the strengthening of these relationships, and the key influences on the customers` overall quality of experience (QoE) at the hands of resellers.

Customer relationships are built on trust. They always have been. Trust is established gradually, over time, between buyer and seller usually on a one-to-one basis.

Trust is established only after customers have experienced repeated, positive experiences in dealings with the supplier. Usually, the quality of the customer experience determines the level of loyalty the purchaser will display towards the vendor and the brand.

It`s a complex and time-consuming procedure.

For all this, the QoE formula is simple: A positive total customer experience generates loyalty - a negative one engenders deflection to the opposition.

The question is, what constitutes a positive customer experience - and how can its quality be enhanced in a way that will cement the relationships involved?

What are the markers - or differentiators - for superb customer services and QoE? Is it possible to create targets for QoE and measure the potential for their success or failure?

One of the key problems is that, today, resellers and customers interface with one another on many different levels. The old "salesman-to-buyer" approach no longer applies.

For example, pre-sales executives deal with company executives to determine corporate strategies and map new technologies and new product offerings to these metrics.

Technical experts are brought in to design new solutions. They connect with departmental heads and financial consultants to address total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI) issues.

The implementation teams from both sides focus on the challenges of logistics and ways to minimise disruption to regular business flows.

Finally the visionaries from both supplier and customer have to agree on future directions that will encompass the integration of new technologies and the convergence of existing ones.

This is all achieved against a (usual) backdrop of tight or constrained budgets, burgeoning end-user expectations and the ever-present possibility of security risks.

To maintain a similar mindset for all these players, meet the unique needs of special groups and possibly exceed the expectations of executive management is a tall order indeed for the reseller.

The first rule for QoE enhancement is to involve all players from both reseller and customer in the process. Form a team that includes key executives (CEO and CFO), financial consultants (TCO, and risk analysis people), technical experts (CTO and CIO) and support personnel.

You will be looking to involve people who display leadership qualities, who are confident and innovative and have a "can do" attitude. Group like-minded men and women who are open to ideas such as technology integration (merging data and voice infrastructures for example), convergence and training.

Some of the tasks they will have to oversee, monitor and manage include enabling critical business applications, managing and controlling the corporate network, examining cost of ownership issues and future-proofing the organisation and performing ROI analyses on key IT investments.

As part of their QoE brief, they will address issues such as the optimisation of business operating efficiencies, increased user productivity, purchase avoidance, net fixed asset purchase avoidance, reduced downtime losses (increased system availability) and the quest for other strategic business advantages.

Successful QoE programmes will deliver a number of long-term business benefits - both tangible and intangible.

The measure of the tangible benefits ultimately pits a project`s costs against the total benefits, culminating in the derivation of four key indicators of project viability:

* ROI - the ratio of the net gain from a proposed project, divided by its total costs.

* Net present value (NPV) - a measure of the net benefit of a project, in today`s rand terms.

* Internal rate of return (IRR) - the discount rate necessary to drive the NPV to zero. (In more practical terms, the value another investment would need to generate in order to be equivalent to the cash flows of the investment being considered.)

* Payback period (break-even) - the time it takes for the project to yield a positive cumulative cash flow.

By their very nature, many QoE benefits may be difficult to quantify in absolute monetary terms.

Often, however, QoE benefits can be quantified into key performance indicators (KPIs) such as a percentage of market share, or industry ranking.

Other KPIs include:

* Brand advantage - advancing or reinforcing the corporate brand`s positioning.

* Strategic advantage - achieving overall corporate objectives.

* Competitive advantage - releasing solutions faster, developing solutions less expensively, better addressing customer needs, meeting changing market demand.

* Intellectual capital - increase in the knowledge gained by the staff, and the perceived market value derived from these gains.

* Organisational advantage - enabling an organisation to function more effectively through reinforcing or recreating a positive working environment and corporate culture

* Risk avoidance - highlighting the risk of not implementing a solution.