For telecom carriers, guaranteeing a good "customer experience" can be a vapid promise that is purposely hard to quantify. But Global Crossing has re-engineered its entire business around the concept over the past three years, and the facilities-based, tier two global telecom provider has hard metrics in place to measure its success.
The quest for an improved customer experience also resulted in merging Global Crossing's chief technical officer (CTO) and chief information officer (CIO) positions into a combined CTIO post to make sure software and network technology were in sync. To drive the goal home, Global Crossing tied a portion of all employees' annual bonuses to customer experience metrics.
"Customer experience is the new battleground in the industry," said Global Crossing CTIO Anthony Christie. With up to 75% of Global Crossing's orders coming in from existing customers, the provider must pay close attention to how customers feel about service. The results? Global Crossing commissions third-party research and reports that more than 90% of its customers are satisfied and 75% are in the very satisfied range and say they will buy again.
Current Analysis Research Director Brian Washburn gives Global Crossing a positive rating because it remains focused on its goals of concentrating on growth services, keeping customer satisfaction high, lowering access costs and rolling out new services and enhancing existing ones.
Global Crossing competes in a tough market – providing global telecom services to a range of multinational enterprises and service providers. Its direct competitors include large players like Verizon Business, AT&T, BT Global Services and Orange Business Services. The company also sells telecom services and capacity to other telecom service providers.
Global Crossing's focus on customer experience has worked well since 1998 for PSAV Presentation Services, a multimedia event presentation company. The company has a pool of 3,000 technicians who provide audiovisual services on-premises in hotels in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and other locations around the globe. New voice, data and video services need to be delivered every time PSAV goes into a new location.
"When we go into a new hotel, I may need a T1 installed quickly, or I may need to delay it all of a sudden," said Alex Randow, director of PSAV's IT Support Center. "We love Global Crossing's flexibility, because things change on a dime."