Evidently, unlike 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, where customers were not a priority, this year, they have been:
From an SSI interview.
This is a reflection of what's wrong with big companies. So many spend years abusing their customers and then pick 1 year out of 10 to try to not do that.
Related: Lenel Partners Angry, Lenel Does Not Care, Worst Manufacturer Technical Support 2018
Can't speak for all of UTC, but when I worked for Chubb Edwards pretty much everything came from UTC. Of the two and a half years I worked there, every year was "more emphasis on the customer". "Building the customer experience." What it really meant was, we want to increase margins, finish jobs quicker, and make sure to up-sell when ever we can. Also make sure we are using more UTC products.
Especially towards the tech, they really wanted to grow the fire service business, so as security guys they wanted us to learn how to do fire, and try to find out when their fire inspections may be due so the fire sales guy can get in there.
This is why I left the big companies to work for an owner operated company.
The reality is that these big corporations need to meet quarterly numbers....that will always be the priority and absolute goal of a publicly traded company . Priorities are set and executive compensation is measured by quarterly profit -
If executive compensation and bonus was tied to a client satisfaction metric, then I would take the bullshit seriously...but that will never happen
Everything else said and written are platitudes and buzzwords which appear to align with staff and client beliefs...make no mistake, executive survival is based solely on their last three months of profit
I think the business of every business is the people and putting the customer as first priority is the way to go.
The problem is that it's really, really, ridiculously hard to actually prioritize the customer. And the bigger the organization, the harder it gets.
Why do you think so?
One reason I think is that the bigger the company is, the more market power they have and the easier it is to exploit that power to make quick profits rather than prioritize customers (e.g., large Lenel end users who face high switching costs are easier to profit by squeezing than delighting).
It's hard to do because it's hard to measure. Organizations mainly do what the people up top want done. And in a large, top heavy organization, the people at the top mainly manage by spreadsheet, that is, judging a business unit's relative effectiveness and worth by metrics and key performance indicators. Since it's hard to quantify customer satisfaction on a spreadsheet, but easy to quantify (and thus reward) profitability on a spreadsheet, then profitability is what middle management is going to pursue.
You can't just wave your hand and say "this year we are going to focus on the customer" and expect it to happen. You can't even put money towards customer appreciation initiatives, although of course that helps, because everybody knows what the higher ups really care about.
If you really want to focus on the customer, you need to find, recognize, and promote people who actually do that. You need to create programs that support the customer and then actually nourish those programs. And you need to invest in areas that don't directly lead to short term profitability, like tech support and customer service.
The old Pelco, for example, knew how to focus on the customer, and they were rewarded by intense customer loyalty, long after there was any reason to remain loyal. Hikvision, for all its faults, knows how to focus on the customer; they have enough foot soldiers on the ground that individual reps can lavish attention on the sort of little dealer who the bigger manufacturers ignore, their constant product updates means that they always have awesome new features, the product is cheap enough that returns are never a problem, and their QC isn't half bad. In return, their customers reward them with the sort of fanatical loyalty we see on this very forum.
But a company that doesn't already focus on the customer will have a very hard time changing that. It takes years, and a fundamental restructuring of exactly what it is the company actually does.
It's not a matter of cash. It's not a matter of will. It's a matter of inertia. And the bigger the organization, the harder it is to redirect it.
Hikvision, for all its faults, knows how to focus on the customer; they have enough foot soldiers on the ground that individual reps can lavish attention on the sort of little dealer
I don't disagree with that description of Hikvision but Hikvision is not operating by normal Western commercial norms. If Lenel was owned by the Chinese government...
Btw:
Since it's hard to quantify customer satisfaction on a spreadsheet,
NPS (net promoter score) has become a big quantifiable metric in the tech space though not sure how much it is adopted by security manufacturers.
Related, I started a new discussion: Do You Quantify Customer Satisfaction Or Use NPS Scores?
NPS (net promoter score) has become a big quantifiable metric in the tech space though not sure how much it is adopted by security manufacturers.
It is certainly possible to measure customer loyalty. But read your link. How many security product manufacturers could even begin to measure it, let alone do anything about it, right now? Not many.
Not even throwing money at the problem can fix that right away.
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