New Simplified Customer Satisfaction Requirements

Cisco continues to invest in helping channel partners during the current economic downturn, while improving its position to accelerate in the upturn. By increasing the collective focus on the customer base, Cisco strives to promote the long-term health of partners. Now, more than ever, customer satisfaction stands as a significant competitive differentiator for Cisco partners, as it expands their eligibility for financial incentives.

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) has always been a cornerstone of the Cisco Channel Partner Program and an integral part of establishing customer loyalty. It provides a method for partners to assess customer-to-partner relationships and actively address customer concerns.

Simplifying CSAT

Cisco is simplifying the CSAT process to:

• Align the CSAT requirements and timing to those of the Cisco Value Incentive Program (VIP), certification, and CSAT excellence
• Eliminate the need to measure CSAT by separate technology tracks (to better support partners in solution- and architecture-based selling, one CSAT score now applies to all VIP tracks and network architectures)
• Provide real-time visibility to surveys from all sources through the Partner Access onLine (PAL) tool
• Increase the objectivity of the surveys by introducing additional survey sources: partner sourced, Cisco account manager sourced, and secondary sources*
• Continue to allow only partner-sourced surveys in consideration for VIP eligibility
• Optimize and automate the customer response allowance (CRA) formula to eliminate survey outliers

*For example, surveys from customers who call the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) and identified the partner as the solution provider

Cisco Network Architectures

To move to an architectural approach, Cisco is aligning its efforts across the company, including products, services, programs, and partners. These architectural capabilities help enable new business models and business transformation. They change the discussion from a technology conversation to a business conversation, and position the network as a platform for application-based solutions.

VIP and Architectural Capabilities

The VIP will now allow partners to profit from selling technology solutions based on three architectural approaches that customers are adopting: collaboration, virtualization, and borderless networks that provide secure mobile infrastructure. Furthermore, the VIP will now reward channel partners who sell advanced technologies, as well as routing, switching, wide area networking optimization, Cisco Unified Computing, storage networking, and emerging technologies, such as Cisco TelePresence.

Visit the CSAT web pages for more information about these enhancements.

If you have any questions, please contact your Cisco channel account manager or open a case with the Partner Relationship Team.