• FAQs

Cisco is pleased to recognize and congratulate partner organizations for achieving Cisco Channel Customer Satisfaction Excellence.

Customer Satisfaction Excellence is the highest distinction a partner can achieve within the Cisco Channel Partner Program. Partners achieving this quarterly honor are identifiable by the "Gold Star" distinction in the Cisco Partner Locator tool. Partner Locator users will also be able to search for all partners that currently hold the quarterly Cisco Customer Satisfaction Excellence award by using the advanced search functionality.

The Channel Partner Customer Satisfaction Excellence assessment is based upon the customer satisfaction results captured in the Cisco Partner Access Online tool. Each quarter, Cisco recalculates the numbers from the previous (rolling) four quarters, and then acknowledges Partners who achieved customer satisfaction distinction within each geographic region during this time frame.

• Award Requirements
• Qualification Period
• Examples of Program Qualifications

Award Requirements

To qualify for Customer Satisfaction Excellence recognition, the Certified Partner must meet two qualifications:

1. Achieve a minimum number of survey responses:
   • Gold Partners = equal or greater than 30 responses
   • Silver Partners = equal or greater than 20 responses for the FY13 Q2 measurement, 30 responses for the FY13 Q4 measurement
   • Premier Partners = equal or greater than 20 responses
2. Meet or exceed the Cisco Customer Satisfaction Excellence target for your region:
   
   Cisco FY'13 targets are based upon your region’s actual FY'12 Customer Satisfaction averages. Customer Satisfaction is a weighted average of a partner's pre and post-sales support.
   
   APJC............4.45
   EMEA............4.53
   Americas........4.57 for the FY13 Q2 measurement, 4.60 for the FY13 Q4 measurement
   

Qualification Period

Qualification for Cisco Customer Satisfaction Excellence will be determined at the end of Cisco * fiscal Q2 and Q4 on a rolling 12-month window.

*The FY2013 Cisco Fiscal Year Dates are:
End of Q2 - Jan 26, 2013
End of Q4 - Jul 27, 2013 (Please note Jul 13, 2013 will be the FINAL day surveys may be received for Q4)

Examples of Program Qualifications

These two examples illustrate the process of quarterly recalculations to determine Customer Satisfaction Excellence qualification.

Example #1: Qualifying Partner

For Partner X, a Gold Partner from APJC region: This partner qualifies for Customer Satisfaction Excellence because both of the above program requirements were met or exceeded.

Example #2: Non-Qualifying Partner

For Partner Y, a Premier Partner from Americas region: This partner did not qualify because only one requirement was met, not both.

In the above example, since the partner did not reach their Americas Regional Target of 4.60, they would not qualify for the Customer Satisfaction Excellence Award even though the total number of responses requirement was met.

Thanks for your interest in Cisco Customer Loyalty Economics

Never before has it been so easy to link customer loyalty to your profitability.

Loyalty Model

The customer loyalty phase of Partner Access online (PAL) uses propriety data and analysis from Walker Information, an independent third party, whereby "willingness to recommend" and "willingness to repurchase" become new foundational metrics to complement current Cisco customer and partner satisfaction metrics. "This move takes Cisco beyond other IT channel programs in the area of measuring customer satisfaction," says Michael Harris, Vice President of Research for Gartner Dataquest.

Partners benefit from a customized view of loyalty data which segments their customers by loyal, accessible, trapped, or at-risk segmentation. Financials are tied to customer loyalty metrics, to allow partners to understand the financial impact of losing a customer based on historical bookings data. Partners can also conduct "what if" analysis to customize their financial results based on partners known bookings and profit margins. Moreover, access to year-over-year trending, based on customer loyalty segmentation, is provided to determine whether actions taken one year had any impact in subsequent years with resultant top-line growth.

The release of this new functionality is available to all partners, However, only Cisco Gold Certified Partners will have sales bookings comparison functionality. Future releases will include sales bookings comparisons for all certified partners.

> Access PAL