Customer Satisfaction
Cisco Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) continues to be one of the highest priorities of Cisco and a cornerstone of the Cisco Channel Partner Program. CSAT is an integral part of establishing customer loyalty, and gives partners a method to assess customer-to-partner relationships and actively address customer concerns. Partner Access onLine (PAL) provides partners with real-time, partner-customized access to Cisco best practice sharing.
"Our key differentiating feature is our fanatical approach to customer satisfaction"
John Chambers, Cisco Chief Executive Officer
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.
To qualify for Customer Satisfaction Excellence recognition, the Certified Partner must meet two qualifications:
Qualification for Cisco Customer Satisfaction Excellence will be determined at the end of Cisco fiscal Q2 (January) and Q4 (July) on a rolling 12-month window.
These two examples illustrate the process of quarterly recalculations to determine Customer Satisfaction Excellence qualification.
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.
Requirement | Target | Actual | Requirements Met? |
---|---|---|---|
# of Responses | 30 (Gold/Silver Partners Target) |
35 | Yes |
CSAT Regional Target | 4.45 (APJC Regional Target) |
4.70 | Yes |
For Partner Y, a Premier Partner from Americas region: This partner did not qualify because only one requirement was met, not both.
Requirement | Target | Actual | Requirements Met? |
---|---|---|---|
# of Responses | 20 (Premier Partner Target) |
21 | Yes |
CSAT Regional Target | 4.60 (Americas Regional Target) |
4.59 | No |
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.
Never before has it been so easy to link customer loyalty to your profitability.
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 functionality is available to all partners, However, only Cisco Gold Certified Partners will have sales bookings comparison functionality.