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The Customer Experience Blueprint:Roadmap to Measurable Front-Office Results Siebel Systems has taken our 11 years helping 4,000 customers, representing 3.2million end users, solve their most challenging front-office business problems anddeveloped the Customer Experience Blueprint.

While most businesspeople have heard the buzzaround a corporate customer-driven strategy,few recognize the complexity associated withbuilding and executing a comprehensivefront-office initiative to support that strategy.Over the past 15 years, companies have largelyfocused on optimizing static and linear back-office processes. It’s not surprising that thosesame companies that have applied a similarapproach to dynamic, nonlinear front-officeprocesses have come up short.

“The basic nature of the problem is verydifferent than what many executives arefamiliar with,” says Peter McCullagh, groupvice president of customer strategy for SiebelSystems. “Back-office methodology is linear,cost-driven and controllable, whereas with a front-office initiative you have customerscontrolling the interactions, relationships andthe processes.”

But the difference in these two strategiesdoesn’t stop there. The critical difference islong-term competitive advantage. “The bene-fits of cost-savings and driving efficiencieshave already been exploited to their fullestextent in the back office. Today, thereare only two areas left forcompanies to gain advantage:one is culture, and the other is the relationships they have with customers,” saysMcCullagh. “And if companiescan foster profitable customerrelationships, they can createreal competitive advantage,because these relationshipswould be virtually impossiblefor other companies to copy, unlike back-officeoptimization.”

Case Study: Horizon HealthcareHorizon Healthcare had morecustomers than ever before, but meeting all of their indiv-iduals needs was becoming a challenge.

As membership increased, so did thevolume of calls to Horizon’s call center, andmany were from new members who neededdetailed information about their health plans.To make things even harder, Horizon’stechnology was outdated. Customer servicerepresentatives had to navigate through fiveseparate systems to get to claims.

Horizon is always looking to improve its customer service, so the company real-ized that its outdated systems were ineffi-cient and negatively impacting customersatisfaction. The company needed a solutionthat would improve customer responsetimes and help call center representativesprovide efficient and comprehensiveanswers through easy access to customer and claims information.

To meet its goals, Horizon successfullyimplemented Siebel Call Center solutions to 1,200 call center representatives. Nowcustomer calls are resolved 20 percentfaster; employee productivity has improved25 percent, even with 200,000 morecustomers; and call wait times have beenreduced 20 percent.

Enter the Customer Experience BlueprintBased on this wealth of implementationknowledge and experience, we’ve collectedleading practices from helping customersachieve measurable, front-office businessresults and compiled them into the CustomerExperience Blueprint. This comprehensivesix-stage framework gives companies a list of guidelines to follow for front-office imple-mentation success. And we have found thatwhen companies follow these principles, theyare seven to ten times more likely to achievethe desired results.

“We’ve learned the same lessons over and over again from these deployments,”McCullagh notes. “Keep it simple. Keep itfocused. Manage the scope aggressively. And apply the 80/20 rule. If executivemanagement supports the initiative, you’vegot the 80 percent, and if you compensatepeople to adopt the initiative, that’s the other 20 percent. In my experience, you can maintain the focus by doing those twothings. Otherwise, your initiative is notlikely to be successful.”

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The Customer Experience Blueprint: Roadmap to Measurable Front-Office Results

Case Study: Cingular WirelessCingular Wireless needed to present aconsistent, unified, single message to its customers.

After being formed by two major tele-communications companies, Cingular had to bring together diverse business cultures,work styles and levels of computer literacy.The company had to implement commonprocesses, behaviors and tools across its B-to-B salesforce so that it could successfullyshare and manage customer information andmultiple markets across the United States.

Cingular deployed Siebel Communicationsas part of a comprehensive initiative to unifyand increase the effectiveness of itssalesforce. In addition to standardizing on anew technology, Cingular realigned its salesterritories and rolled out a new compen-

sation plan to further support the success ofthe new strategy.

Today, Cingular has one face to showcustomers, and the sales team has madesignificant improvements in its accountcoordination and effectiveness. Improvedcustomer management has increased the volume of lead routing to 100 leads per day. Performance benchmarking hashelped the company proactively provideneeded support and coaching. And theaddition of Siebel Wireless has armed the salesforce with real-time access tocustomer information while in the field.Ultimately, all of these benefits supportwhat Cingular cites as the biggest improvement of all: increased and highlyproductive activity between sales repre-sentatives and customers.

Six Stages to Front-Office SuccessSiebel’s Customer Experience Blueprint con-sists of six distinct stages. Each stage containsa set of tasks that must be completed before aproject can proceed to the next stage. The sixstages include:

Stage 1: Understand – Establish a clearunderstanding of the current state of yourbusiness, including your position relative toyour competition and the experiences yourcustomers have with your company today.

Stage 2: Envision – Agree upon a clearvision of what you’d like your customerexperience to be in the future, including adetailed strategy for achieving that state. It is critical to specify the business resultsyou seek and to establish key performanceindicators you’ll use to measure progress and success.

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About Siebel SystemsSiebel Systems’ solutions help organizations of all sizes optimizetheir people, processes and technolo-gy around their customers, leading to outstanding customer experiencesand superior business results. Ourcustomer relationship management,business intelligence and customerdata integration solutions are theproduct of more than $2 billion indirect and partner investment andreflect over 11 years of experience withmore than 4,000 organizations.

George ShaheenChief Executive Officer

Thomas M. Siebel Founder and Chairman of the Board

Kenneth A. GoldmanSenior Vice President, Finance and Administration and Chief Financial Officer

Siebel Systems, Inc.2207 Bridgepointe ParkwaySan Mateo, CA 94404 www.siebel.com

Business ContactDavid HicksPhone 720.529.4183david.hicks@siebel.com

Stage 3: Define – Establish a projectplan, scope and solution design that spanspeople, process and technology domains fora comprehensive and realistic understandingof effort, cost and timetable to achievebusiness outcomes.

Stage 4: Build and Deliver – Work withthe people, processes and technologies toimplement the plan that you have defined.Ensure that each component of the solution

meets the key performance indicators youagreed upon in Step 2.

Stage 5: Confirm – Evaluate yourperformance and determine where you are inrelation to your future objectives. A successfullaunch of your solution is not enough. Youmust ensure that you have aligned yourpeople, processes and technology to providethe desired customer experience.

Stage 6: Operate and Optimize –Because your company’s business is dynamicand customers are constantly changing, youwill need to continually optimize the solutionto meet your business goals.

Establishing Exit CriteriaIn building the Customer Experience Blueprint,we set out to define the critical tasks that must be completed to maximize the successfrom front-office solutions. At each CustomerExperience Blueprint stage, there are specificdeliverables that must exist before a projectcan proceed to the next stage. These “exitcriteria” help businesses determine wherethey are in the Blueprint life cycle.

For the final stage, Operate and Optimize,the exit criteria is unique in that there is noreal conclusion to the stage. This stage isongoing and iterative by nature, as companiesmust continually optimize their solutions tomeet evolving business needs and market

demands. All new improvement initiativesdeveloped in the Operate and Optimize stageare looped back to the appropriate stage inthe Blueprint and implemented by followingthe processes and procedures prescribed inthe subsequent stages.

Exit criteria provide objective evidencethat help everyone understand when work ina particular stage is complete. These criteriamake the Blueprint methodology-independent

since the specific method or technique usedto produce the exit criteria is not the focus.The Blueprint simply specifies what mustexist before a company moves to the nextstage. It does not specify how (themethodology) to produce that exit criteria.

In the end, the Blueprint’s most importantvalue contribution is that it is more than atechnology implementation plan. “The realvalue of the Customer Experience Blueprintframework is that it encourages people tothink through more than just the technologydimension of a problem,” explains PerryKeating, senior vice president of globalservices for Siebel Systems. “It makes youthink holistically at a higher level aboutthings such as how products or servicesshould be bundled together, incentives tomotivate customers to buy, how to improvetraining and how to use information tools to provide greater customer insight.”

While Siebel can address many of theneeds that are identified through theBlueprint process, some tasks and activitiesmay involve other providers. “The point is: We care deeply about our customers’success – and showing them real results,”McCullagh comments. “The CustomerExperience Blueprint is a real tool to helpcustomer-facing organizations succeed in acompetitive world.” ■

“The real value of the Customer Experience Blueprint frame-work is that it encourages people to think through more thanjust the technology dimension of a problem.” – Perry Keating,senior vice president of global services for Siebel Systems