InformationWeek

September 27, 1999

When Customers Are King

continued....page 2 of 3

Illustration by Dennis Harms Businesses that don't have direct contact with their customers have a particularly tough time becoming customer-driven, and are less likely to have technology in place to support it. The Dwyer Group Inc., the Waco, Texas, parent of service companies such as Mr. Rooter, Mr. Electric, and Mr. Appliance, only dealt with its customers through its franchises. Customer information was sent to the $20 million Dwyer Group through a low-tech method: bundles of pink paper invoices. "We had buckets of them everywhere," says controller Al Kruzel. "The question was, what do you do with them?" It was costly and difficult to pull data from the forms. "We didn't know who the customer was; we didn't know if the customer was happy," Kruzel says. And, since Dwyer knew nothing about its customers, it didn't know how to sell or market to them.

Dwyer's executives gave the challenge of revamping the customer processes to the IT group. After a couple of false starts, the company formed a committee that included senior IT and business executives and the board of directors. The product the committee settled on was Pivotal Technology's Partner Pivotal Relationship Hub application. Partner Hub lets stores enter customer data in a companywide database stored in Dwyer's Pivotal Relationship CRM application, giving the company key information and helping each chain sell to one another's customer bases.

To increase contacts with customers, Dwyer plans to use the Web to process requests for plumbing, electrical work, and appliance repair services. The Web site, to debut at the end of the year, will let customers enter requests, and then will use Pivotal's Partner Relationship Hub to dispatch a repair person from one of its stores based on the nature and location of the problem.

Al Kruzel Photo by Mark Perlstein Dwyer has its reasons to focus on the site: its preliminary research shows that 45% of its 2.1 million-consumer household base is connected to the Web--and some of those customers prefer to communicate via the Web.

Dwyer and Oak Paper are indicative of the new technology and business collaboration crossing the industry. More than half of IT managers surveyed by InformationWeek Research say they're brought in to help develop new products from the start, while another 31% are asked in the middle of the process itself.

If a company is agile and responsive to customer needs, it's more likely thatthe relationship between its business and IT units will be seamless. "IT departments drive the technology," says Christopher Leibfreid, managing director of PricewaterhouseCoopers' CRM practice. "One of the main touchpoints for customers now is the Web, which is heavily technology focused." In other words, if businesses that once relied solely on direct sales forces want to reach out to customers over the Web, they have to work closely with IT.

For Free-PC Inc., which gives consumers free PCs underwritten by ads running on its machines, the Web is vital to understanding what its customers want. Since the bulk of its customers use computers to connect to the Web, the company has custom-built software that monitors not only what ads consumers are clicking on, but also how well the computer systems, applications, and network connections are performing. It uses that data to improve performance, change ads, and update its client software. "We try to create a more useful experience for the consumer," says Steve Chadima, VP of marketing for the Pasadena, Calif., company.

pie charts To handle customer questions and complaints, the company bought software from NetDialog Inc., which provides E-mail management, Web self-service, and voice and chat interaction with customers. One of NetDialog's attractions was that it integrated all means of customer contact. When a customer can't answer a question through self-service, the package will make sure E-mails are answered quickly, and let a customer talk to a representative if necessary by clicking a "call me" button.

As a startup, Free-PC is unencumbered by old-line IT structures. The company updates its client software frequently; it requires tight, constant interplay between development personnel and business people. "The technology team is not some isolated group of folks sitting over in a corner," Chadima says. They're physically located with the business people and meet with them constantly. When the company creates a new generation of software, three groups are in the room:

IT development and support, customer service, and marketing. That communication is critical. "The companies that do the best are ones that have seamless flow of information between technologists and the customer-focused part of the organization," Chadima says.

How companies facilitate intra-organizational interaction varies dramatically. For some, such as NorthPoint Communications Inc., a San Francisco vendor of digital subscriber line technology for small and midsize businesses, it's relatively informal: The marketing team will contact the IT shop in the early phases of an idea, so the result is a group project. That interchange is built into NorthPoint's corporate culture. "We're here as a company not to provide different functional areas, but to provide a set of services," says marketing VP Judy Levine, "People look for how to link their jobs into initiatives."

continued...page 3
return to page 1