Questions & Answers: The Rise of the Customer Experience Officer

An Interview with Global Crossing's Vice President of Customer Experience Reengineering

The "other CEO" already has become a well-established position in industries where customer loyalty is important enough that it either makes or breaks companies.

The position continues to gain prominence in industries like health care and financial services, and now is creeping into telecom. Profitability increasingly will be determined by not only customization of services across many channels, but also one-to-one service-assurance capabilities that evolve with customers’ changing profiles, preferences and locations.

Global Crossing's Vice President of Customer Experience Reengineering Laurinda Pang

With multichannel and multipartner services evolving at a faster pace than ever before, grasping the customer experience in a holistic manner has become quite taxing to internal departments, such as marketing, sales and networking. Since each facet holds a piece of the overall customer profile, an overarching authority is necessary to identify synergies and overlap, as well as disparity and inconsistency across the organization. A person with that type of insight can drive improvements in customer data, its procurement and management, as well as its dissection and manipulation for more intelligent decision making around service delivery and service assurance.

As the vice president of customer experience reengineering, Laurinda Pang has become the "other CEO" for Global Crossing Ltd., which serves approximately 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies today. The organization recently received accolades for "outstanding" and "excellent" customer service from Telemark Services in its "ICT Service Supremacy" study, in which Global Crossing achieved high customer-service scores from 97 percent of its customers.

Billing World spoke with Pang to discuss her role as the customer experience officer, and how her position has helped Global Crossing in the delivery of its higher-margin managed services, such as VPNs and leased-line VoIP services.

Billing World: Your organization has gone through substantial changes the past few years, so why was this the right time to create the position of the customer experience officer?

Pang:

While a lot of services organizations recognize the weakness in service assurance, few have put the resources into addressing those weaknesses. No one has made that investment in the enterprise space, which is why service assurance remains an area where no one excels. We plan to change that. In 2008, we will invest one-third of our capital expenditures in the development of the seamless, holistic customer experience; and one-third to OSS; and another one-third around new products and product enhancements.

We have decided that investing in  that niche will help us in all phases of the customer lifecycle — quote, order, install, bill, service assurance, inventory management and account services.

In ICT, the days of cutting operations costs to run lean are gone, as we as an industry have to bolster operations support to achieve the next level of customer support. That "next level" comes only if a holistic view of customers is possible. To get there, we feel we have to integrate strategies and systems across service delivery, customer service and the IS organization. In that vein, we will build internal support structures that help not only the overall performance of the business, but the customer-facing personnel who interface with customers. The two will be inextricably linked.

That will help us understand enterprise needs, their services, their processes and their systems. Once there is a deep understanding of those variables, we can foster a seamless and consistent experience for products and services we offer around the globe. We want the enterprise to know what to expect of us, regardless of where its operations are located.

Billing World: Everyone claims to be transitioning from a price- and network-centric approach to a customer-oriented strategy. What sets you apart?

Pang:

Billing World: Have you seen any results?

Pang:

In the survey, not only did 97 percent of our customers say they were satisfied, but we also outstripped competitors in key categories, including service activity support and overall value. We also won the "Best in Class" rating for their "Product is Upgradeable" category, where 15 service attributes were evaluated.

Billing World: What about your organization’s structure has enabled you to do that?

Pang:

To further that consistency, we provide each customer its own personalized team, comprised of a dedicated sales person, a client services manager (focused on the actual support of the customer, or the farming out of the customer), and a sales engineer who handles the technical aspects of their services. Whether North America, Latin America, Europe or other regions of the world, the delivery of services and the troubleshooting of issues are therefore handled by Global Crossing teams well-versed in the road map of systems and processes we develop with our customers to foster consistency.

Billing World: Where are you in the development of that road map right now?

Pang:

Part of this initiative involves an "invest-and-grow" mantra that will help us go beyond what we already can do today, such as delivering superior value and outstanding product performance capabilities. Going forward, we have to focus on things that directly impact customer satisfaction, including collaborative account management and highly responsive, flexible customer support.

Billing World: Why are you qualified for the position of customer experience officer?

Pang:

I’d been with the company for 14 years through acquisitions in sales and operations, as well as customer and client support roles. I also headed up investor relations for three years, and business operations in our U.K. venture prior to the acquisition of Frontier Communications. I was also in charge of a small business group that comprised half of the revenue of the company before the acquisition.
Those experiences give me a perspective of where we stand in customer support, operations and financial strength.

Billing World: Why do you think the telecom market is primed for this position?

Pang:

The timing is right now, as customer service rather than the price is the differentiator. ICTs have to concentrate on servicing the customers to pull further ahead of a growing mix of non-traditional competitors, such as Internet and entertainment companies. Telcos have to drive loyalty. That will come from more than just providing high bandwidth, complex services and sophisticated networks. Loyalty comes from the differentiated experience you can offer.
As an industry, we have to ensure we have not only the technology and the pricing components, but an optimal support structure that impresses existing customers enough that they stay with us. The customer experience officer can facilitate that structure by striving to inject the customers’ perceptions about service into the organization, from the highest levels down.