How do you know you have a marketable product if you don’t track its sales? How do you know it’s a viable product if you don’t track its adoption? How do you make improvements if you don’t track its performance? How do you know when it’s time to update to match market demand?
In an industry that faces significant challenges and hurdles like supply chain disruption and order backlog, organizations are prioritizing efficiency in their workflows and business operations. One way to maximize efficiency is by making data-driven decisions that answer many of the questions posed above. Throughout a product’s entire lifecycle journey are a significant number of decisions that need to be made; fortunately, the technology industry is leading the way when it comes to big data and analytics solutions.
TD SYNNEX vendor and Global Lifecycle Management (GLM) customer Extreme Networks understood the value of collecting data through a high-touch approach and then using those analytics to create customer stickiness.
Setting the stage: Defining customer experience
One of the differentiators for GLM is the ability to white-label services on behalf of our customers, from partner activation and enablement to customer relationship management and revenue retention. With a limited internal bandwidth and budget, Extreme Networks tapped in to GLM expertise to help define success.
Our team worked closely with Extreme Networks to help them establish KPIs of success for their Extreme Management Center software. These initial engagements helped GLM understand what metrics were most critical to determining whether or not their software was successful and if the customer experience reached its full potential.
While selling the software wasn’t the primary need, the team determined they needed to gauge how many purchasers were truly using the product for its intended purpose of onboarding. GLM immediately got to work as a white-labeled extension of the Extreme Networks team, reaching out to customers to ask about their onboarding experience.
Working smarter, not harder: Identifying gaps through automation
These check-ins with customers proved to be a critical step, helping Extreme Networks establish a new onboarding follow-up process thanks to the information that GLM was able to gather. Taking it a step further, Extreme Networks, through GLM, wanted to understand how customers who did successfully onboard the new software were using the platform itself.
“What was working well? Were they taking advantage of all the integrated features the software offers?” — Edmund Vasquez, senior manager of Customer Success & Cloud Renewals, Extreme Networks
The data and feedback captured at this stage allowed Extreme Networks to make updates and adjustments to their product in real time by relaying information to the product management organization. It ultimately led to a dedicated customer success organization within Extreme Networks.
Once information on the Extreme Management Center was captured, the Extreme Networks/GLM duo turned their attention to cloud subscription renewals. GLM began contacting SMB customers and uncovered a gap in the renewal process that was preventing some of these customers from receiving a quote to renew, which allowed their subscriptions to expire. As a result, Extreme Networks launched a foolproof renewal automation portal in 2021, ensuring all customers correctly receive renewal quotes.
End result: Success that sticks
Extreme Management Center: check. Cloud subscription renewals: check. Next step: ExtremeCloud™ IQ software. Extreme Networks was looking to round out the customer experience when it came to the adoption and usage of their cloud platforms. GLM meticulously contacted ExtremeCloud IQ customers within 90 days of their purchase to ensure the onboarding process was going smoothly. They used these conversations to discuss product features, support and enablement, leading to customer stickiness and product optimization.
“GLM was able to gather insightful information through open-ended questions and scripts with this approach, bringing us rich data that we can feed to product marketing and product lifecycle management teams.”
Learn even more about this customer experience–focused partnership from the full case study.
In all, GLM used a high-touch approach to collect insightful feedback, which was then used to make informed decisions to drive customer success and satisfaction. Check out our other examples of times GLM implemented their white-labeled services on behalf of their customers to fuel digital transformation and key business outcomes:
