Customer: Hughes Network Services
Industry: Network Communications
Hughes Network Systems
Company BackgroundHughes Network Systems is the world’s leading provider of broadband satellite network services for businesses, consumers, and governments. Hughes has shipped more than 1.5 million systems in over 100 countries and reported nearly $1 billion in annual revenue for in 2007. Headquartered outside Washington, DC in Germantown, Maryland, Hughes maintains sales and support offices worldwide and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hughes Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:HUGH).
Challenge
Hughes is continuing to grow and succeed in this highly competitive market because the company is committed to delivering the highest level of customer service to all its customers—whether they are Fortune 500 companies, a small business owner or your average American family. In order to continually provide outstanding products and services, it is critical for the company to have accurate and up-to-date customer satisfaction information. More importantly, any new customer data collected needs to seamlessly integrate with other business systems and databases that store existing customer information. In this way, the various departments in the company are all able to access a holistic view of a customer’s history.
Since the late 1990’s, Hughes has tried a variety of survey tools, each having its own advantages and disadvantages. None provided a complete solution that met the full spectrum of Hughes’ needs—including a home-grown custom application developed in-house in 1999. The problem was none of these solutions were scalable or flexible enough to handle the wide range and heavy volume of survey needs. Hughes even outsourced the survey projects to third-party research firms, which proved to be too costly to maintain over the long-term.
SolutionHughes initially became a Vovici customer in 2000, and the first implementation immediately reduced the time it took to design and launch surveys. However, dramatic benefits emerged when Hughes upgraded to Vovici’s EFM Community solution in 2005, which provided real-time feedback from surveys; integration with existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and financial applications; security and confidentiality; and an open platform that enabled custom coding to accommodate Hughes’ unique requirements. Centralizing survey efforts also helped ensure all surveys adhered to consistent quality and customers were not being contacted by multiple areas of the company.
"We are expanding our use of Vovici everyday at Hughes. We literally have hundreds of surveys going out daily,” said Anida Carpenter, Customer Research and Business Intelligence manager at Hughes Network Systems. “We’re leveraging the centralized and automated feedback controls that Vovici provides to support multiple, departmental initiatives as an integrated strategic component of our success. It allows us to react faster to our customers because we have near real-time problem identification, which results in timely product and service response."
Among its many uses of EFM Community, Hughes collects information from customers at nearly every touch point. One of the key areas of measurement is the installation and fulfillment chain. Third-party auditors are employed to check on the quality of the installation at the client site to ensure all equipment associated with the satellite internet is properly installed and functioning. Capturing this information and tying it to the customer’s file allows Hughes to have a 360-degree view of the customer’s experience.
Also, new products are put to the test by customers who provide feedback through surveys. Because Hughes’ products are highly technical, and certain components of the product can only be tested after it has been installed at the client’s site, these “beta testers” provide a final opportunity for the engineering team to perfect new products before releasing them to the general public.
ResultsHughes gained a tremendous business advantage by centralizing its survey efforts in-house with Vovici’s EFM Community solution. The company improved customer satisfaction by 35-40% since 1999, and since 2001 has saved $218,000 annually by bringing survey projects in-house. Among other operational benefits, call centers around the world automatically receive daily downloads of various customer survey results, which means customer service agents, no matter where they happen to be—India, East Coast, West Coast, etc.—always have the latest, most up-to-date information available.
Hughes is able to maintain its leadership position and continue to build loyalty among their client base because they are able to communicate so effectively through the use of interactive feedback surveys
News
Vovici releases Community Builder module that will allow organizations to quickly and cost effectively create and manage online community panels — providing a voice to customers, employees, and other constituents. Learn More.
Join Vovici for an American Marketing Association webcast beginning May 1: Building Online Communities for Feedback – Why You Need Them and How to Use Them. Click here for details.