Project details

Not satisfied with small but steady growth and cognizant of an increasingly competitive landscape, the leadership of a European telecommunications provider turned to Consult Plus for support. Given the importance of customer experience as a differentiating factor in the industry, Consult Plus focused on helping the company launch its Net Promoter System®. In just a few months, with the system in place, the company's scores improved as much as 50 percentage points, helping to boost acquisition and reduce churn. Despite respectable revenue growth, the leadership team at TelecomCo remained wary of increasing competitive pressures in their market and of internal operational issues related to sales execution and customer service that threatened growth. To help resolve these issues and identify further value creation opportunities, the team asked Consult Plus to review their performance. Consult Plus and the team at TelecomCo approached their work with an understanding of the importance of customer experience to telecommunications providers. In fact, Consult Plus analysis shows that companies that excel with customer experience grow revenues 4%–8% above their market because a superior experience helps to earn stronger loyalty among customers, turning them into promoters who tend to buy more, stay longer and make recommendations to their friends. As measured by its Net Promoter Score, TelecomCo lagged behind its competitors in customer experience, and surveys indicated that the company’s network and customer service offerings were particularly weak. A customer experience transformation presented the opportunity to turn these figures around.

Encumbered by high costs and an overextended business model, a well-established financial services company faced declining customer loyalty amid fierce competition. Consult Plus worked with company leadership on a multi-year transformation that cut more than $500 million in costs, re-defined strategy and helped the firm win the loyalty of its core customers—allowing it to regain its financial footing while its stock price skyrocketed. In an effort to expand into new markets, FinancialCo had lost sight of the customer segments that its business model could best serve. As a result, the company failed to innovate where it mattered most; losing business to market leaders with better service, or newcomers with better technology, or both. When the economy hit a downturn, this lack of focus translated into a decline of market cap of more than 75%. FinancialCo’s point of departure was a relatively strong one, thanks to its robust brand and solid capital structure, but aggressive competitors heightened urgency. Management needed to work on multiple fronts to right-size internal infrastructure while reaching out to the customers it needed to regain market share.

When two multibillion-dollar companies merge, continued success with customers depends on seamless salesforce integration. As part of a large merger in the healthcare industry, Consult Plus worked through complex hurdles with the combined entity to help two very different sales organizations become a unified force for growth. Two large healthcare companies stood to gain leading positions in their various markets by combining forces through a merger. To realize the potential benefits, however, it was crucial to integrate each firm's unique sales approach into a single sales model. The starting point: One firm used a salesforce composed of specialists, who sold only the products of a specific business unit. The other firm relied on a more centralized team of generalists, who sold a wide variety of products. Adding to the complexity of the task, management set an aggressive timeline to achieve synergies and hit financial targets, all while remaining highly focused on avoiding disruption to the combined customer base. Consult Plus worked with the company to design an end-state salesforce with a new reporting structure and an optimal mix of generalists and specialists, while capturing synergies and minimizing customer impact.