Turning Data Into Profit: Driving Business Growth and Profit From a Customer Experience Management Program

The relationship survey is one part of an integrated process designed to give Oracle a 360-degree view of customers in order to improve and customize sales, marketing and services programs. Oracle listens widely for the VOC. Beyond surveys, Oracle listens to user groups, advisory boards, focus groups and user experience sessions.

Beyond VOC feedback, Oracle looks for linkages to operational and financial measures. Collecting and modeling such information is an excellent start, but increased loyalty comes from making such research actionable. Accordingly, Oracle publishes the feedback via role-based dashboards to tens of thousands of employees. All of this drives a closed-loop process that results in constantly improving operational efficiency.

This is how Oracle has fueled its increases in customer satisfaction year after year. Impressively, this is growth in overall satisfaction across Oracle’s expanding customer base, even as revenue has swelled from less than $14 billion in 2005 to more than $23 billion in its most recent fiscal year. Oracle has grown dramatically through acquisition, with more than 53 acquisitions since 2005, including PeopleSoft, Siebel and BEA Systems, and customer satisfaction is higher for the customers of acquired companies post-acquisition than it was pre-acquisition.

Clearly, Oracle’s focus on the CCO, centralized survey research and enabling a 360-degree view of the customer has enabled it to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty and word-of-mouth like clockwork.

Jeffrey Henning is the founder and vice president of strategy at Vovici, a Dulles, Va.-based provider of comprehensive survey software, panel management and online community solutions. Jeffrey can be reached at jhenning@vovici.com.