Case Study-Project
Company Founded in 1997, HTC has created
many of the most popular OEM-branded mobile devices on the market. Since 2006,
they have introduced top-rated devices under their own brand powered by Android
and Windows. They are competing against the top mobile vendors and are
aggressively trying to establish a strong HTC brand. The company is
headquartered in Taiwan and employs over 16,000 people. Challenge HTC launched
a global customer initiative in 2012 to take their customer product experience
to a new level and create a new industry standard.
Their channel business model made it
difficult to engage directly with consumers and often customer information
resided in regional silos making it difficult to understand consumer profiles,
issues and buying patterns. Most of the product help content was in PDFs which
housed old data. They needed a system to provide the most updated and relevant
help content. HTC was looking for an integrated tool set that could easily be
deployed to all of their divisions, geographies and partners. This would enable
them to get a comprehensive picture of customer profiles, issues and to help
them prioritize changes to the content as well as product enhancements. It
needed to be broadly accessible to all of the global constituencies, including
call centers, websites, internal product experts and customers as well as
incorporate all of the languages and workflows of a global company. The new
system would enable them to understand the market better, serve their customer
needs, and enable them to react more quickly to issues and trends – all
enabling them to establish stronger customer relationships. The global
popularity of HTC represented another challenge: they could get over 100,000
posts to their Facebook page daily which was difficult to manage. They weren’t
able to take advantage of the customer feedback they were getting. They felt
they were losing the relationship with their customer and they wanted a system
that could incorporate customer opinions and issues so they could quickly respond
to them and make the necessary changes or enhancements. The goal was to
strengthen relationships with their customers and strengthen their brand. A new
product experience platform would take a big step toward achieving that goal.
Requirements One of the most important requirements of the new system was to be
able to update, modify and access information easily and in real time. To
accomplish this, the product needed to be collaborative and provide a
centralized knowledge management system that could manage a large inflow of
information. The goal was to deliver the ultimate customer self-service
experience – their users and agents could access the most updated and relevant
information quickly and easily without having to pick up the phone or write an
email. In researching the various solutions in the market, it became clear that
the large enterprise solutions were expensive and did not have all The project
is a big success. • It came in on time and on budget! •
HTC has seen the improvements in
customer experience they expected from both a technological and behavioral
perspective • Ticket deflection has increased significantly “MindTouch has
given us the power to re-engage with our customers and helped us to create the
ultimate customer self-service product experience of the functionality that
they needed. They also recognized that if they were going to choose a
best-of-breed solution, it must be able to integrate with other best-of-breed
solutions – the vendors needed to share a similar vision. In addition, the
system needed to be customizable so HTC could add functionality that was
specific to their needs.
The new system needed to be multi-channel so
they could gather a comprehensive customer profile and update/change
information according to customer interactions from a variety of sources,
including Facebook, agent calls and website information. HTC wanted to know
everything about their customers’ products and intentions regardless of the
channel used. They also wanted everyone in the organization to have the same
information. The team needed a solution that could be deployed quickly and it
had to be flexible to meet their changing customer needs and market
requirements. Scalability was critical. Another important component of the new
system was to provide customer “intelligence” and analytics so HTC could better
understand user behavior and intent increasing their crossselling
opportunities. This insight could also identify product shortcomings and
possible new directions. Why MindTouch:
The HTC team chose MindTouch to develop
their ultimate customer self-service system for several reasons: • MindTouch
enabled them to track customer behavior and own their customer data. With the
new system, they could finally be proactive about presenting customers with consistent,
relevant, and updated content regardless of the channel accessed. • The new
system provided a centralized knowledge repository of all product help
information that could be plugged in to all customer access points that was
easy to manage. • HTC was finally able to capitalize on their customer input.
Answers to product questions and issues, whether from a product expert or
consumer, could now be delivered in real time with much higher value due to
broader and higher quality input, better understanding of user intentions and
needs, and the system’s ability to continually rank information based on its
relevance to what the user needs. HTC could also get a better understanding of
product use issues that were not being addressed in the current product documentation.
• HTC could finally deliver consistent information across channels with a high
degree of quality control and contextual relevance. The multi-channel and
collaborative capabilities of the new system were critical to achieving their
goal of creating a robust, world-class product help experience. •
The intelligence of the MindTouch
software could help HTC understand what customers needed when and how best to
help them. • MindTouch was able to provide an end-toend solution that could
scale to meet HTC’s needs and was easy to implement. Time to market would take
little more than a month. • MindTouch was a fraction of the cost of enterprise
legacy systems – information could be updated quickly and centrally, the system
was easily customizable, and better product information would minimize the need
to call or create help tickets. MindTouch gave HTC the ability to be proactive
and to continually improve on the customer’s product experience. MindTouch
provided an out-of-the-box solution which could be easily tailored to meet
their needs. They became a strategic partner that helped HTC with the overall
project, not just their own solution implementation. HTC could now control
consistency of information across all call centers and websites, enhance product
information through customer and internal expert collaboration, and greatly
shorten response times – all together delivering a great product experience for
their customers.
Questions:
1. What
were the issues and difficulties faced by HTC?
2. What
kind of change management techniques helped them overcome their obstacles?
Explain.
3. Summarize
your understanding of this case.
1. Identification of Main Issues/Problems
2. Extent of own inputs and originality.
3. Recommendations on Effective Solutions/Strategies
4. Links to Course Readings and Additional Research
5. Writing Mechanics and Formatting Guidelines
