Building Loyalty
This information is vital because it helps solution providers and vendors figure out which product combinations will make efficient solutions on the front end and which products are most likely to generate additional revenue after the sale.
![]() |
---|
MICHAEL VIZARD \ Can be reached at (516) 562-7477 or via e-mail at mvizard@cmp.com. |
The ability to collect and analyze this data not only would make everybody in the channel more efficient, it also would go a long way toward proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that indirect sales are a high-tech vendor's most efficient route to market.
Taking on this ambitious effort is an application service provider named Loyalty Builders in Portsmouth, N.H. Its service is based on an analytics engine developed by David Meeker, a mathematician from Stanford University. The company itself is led by Mark Klein, who previously founded three other companies, the last of which he sold to Lotus Development. When Klein became an IBM employee after the Lotus acquisition, he quickly grew disenchanted with compensation models based on what he perceived to be meaningless customer-satisfaction ratings.
Today, Loyalty Builders has two main clients: Microsoft and Amphenol. Klein says Microsoft uses the service to help 100 of its best partners identify new demand-generation opportunities, but has had little success expanding the service beyond that group because it wants partners to pay for the service. Partners, however, are reluctant to pay for a service that only tells them about Microsoft-related opportunities. So now Loyalty Builders is going to market its service directly to solution providers so they can better identify opportunities across a range of products. That service will be priced according to the scope of customers and number of products involved, with complex projects usually priced at $25,000 per quarter.
Klein says one thing he can statistically prove is that there is no correlation between customer satisfaction and future purchases because customers often say one thing at one time and do something completely different at another.
Just about everybody in the channel knows or suspects that, but it sure would be nice to have somebody prove it.
How do you measure customer satisfaction? You can reach CRN Editor in Chief Michael Vizard via e-mail at mvizard@cmp.com.
