The Accellion Service Guarantee Case study slides

1. THE ACCELLION
SERVICE GUARANTEE
Case 17 - 34
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2. About the Company
• Founded in 1999, Accellion is a privately held company headquartered in Palo Alto, California with
offices in North America, Asia and Europe.
• Accellion is an award winning private company that provides secure file sharing and
collaboration in the private cloud. Recognized as a leader by industry analysts, Accellion offers
enterprises and government agencies the scalability, flexibility, control and security to enable a
global workforce with the tools they need to securely access, edit, share, and manage
information, wherever work takes them.
• More than 15 million business users and 2,500 of the world’s leading enterprises and
government agencies trust this enterprise solutions to securely connect people to enterprise
information from any device.
• Value Proposition’s to the clients
– Allows them to serve their users faster.
– Increases Operational efficiencies.
– Minimize cost.
– Customer’s could improve the access time for downloading and uploading files by more
than 200%
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3. 3

4. 4
Objectives
understand the impacts of a well
designed service guarantee
Evaluate the degree of culture creation
for service excellence within the
company
Suggesting ways to minimize potential
cheating on its guarantee
To evaluate the effectiveness of
Accellion service guarantee in
communicating service excellence to
current & potential customers

5. Outstanding features
How was it Done?
– Outstanding Infrastructure
– Locating an intelligent storage and file management system at the “Edges of Internet”.
– The typical time consuming routing through many servers and hubs could be avoided
using Accellion Infrastructure.
Tapping the opportunity:
– The need for an internet to deliver high bandwidth content to end user has never been
greater.
– There was a trend towards multimedia and personalized web content, all of which
could not be delivered efficiently by existing infrastructure, which was a busy route
traffic:
– Accellion tapped this opportunity , by developing and launching a new service
distributed file storage, management and delivery.
Catering to tapped opportunities:
– Accellion provided an application platform that resided on independent servers, which
were directly connected to the user’s ISPs.
– This avoided the congested servers of the internet.
– Allowed Accellion to distribute specialized content and applications more efficiently.
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6. Question 1 :
What is the Marketing impact of a well-designed
Service guarantee ?
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7. Service Guarantee
A service guarantee is a marketing tool service used by the firms to
– Reduce consumer risk perceptions, signal quality, differentiate a service
offering,
– Find opportunities to rectify a situation
– Set standards to cater to the expectations of consumers from the service
provided
Details of Service Guarantee
– Performance Guarantee
– Availability Guarantee
– Customer Service Guarantee
– Security and Privacy Policy
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8. Marketing Impacts
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Positive Marketing Impacts Negative Marketing Impacts
Company: Company:
• Focus on consumer expectations
• Set clear performance standards foremployees • High Cost- Training, Research, Maintenance
• Increase service quality and serviceperception • Over promising problems
• Increase reputation • Bad impression in case of any securityglitch
• Attract new customers and increase marketshare • Bad impression in case of equipment breakdown orpower
• Identify, understand, and eliminate and/or reduce potentialfail system failure
points in the service operation. • Negative impact in case of inexperienced or rudeemployees
• Actively seek customer feedback in order to identify failpoints
and/or improve service performance
Employees Employees:
• Increased workload
• Clear and defined guidelines foremployees • Increased training costs
• Increased pressure
Customers Customers:
• Reduces the risk consumers perceive when deciding onthe
purchase of a service. • High price
• Commitment to service quality • Deterioration in operations decreases brand loyalty ofits
• Improvement in operations increases brand loyalty ofits customers
customers • Deterioration in operations decreases positiveword-of-
mouth
• Improvement in operations increases positive word-of-mouth by
its
by its customers.
customers.

9. Question 2 :
Evaluate the design of Accellion’s guarantee.
How effective will it be in communicating service
excellence to potential and current customers?
Would you recommend any changes to its design or
implementation?
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10. Design of Accellion’s guarantee
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Characteristics Accellion’s Guarantee
Unconditional • Clear contact providing 100% service guarantee to itscustomers
• 24-hours support center
• Does not impose any condition for serviceguarantee
Meaningful • Response within 2 hours of receiving a complaint
• 48 hours of advance notification before service disruption due toroutine maintenance
Easy to Understand • Wordings used are not confusing ormisleading
• Language is comprehensible
• Language made easy for both the employees as well as thecustomers
Easy to Invoke • No questions asked , “customer’s discretion”guarantee
• Commitment encourages Accellion to provide excellent service, failingwhich
the company would have to bear high risks to compensatecustomers

11. How effective will it be in communicating
service excellence to potential and current
customers?
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Listening Gap
• Sufficient market
research has been
done but there is
constant scope of
improvement
• Adequate Service
recovery provided
in case of service
failure but
customer’s
dynamic
expectations could
be challenging
Service Design and
Standard Gap
• Good Service
Design :
• Efficient
• Reliable
• Privacy
Service
Performance Gap
• Employee clearly
understand their
role
• No intermediaries,
direct deliveries
Communication
Gap
• Over-promising
• 100% availability
• Risk free
Service Excellence
Potential
Customers :
More willing to
use the service
• Attracted
• Reduced
perceived risks
• Current Customers
• Satisfied
customers would
increase brand
loyalty

12. Recommendations : design or implementation
Design Recommendations:
– Increase policy transparency by generating regular reports
– Should be careful while using words
– Add disclaimers wherever needed
– Should make use of competitive advantage
Implementation Recommendations:
– Employee more staff & ensure efficiency from the employees
– Regular training of employees to keep them up-to-date and motivated
– Continuous improvements by keeping track of customer expectations through
surveys and feedbacks.
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13. Question 3 :
Will the guarantee be successful in creating a culture for
service excellence within Accellion?
What else may be needed for achieving such a culture?
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14. Culture creation for service
excellence
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Principles of Service
Excellence
• Vision & Mission Statement
• Business Objectives
• Service Standards
• Intervention & Learning Strategy
• Organizational Alignment
• Measurement & Leadership Accountability
Attributes of Service
Guarantee providing
Service Excellence
• Performance Guarantee
• Availability Guarantee
• Customer Service Guarantee
• Security and Privacy Policy
Potential
Challenges
• Communication
• Misalignment
• Teamwork/Engagement
• Conflicting Priorities
• System/Processes
• Service Recovery/ Problem Resolution
• Accountability

15. Question 4:
Do you think customers might take advantage of this
guarantee and ‘stage’ service failures to invoke the
guarantee?
If yes, how could Accellion minimize potential cheating on
its guarantee?
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16. Potential cheating on service
guarantee
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Drivers for
Cheating
Details Triggers Steps to minimize the
Potential Cheating
Potential Material • There is no strong relationship between • Unethical situational • Difficult to address if
Gain amount of compensation and cheating Variables customers are unethical
• External pressure
• Dissatisfaction
• Machiavellianism
Toget long term
relationship
• Toget high involvement in service
• Switching cost is higher and time consuming
• Toachieve priority
• Triggered due to
Personality variables
• Tobecome the locus of
control
• Introduce customer
loyalty program
Level of Cheating increases when the customer is • Triggered due to inhibitory • Provide seamless and high
Satisfaction • Unhappy situational variables quality service to the
• Perceives unfair treatment • Attitudes customers
• Dissatisfied with the service
Ease of invoking a
Guarantee
• Presence of opportunities to commit
an unethical behavior can be seen as
a motivator for cheating
• Triggered due to inhibitory
situational and
personality variables
•
•
Conditions should be
explained in detail
Breach of contract
should be specified

17. THANK YOU & GOOD LUCK
■ Presentation by Ehab
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