The Accellion Service Guarantee

Presented by-
Saurav Pattanaik
Ruchira Panigrahy
Vishal Panda
 To evaluate the effectiveness of Accellion
Evaluate the degree of culture
service guarantee in communicating
creation for service excellence within
service excellence to current& potential
customers
the company

understand the impacts of a well Suggesting ways to minimize

designed service guarantee potential cheating on its guarantee

Objectives
 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, Inc provides enterprise-class secure collaboration and managed file transfer solutions that provide the
ease-of-use employees need, while giving the enterprise organization the security protection it needs.

 More than 1,200 enterprise organizations, representing seven million business users worldwide rely on Accellion
solutions to help keep their enterprise information secure and ensure compliance

 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%
 Salient 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.
Question 1 :
What is the Marketing impact of a well-designed Service
guarantee ?
 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
 Marketing Impacts
Positive Marketing Impacts Negative Marketing Impacts

Company: Company:
• Focus on consumer expectations
• Set clear performance standards for employees • High Cost- Training, Research, Maintenance
• Increase service quality and service perception • Over promising problems
• Increase reputation • Bad impression in case of any security glitch
• Attract new customers and increase market share • Bad impression in case of equipment breakdown or power
• Identify, understand, and eliminate and/or reduce potential fail system failure
points in the service operation. • Negative impact in case of inexperienced or rude employees
• Actively seek customer feedback in order to identify fail points
and/or improve service performance
Employees Employees:
• Increased workload
• Clear and defined guidelines for employees • Increased training costs
• Increased pressure
Customers Customers:
• Reduces the risk consumers perceive when deciding on the
purchase of a service. • High price
• Commitment to service quality • Deterioration in operations decreases brand loyalty of its
• Improvement in operations increases brand loyalty of its customers
customers • Deterioration in operations decreases positive word-of-mouth
• Improvement in operations increases positive word-of-mouth by its by its customers.
customers.
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?
design of Accellion’s guarantee

Characteristics Accellion’s Guarantee

Unconditional • Clear contact providing 100% service guarantee to its customers

• 24-hours support center
• Does not impose any condition for service guarantee
Meaningful • Response within 2 hours of receiving a complaint
• 48 hours of advance notification before service disruption due to routine
maintenance
Easy to Understand • Wordings used are not confusing or misleading
• Language is comprehensible
• Language made easy for both the employees as well as the customers
Easy to Invoke • No questions asked , “customer’s discretion” guarantee
• Commitment encourages Accellion to provide excellent service, failing which
the company would have to bear high risks to compensate customers
How effective will it be in communicating service excellence to potential and
current customers?

Service Design and Service Communication

Listening Gap Service Excellence
Standard Gap Performance Gap Gap

• Sufficient market • Good Service • Employee clearly • Over-promising • Potential

research has been Design : understand their • 100% availability Customers :
done but there is role • Risk free • More willing to
constant scope of • Efficient use the service
improvement • No intermediaries, • Attracted
• Reliable
• Adequate Service direct deliveries • Reduced
• Privacy
recovery provided perceived risks
in case of service
• Current Customers
failure but
:
customer’s
dynamic • Satisfied
expectations could customers would
be challenging increase brand
loyalty and WoM
Recommendations : design or implementation

 Design Recommendations:
 Increase policy transparency by generating regular reports
 Should be careful while using words (99.9% instead of 100%)
 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.
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?
culture creation for service excellence
1. Vision & Mission Statement
2. Business Objectives
Principles of 3. Service Standards
Service Excellence 4. Intervention & Learning Strategy
5. Organizational Alignment
6. Measurement & Leadership Accountability
Attributes of • Performance Guarantee
Service Guarantee • Availability Guarantee
providing Service • Customer Service Guarantee
Excellence • Security and Privacy Policy
• Communication
• Misalignment
Potential • Teamwork/Engagement
Challenges • Conflicting Priorities
• System/Processes
• Service Recovery/ Problem Resolution
• Accountability
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?
potential cheating on service guarantee

Drivers for Details Triggers Steps to minimize the

Cheating 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
To get long term • To get high involvement in service • Triggered due to Personality • Introduce customer loyalty
relationship • Switching cost is higher and time consuming variables program
• To achieve priority • To become the locus of
control
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 • Presence of opportunities to commit an • Triggered due to inhibitory • Conditions should be
Guarantee unethical behavior can be seen as a situational and personality explained in detail
motivator for cheating variables • Breach of contract should
be specified
THANK YOU