Great companies recognize their employees are their most valued asset. They invest in a vast myriad of ways to develop, motivate, and enable them to do their best work and drive the company’s mission. In today’s highly connected and fast-paced world, there can be no doubt that making sharing and collaboration easier, eliminating common workplace frustrations and barriers to productivity, can be highly motivating.
Given this, it’s something of a mystery that many of these same companies choose to implement collaboration and productivity solutions with little to no focus on end user experiences or the adoption journey. They invest in technologies with huge transformational potential and then jeopardize their ROI by neglecting proven business axioms like the importance of understanding target audiences, driving effective awareness and readiness, and enabling senior and frontline managers to both drive and support changes that impact their people.
At Microsoft, we’re committed to providing products and services that help customers build more business value faster. Foundational to our definition of customer success is the concept of individuals and organizations achieving more, whatever that means to them. With the powers of calling, conferencing, video and sharing all in a single cloud platform with rich Office 365 integration, Skype for Business can accelerate and boost customer success in a way that no other collaboration solution can today.
We’re confident in the enterprise class service delivered by Skype for Business. We proudly work alongside customers, supporting and witnessing their successes. We also recognize that end user experiences are heavily influenced by factors related to the intersection of the Skype service and each customer’s organization. A few examples articulate the point:
- During implementation planning, is there a robust sponsorship coalition (i.e. executive sponsors who set the vision and key LOB managers accountable for execution) to ensure tight alignment across expected business outcomes and related technical requirements for the project?
- As the benefits of decommissioning old telephony systems are celebrated, is there a solid plan to ensure users have the right devices for high quality calls and meetings with their internal colleagues and external customers?
- As costly audio conferencing contracts are scheduled for termination, has a transition plan been fully communicated to end users, including new or different functionality, with sufficient awareness and the right readiness resources to help them prepare?
Inarguably, an over-pivot on tangible, short term benefits happens in most projects. Defining technical deployment success criteria that are disconnected from the business that the solution aims to serve is all too common. Unfortunately, the longer-term cost of these common missteps is high, putting ROI at risk.
Here’s the simple truth – users who perceive their needs and experiences are well understood and prioritized as part of a technology rollout (by senior leadership, their IT department, and their direct manager) are far more likely to adopt. It’s only through this successful end user adoption that tangible benefits and sustained business value for the organization are realized.
This critical understanding of the connection between reliable, quality experiences, delighted users and customers achieving their business outcomes (and ROI!) is the reason we created the Planning for Customer Success Workshop as part of the Skype Operations Framework.
The Planning for Customer Success Workshop and companion Customer Success Plan Workbook share valuable insights and facilitate self-assessment against 6 critical success factors for Skype for Business: Sponsorship, FastTrack & Partners, User Satisfaction & Adoption, Endpoints, Network, and Operations.
Ready to learn more about the 6 critical factors for delighted users and huge success with Skype for Business? We’re ready to help!
Call to action
- Check out the Planning for Customer Success Workshop and accompanying Customer Success Plan Workbook.
- View the training for Planning for Customer Success Workshop.
- Check out the O365 Adoption Guide for valuable guidance on driving user readiness, adoption and effective organizational change
- Discuss with us in the SOF Community