HP Indigo is the billion-dollar, full-stack digital printing division within HP. They develop, manufacture, and service commercial printing presses that companies like Shutterfly use to create vibrant photo books. Their digital presses can also produce anything from wall decor to gorgeous labels for luxury brands.
“Less than 0.1% of the printing volume in the world is printed on Indigo, but probably more than 25% of the printing industry profit is on an Indigo,” says Udi Vaks, Head of Growth at HP Indigo.
With around 4,000 customers spread over 120 countries, each customer isn’t just a customer — they’re a partner. HP Indigo’s printers are likely one of the biggest investments these partners are making in their business.
Customer loyalty is paramount to HP Indigo’s success, and a strong customer experience is the key driver. No one understands that better than Vaks. “Our business is about people. It’s about people caring about other people, and making sure you truly care about your customers.”
As Head of Growth, Vaks runs a customer experience program that expands the definition of who qualifies as a customer. “It’s not just the guy who signs the check. It’s also the operator, the production manager, the suppliers.”
HP Indigo uses Delighted Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys to capture feedback from all of these customers. Since they started collecting feedback with Delighted in 2016, they’ve gone from 3,000 pieces of feedback per year to over 100,000 in 2018. “Monthly NPS has gone up from 11 to 52 because we keep on getting more feedback, communicating, and closing the loop on it,” says Vaks. Their weekly average NPS is as high as 80.
These scores impact the bottom line. Over time, they’ve found that NPS and customer happiness is a strong indicator of future growth. “We see a very strong correlation between how happy the customer is and the likelihood they’re going to buy more.”
Internally, this means that every employee takes great pride in providing excellent care. Their customer-focused culture has heralded measurable improvements for their service department and decreased cost-to-serve. “Our service business used to be like a weight on the business and it’s now our brightest spot,” says Vaks.
HP Indigo’s customer experience program wasn’t always such a well-oiled machine. Prior to 2016, they invested millions of dollars on surveys and improvement plans. Their yearly questionnaire contained around 100 questions, took three months to prep, and another three to analyze. But, Vaks recalls, “It didn’t move the needle.”
Providing customer service was also costly. Technical service teams would be flown on-site to visit customers who were understandably unhappy due to maintenance issues and communication breakdowns. Something had to change.
In 2015, they revamped the way they collected feedback. Delighted is the solution they chose. “It almost felt like too good of a deal to work with Delighted. It was so easy to start. The Delighted team was so responsive, they always answered our questions literally in seconds. The overall experience is great.”
Instead of collecting feedback only once a year, they now keep a constant pulse on customer happiness through Delighted Link surveys embedded in customer messaging. The endless flow of input creates a system of accountability where speedy response is key. “If you know feedback only comes once a year in bulk, you can make all kinds of excuses for it. If you run faster feedback loops you can really improve in real time.”
Communication is at the heart of the closed loop process. Vaks says, “Customers don’t expect perfection from you. They just expect you to tell them what’s going on, get back to them quickly to tell them if something is not working, and let them know you’re on top of it.”
These processes have created their own positive feedback loop: customers feel heard, so they provide even more feedback.
“When you have a streamlined solution like Delighted, it helps you run lightweight processes and get more impact out of it.” Complex customer experience platform features aren’t what help Vaks and his team change internal company behavior or culture. Making sure all of the feedback gets into the right hands does.
“You need to send the feedback as quickly as possible to the relevant people and then hold them and the organization accountable.” Vaks’ growing team of 5 developers and designers develop and maintain an experience management app that runs on Delighted customer feedback data via the Delighted API. By combining their experience data with internal operational metrics, they empower everyone to provide stellar care and achieve breakthrough performances.
They collect feedback with Delighted after every service call, and create leaderboards for each region of the business. If a customer is unhappy, account managers and service personnel see the rating with the open-ended feedback, organized by the customer’s business volume, and close the loop by calling or emailing to follow up.
“We have a weekly report that goes out worldwide and on a regional level. Service engineers and every country manager get scored according to their NPS, and they wear it on their sleeve,” Vaks adds.
This is a far cry from how feedback used to make the company feel. Internally, negative feedback was dreaded, since it could lead to negative attention. Now, they know that when negative feedback comes in, they can turn it around.
“If you get 10,000 pieces of feedback a month, you don’t fear it.” Instead, they can own that feedback and drive change. “We want an organization that is fearless, that doesn’t sweep things under the carpet. That doesn’t make excuses.”
And to do that means striving for continuous improvement. Vaks says, “We may not get an NPS of 100, but if we can get one point better every month, you become world-class in a few years’ time. And time flies.”
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