CUSTOMERS.COM® RESEARCH FROM THE PATRICIA SEYBOLD GROUP
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Moving
from Cost Cutting to Customer-Contributed Innovation at Mentor
Graphics
An
Interview with Kim Kelley,
Program Manager, Customer
Support Marketing
By Ronni T. Marshak,
Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant,
December 18, 2008
NETTING IT OUT
In
June 2008, Mentor Graphics
launched a new innovation
initiative, Mentor Ideas,
a Web-based environment for
capturing product enhancement
ideas from customers. This
initiative is focused on
the Mentor Graphics PADS
product line and customers,
and, due to the success of
the initial pilot, the company
has now launched a similar
initiative for its Expedition
product line.
Mentor
Ideas was originally conceived
in response to a bottleneck
in dealing with product enhancement
ideas that come through the
company’s online self-service
support application, SupportNet.
Attempting to address the
over 5,000 new ideas suggested
by customers via SupportNet
resulted in missed opportunities
and time spent reviewing
ideas that didn’t address
wide-spread customers’ issues.
Mentor
Ideas, built on WebStorm,
an innovation management
tool from BrightIdea.com,
allows customers to not only
submit ideas, but also to
vote on them, promote or
demote them, and discuss
the relative merits with
each other. As a result,
Mentor Graphics is gaining
the voice of the customer
where it counts—in
building products that customers,
as a group, agree are significant.
Program
Manager, Customer Support
Marketing, Kim Kelley comments
that, by capturing the “wisdom
of the crowd,” the
development team ends up
working on the 10 to 20 best
ideas, according to the customers,
rather than processing over
400 ideas that might or might
not be valuable to the majority
of users.
SupportNet
Product and Task Focus
© 2008
Mentor Graphics
Illustration
1. In order to make it
easier for customers to
find the product information
they need from among over
600 products, Mentor Graphics
designed a user interface
that remembers the products
you are interested in and
guides you through the
tasks that you want to
undertake.
This
report continues...
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