April 14, 2015
Medallia Partners with Loyalty Expert Fred Reichheld, Acquires Rights to Reichheld’s HuddleUp Platform
Reichheld to advise on bringing employee NPS to customer experience management
Palo Alto, Calif. — April 14, 2015 — Medallia, the global Customer Experience Management leader, today announced a partnership with Fred Reichheld, the creator of the Net Promoter System. Reichheld will team with Medallia to advance customer experience capabilities through product, research and best practices, while continuing his role as a fellow at Bain & Company. Reichheld’s expertise will help Medallia build software to more effectively engage teams and accelerate their ability to profitably delight customers. Medallia has also acquired rights to HuddleUp, a software platform developed by Reichheld to capture the voice of every employee and spark team dialogue to turn ideas into action. The HuddleUp team will join Medallia.
“We’ve found that the quality of a company’s customer experience is directly related to the effectiveness and health of its teams and leadership.” said Borge Hald, co-founder and CEO of Medallia. “We are excited to join forces with Fred and the HuddleUp team to help companies engage their workforce to earn customer delight. This is about getting fundamentals right and the unleashing of human potential. An engaged and proactive workforce is critical to performance for even the most digitally focused business.”
Research has shown that business outcomes improve by an average of 240 percent when companies engage employees and customers fully versus companies that do not. Additionally, research across industries repeatedly shows the valuable linkage between customer experience and employee engagement. Companies like Southwest and Zappos have credited engaging their workforce not only with exceeding customer expectations but also with driving business performance. Yet for most companies, fewer than 30 percent of employees are fully engaged.
“Lots of companies survey customers for feedback but great companies go further. They inspire employee teams to really care about their customers and to act on feedback,” said Reichheld. “Working with Medallia, we will enable a virtuous cycle between employee engagement and customer loyalty where workers are inspired to find innovative solutions that profitably delight customers, and, in so doing, find more meaning and purpose in their work. Ultimately, our partnership is about helping people and companies find greatness together.”
About HuddleUp
HuddleUp is an employee engagement platform designed to capture the voice of every employee and spark regular conversations on the team and company level to turn ideas into action. Founded in 2011 by Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld, the platform uses short, anonymous polls to collect employee feedback about how well teams are performing, and delivers aggregated reports that leaders can use to quickly start discussions about how the team can improve. This ongoing cadence of polling and discussion spurs greater openness and collaboration — qualities critical to staying aligned around changing customer needs.
About Medallia
Medallia® is the Customer Experience Management company that is trusted by hundreds of the world’s leading brands, including Airbnb, CA Technologies, Four Seasons, GE, Macy’s, Marriott International, Nordstrom, Sephora, Shell, The LEGO Group, and Zurich Insurance. Medallia’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application enables companies to capture customer feedback everywhere the customer is (web, social, mobile, and contact center channels), understand it in real time, and deliver insights and action everywhere—from the C-suite to the frontline—to improve their performance. Founded in 2001, Medallia has offices in Silicon Valley, New York, London, Paris, Australia and Argentina. Learn more at www.Medallia.com.
©2015 Medallia, Inc. Medallia is a trademark of Medallia, Inc. Other brand names may be trademarks of their respective owner(s). Information is subject to change without notice. All rights reserved.
Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, and Fred Reichheld
Contact:
Amanda Felix, Sterling Communications, afelix@sterlingpr.com
