Top five reasons why NetApp continues to grow a loyal customer base

Delivering an exceptional customer experience (CX) is vital in today’s digital environment. In fact, according to Salesforce, 80% of B2B technology customers rank the experience they receive to be as important as a company’s products and services. Companies can no longer treat CX as an afterthought; customers have high expectations, and not meeting those expectations can have a far-reaching impact on their decisions about whom to work with or continue relationships with.

Since its founding in 1992, NetApp has been obsessed with simplifying the storage technology customer experience. "Putting the customer at the center of everything we do" is firmly established as one of our five core values and behaviors.

The NetApp Customer Experience Office (CXO) was established to better meet customers' increasing expectations. The office is charged with being maniacally focused on creating and maintaining a fruitful relationship with our customers while delivering a 360-degree customer-first approach. The CXO also helps bring together NetApp® customers and partners into dynamic communities that provide insights into how our customers experience NetApp, our products, and our services.

One of the ways in which we do this is through our Customer Experience Survey (CXS). Conducted annually, this survey gathers feedback from tens of thousands of customers and partners. We share these results across NetApp to help our teams continue to make data-driven decisions for future iterations of our products and services. 

Over the years, we’ve noted consistency in responses to the survey question, “Why did you choose NetApp over other storage providers?” We've identified five key reasons why NetApp has—and continues to grow—a truly loyal customer base. 

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In the words of one of our customers, we provide “stable product and mature technology.”

NetApp customers appreciate the fact that we focus conversations on their pain points and business outcomes, not on our products. Our success in serving the needs of large enterprises is based on the fact that we deliver an entire suite of solutions that customers care about. And we continue to make sure that those solutions are relevant, timely, and focused on meeting our customers’ business objectives and specific workloads.

One team using NetApp products stated that they’ve “never lost a single bit in 12 years.”

The performance of NetApp products has been respected for 30 years. Our customers have confidence in our products because our engineering teams do a phenomenal job of building and balancing the need for innovation with making sure that our products and solutions continue to meet their ever-evolving expectations for simplicity, flexibility, and quality. 

As one NetApp user put it, “It’s always about the people.”

Repeat business and long-term growth are highly dependent on customer loyalty and trust. Despite providing customer-centric solutions and stellar product performance, if customers don’t trust that we can deliver, it doesn’t matter. Simply put, no trust equals no customers.

At NetApp, our deep-rooted culture of respect, integrity and teamwork helps support our single-minded focus on finding the best ways to empower our customers so that they continue to trust us with their business.

We know that our customers have options. That's why we make it a top priority to give them the best possible experience, while earning—and keeping—their trust. This commitment is reflected in the fact that Netapp currently hovers close to Walker’s IT B2B Loyalty Quadrant Benchmark of 60%, with our truly loyal customers forming the backbone of future NetApp business.

When it comes to our solutions, NetApp’s technology is future oriented.

Many of our customers say that they view Netapp as more innovative than our competition. That’s no surprise, given our strong track record in the industry. NetApp was responsible for many industry firsts (for example, unified storage, deduplication, and FC/NVMe), as well as industry-leading innovation. We’re able to maintain our leadership in innovation because of our “co-innovate” approach with our partners and customers. By continuously incorporating customer feedback, anticipating tech trends, and creating relevant solutions, we enable our customers to focus on business outcomes and their customers’ success, rather than on data management and operations.

As one customer put it, “the NetApp support team works closely with us to resolve any issues/questions, which translates directly to our customers' satisfaction.”

The solutions, services and support teams at NetApp work throughout the customer journey to make sure that we hold true to our commitment to deliver a simpler, more dynamic customer experience. We reduce complexity for our customers, from their initial purchase through the renewal process, and we help them to navigate change as they transition from on-premises to cloud-based storage solutions. That means we’re able to meet our customers where they are and help them get to where they want to be, rather than shaping their business outcomes using only our own perspective. By putting ourselves in the customer's shoes, we can look at them from the “outside in,” which enables us to offer a consistent customer experience that is unparalleled in the industry.

Customer opinion matters.

Listening to, understanding and delivering the voice of the customer insights across NetApp is crucial for us to better identify and address the most impactful customer experience challenges. At NetApp, we are committed to delivering exceptional customer experiences and value all feedback from all channels. In the coming months, watch for further updates on how the direct customer feedback that we receive translates into specific customer improvements—it's all part of our ongoing commitment to provide transparency and show how we’re acting on customer and partner feedback. We value our customers’ and partners’ continued support and look forward to continuously improving our customer experience in partnership with them.

See the NetApp^® customer experience difference.