Last month our clients completed an annual survey of customer satisfaction. This survey is done in conjunction with Microsoft as part of our partnership with them, and is carried out by an independent survey firm TNS. The biggest part of the survey is questions that form an index to measure customer satisfaction.
A big thank you to all the clients that participated, we really appreciate the feedback and it does drive us to work harder in serving you. We also got insight into what we do well and what we could do better.
We have spent some time analysing the results, as Microsoft provides us tools to compare against other partners of similar type as well as a country and regional Asia Pacific level. We then presented the results to all the team and the board.
We are really pleased with the results, steady incremental improvement, especially in regard to client satisfaction and loyalty. We have identified three areas where we need to work harder, and have projects underway to make change. So it is like “Avis is Only No. 2, We Try Harder”.
This month we welcome Alicia Collins to the team as a Business Analyst & Trainer, enabling us to serve more clients and optimise efficiency. Alicia was previously employed with one of our clients and we were always impressed with how quick she was on the uptake, and the improvements she was able to make to their systems. We feel that she will be a great fit with the rest of the IT Partners team. Alicia is already starting work on some Wiki and SharePoint projects, along with improving some of our internal systems and processes.
A big part of what makes us different is the investment we make in learning. I have commented before how we make the accountants nervous with our unlimited budget policy on training. This is one of the best things we ever did. Because we trust our team to make the right decisions, and we put the onus back on the team member to justify the training themselves, we think that the “unlimited” policy works better than saying “you have $5K per annum to spend – make do”.
Our training policy, coupled with our research and development leads to some interesting side effects. We question vendors rigorously as to their claims, we follow world best practice, and we are always looking at why and how we implement IT!