HDI Introduces Customer Satisfaction Index Service

Support Industry’s Association Harnesses Cooperative Power of Members and the Industry to Develop Secure, Reliable, Robust, Statistically Valid Customer Satisfaction Measurement Service

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – January 30, 2006 - HDI, the world's largest membership association for IT service and support professionals and the premier certification body for the industry, announces the availability of the HDI Customer Satisfaction Index (HDI-CSI), a new third-party survey and reporting service that offers IT support centers, help desks and service desks with secure, reliable, robust, and, statistically valid customer satisfaction measurement data. HDI-CSI provides customer satisfaction scores, including valuable comparisons against organizational goals as well as comparisons to peers in the same industry. Benefits to HDI-CSI subscribers include:

Unique benchmarking capability that heightens subscriber awareness of customer satisfaction in comparison to industry peers and organizational goals
Eliminates the need to decide what questions to ask
Reports delivered via email weekly and monthly (eliminating the need to write and run reports)
Detail data available for further subscriber analysis
Easy set-up and interface to all major call (incident) tracking systems
Statistically valid – the system tracks ticket volumes, response rates and adjusts sample size automatically
Alerts subscribers to unsatisfied customers by immediately reporting negative feedback. This alert function immediately triggers an e-mail to the support center if a customer’s response falls below a pre-assigned threshold of acceptable performance
Multiple languages supported for the client survey process
Results in service improvements, leading to increased customer loyalty and retention rates
Provides a secure turn-key web application service (no email addresses retained) The HDI Customer Satisfaction Index service easily allows the transfer of required ticketing information to the HDI service without the installation of any additional software on subscriber computers. To date, HDI has relationships with many of the major call ticketing (incident management) vendors, including Amdocs Clarify, Computer Associates, FrontRange Solutions, HP, Infra Corp. Intuit, Magic (BMC), Oracle|PeopleSoft, Vantive, Peregrine, Remedy (BMC), Siebel and Tivoli.

Support centers’ call tracking/incident management software transmits data to the HDI-CSI servers for each service event that is closed. A survey request email containing a hyperlink allows the recipient to answer the survey via their browser.

HDI-CSI subscribers are able to measure how they are performing compared against their goals on a weekly basis; they can compare performance to their peers on a monthly basis or on-demand. Subscribers can also analyze their detail data or view the volume of service alerts for the week in comparison to the prior three weeks.

According to HDI-CSI subscriber Jeff Brooks, director of service and support for FormScape, Inc., a leading provider of document process automation solutions, “The HDI Customer Satisfaction Index is well worth every penny spent. I cannot begin to put a value on the quality of service and the tremendous time savings this survey tool has allotted me. The alert feature alone is worth the price, because it allows me to address customer issues as they arise and make necessary service improvements on the fly.”

“The long-awaited HDI Customer Satisfaction Index service was designed to meet the needs of an industry that depends on customer satisfaction for survival," stated Ron Muns, HDI's CEO. "This new HDI service is truly an industry-changing offering developed by and for the industry with in-depth participation and input of more than 50 HDI member organizations. Only HDI, the industry’s leading association, could harness the cooperative power of the industry to develop such a service. I am proud that we can offer this easy-to-install service that will allow us to establish industry-wide benchmarks for customer service. Subscribers will finally be able to answer the question ‘how good are my customer satisfaction levels?'"

This service is available immediately and is affordably priced, beginning at $1,295 for an annual subscription for support organizations handling fewer than 10,000 tickets per month. For more information, call +1 (800)248-5667, or visit www.thinkhdi.com/resources/customersatisfaction.

About HDI
HDI is the world's largest membership association for IT service and support professionals and the premier certification body for the industry. Founded in 1989, HDI's mission is to lead and promote the IT service and support industry by empowering its members through access to timely and valuable industry information, including reports and publications; encouraging member collaboration through events and online forums; and establishing internationally recognized, standards-based industry certification and training programs. In addition to membership, certification and training, HDI produces the world's largest and highest-rated event for service and support professionals, the HDI Annual Conference & Expo. HDI is member-focused, and remains vendor-neutral in its efforts to facilitate open, independent networking and information sharing within the association network. HDI has more than 7,500 members worldwide including most of the Fortune 500, and 60 local chapters in North America. For more information, visit http://www.thinkhdi.com.

###

Media Contact:

Jennifer McClure
New Communications Strategies
(650) 331-0083 - office
(650) 387-8590 - mobile
[email protected]