Study Included More Than 257,000 Customer Satisfaction Surveys from 200 Help Desks and Support Centers
Colorado Springs, Colo. – Nov. 29, 2007 – HDI (http://www.thinkhdi.com), the world's largest membership association for IT help desk and service management professionals, and the premier certification body for the industry, today announced the release of a landmark study measuring customers’ satisfaction with internal and external IT support. The study’s results are based on more than 257,000 customer satisfaction surveys collected from more than 200 help desks and support centers.
The study measured and compared participating support centers by industry vertical, size of the user community, type of support delivered (internal, external, blended), location and maturity level.
This study was the first in the industry to measure the level of customer satisfaction over such a large and diverse group of IT support centers using a standardized assessment. The result is an overarching view of the performance of the frontline IT support analysts from the customer’s perspective, and a snapshot of the entire IT support industry’s performance.
Some key findings:
• Overall customer satisfaction ratings were quite high, averaging mid-to-high 4s on a scale of 1-5 (1 being “Very Dissatisfied” and 5 being “Very Satisfied”)
• Participating support centers were asked to determine their “maturity level” – based on HDI’s Maturity Model – from “Reactive,” to “Proactive,” “Customer Centric,” and ultimately “Business Centric.” Not surprisingly, those support centers that classified themselves as “Business Centric” (the highest level of maturity) had the highest customer satisfaction ratings. However, somewhat more surprising and ironic was that those that considered their support centers to be “Customer Centric” had the lowest customer satisfaction ratings of the four groups.
• The survey rated customer satisfaction on five different factors: courtesy of the analyst; technical skills/knowledge of the analyst; timeliness of the service provided; quality of the service provided and overall service experience. Customers consistently reported that their highest level of satisfaction was with the courtesy of the analyst, and their lowest level of satisfaction was with the timeliness of the service provided. These results suggest that while the frontline analysts may be polite to their customers, the incidents are not being resolved as quickly as the customers expect them to be.
“This report provides an excellent starting point for understanding customers’ expectations and providing information that allows organizations to better understand the factors that drive their customers’ overall satisfaction,” said Charles McCann, director of technology support, Oklahoma State University and a member of HDI’s strategic advisory board.
“In addition to the most comprehensive view ever of the industry’s performance as a whole, this report provides a valuable tool for support center managers,” added Jenny Rains, HDI research analyst. “The breakdown of results by the different demographic areas provides benchmarking data from several different perspectives. For the first time, individual support centers can compare their customer satisfaction ratings to the industry overall, as well as to support centers similar to their own.”
Pricing and availability: The HDI Customer Satisfaction Index Benchmarking Study Report is available via HDI’s eStore at http://www.thinkhdi.com/estore; free to HDI members; $49USD for non members. For more information on the HDI Customer Satisfaction Index, visit https://www.thinkhdi.com/resources/customersatisfaction/.
About HDI
HDI, a Think Service, Inc. company, is the world’s largest IT service and support membership association and the industry’s premier certification and training body. Guided by an international panel of industry experts and practitioners, HDI is the leading resource for help desk/support center emerging trends and best practices. HDI provides members with a vast repository of resources, networking opportunities and the largest industry event - the HDI Annual Conference and Expo. Headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo., USA, HDI offers training in multiple languages and countries. For more information, visit http://www.thinkhdi.com or call +1 719.268.0174. (Think Service, Inc. and HDI are not affiliated with Customers International Limited or HDI Europe.)
###