With all the frustration vented at the failures and quirks of technology, you wouldn’t expect high customer satisfaction ratings for IT providers, especially from the SMB market, whose rigorous business conditions typically make them the most pragmatic and therefore hardest to please. But the majority of SMBs are satisfied with their IT providers, according to a study.
Solution providers of information technology (IT) hardware, software and services received high marks for their performance from small and medium-sized customers, according to research released by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).
IT providers received a robust rating of 8.1 (on a 0-10 scale) in the CompTIA End User Loyalty Index. Nearly 700 IT purchase decision-makers in organizations of fewer than 1,000 employees were surveyed to determine the loyalty index, which is based on overall satisfaction with their IT provider, quality of service, repurchase intention, and likelihood to recommend to others.
Nearly 70 per cent of the small and medium-sized organizations surveyed gave their IT providers a rating of 8.0 or higher for both overall satisfaction and satisfaction with quality of service.
Even more impressive, among these organizations 78.5 per cent said they intend to repurchase from their primary IT product provider over the next 12 months; and 68.5 per cent said they would recommend their IT provider to others.
Donald Ryan, vice-president of technology media at TNS Prognostics, a global provider in customer research-based consulting headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. commissioned CompTIA to conduct the survey, said, the good news for IT providers is if you have a customer and can service them, you’re likely to keep them as a customer.
He added that the bad news is it’s difficult to dislodge an incumbent vendor.
John Venator, CompTIA president and chief executive officer, said that in the last several years the IT industry has made a concerted effort to improve its customer satisfaction performance, and the results of this survey clearly indicate that this effort is paying off.
CompTIA, which represents the interests of more than 20,000 member companies in the IT industry, offers its members several programs designed to improve customer service and satisfaction.
