Collective Data has finished compiling, studying, and reflecting on our 6th annual client survey results and we are excited to share some of the highlights with you. We have historically relied on the formal and candid feedback to chart our direction and future activity and this year is no exception of invaluable information to work with.
We have also begun to implement more of a transparent line of communication with the users of our software so everyone can understand as an aggregate how we are doing. This includes what we are doing really well but also includes where we have some opportunity to improve, how we plan to improve, and how we will need your help to strengthen our partnership.
Please understand this survey goes to every contact we have that belongs to an organization with an active maintenance and support contract in place. This includes many roles such as mechanics, clerks, fleet and facility managers, IT, system administrators, programmers and executives. Some of these people interface directly with the software very rarely or not at all while others are power users that rely on the software throughout the day. The results are unfiltered and come complete with many points of perspective.
Customer Support and Training Questions:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
A Recap of Support and Training Satisfaction
The results show that we’re doing a lot right and the overwhelming majority of the handwritten comments supported the satisfaction results such as “Everyone is very helpful” and “Quick to answer calls, always find a solution to problems” for a couple examples.
Room to Improve
But with anything, we also recognize that we have some room to improve. We have continued to grow and that growth can add extra demands to our support and training services. Although we are proud of the overwhelming responses of Very Satisfied and Somewhat Satisfied, we have a lot more to do.
For example, we heard that there have been a few cases of dissatisfaction with support response times and ability to resolve complex issues. To combat this, we have already expanded our team with an additional front level support tech. We have also further integrated our Client Solutions Engineers and Application Developers to be more active with client support tickets. In addition, we have put additional controls in place to ensure extra level of quality checks prior to delivery of configurations.
Over the 2016 calendar year, we will make some additional changes that includes a more formal software change request process to ensure that what you expect is what we provide. We will also further expand our training and support staff to manage the continued demand increase.
Another common theme we recognized was the desire for easier features for configuring existing reports and creating new ones. And we agreed. We recognized that some of this can be improved with better and additional training services. We have already begun preparing for additional report based webinars and we will be providing some quick how to video’s for off line viewing. This is a start but is not where it ends. We have some software updates coming, which will be explained further in the next section.
Overall Satisfaction with the Software
Here are a few highlights for questions related to the software:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Our interpretation and goals
From the responses, it is clear that the majority of our users are Satisfied but not Very Satisfied when it comes to the performance and ease of use of the software. The development team is certainly listening and planning for 2016’s to flip those as Satisfied to be “Very” Satisfied. From studying the comments, we see a lot of love of the product but we found that we can do more to improve in a few key areas of the software:
- Reporting and displaying of information
- Functions and work flow around parts inventory and work orders
- Performance and scalability
We have plenty of ideas on how to improve all these but we would love your input and so I’m reaching out to invite you to a user focus group to participate in making the software reach toward perfection. If you have interest, please reach out to your Account Manager to get details. If you don’t want to participate as a focus group but have something specific you’d like to work though, please contact your Account Manager and we’ll help you evaluate your options.
We have many software improvements and new features coming in 2016. Here are just a few that where directly related to survey responses:
- Better process for improving and fixing bad data and ensuring data is clean and meets business requirements
- Visual calendars to support easier PM management, Motor Pool, and job site tracking
- Improved charting and dashboard capabilities
- Easier to use features for configuring reports to meet your specific needs and expansion of the Ad-Hoc report tool to provide additional capability
Conclusion
I can’t say enough how much I value your feedback, both positive and opportunistic. Everyone at Collective Data is passionate and dedicated to making the software and services we provide be the absolute best possible. We can only do this with your direction and I hope this survey is just one forum you will use to provide us with feedback. Thank you for helping make 2015 a wonderful year and we look forward to taking this much further in 2016, with your help.
Sincerely,
Jason Wonase
President / CEO
Collective Data