Customer Council #1: Your feedback

As part of our desire for constant improvement, we recently founded a “Customer Council”. Any customer can be on the council and in return for completing a short monthly survey, they receive a £5/hour discount on our support services. If you’d like to join the council, fill in this form: https://zcmp.eu/qR2b

23 customers signed up in the first month and 22 completed the survey.

Summary of what you said:

Current feeling of being a Dorset Tech customer

We use the “NPS” method of measuring customer satisfaction. Anyone that answers less than 6/10 is a “Detractor”, 7-8/10 is passive and 9-10 is a promoter. That yellow zone means that on the whole you’re very neutral about us – 7-8/10 kind of score.

In general this is a “good” NPS score, but we’re not happy with it at all and will be working on it in coming months.

How you know you can contact us

We made some changes recently and so we wanted to make sure our customers knew all of the ways they could contact us. This was very interesting for us. Clearly we need to communicate our Whatsapp and live chat options better. In my personal opinion, I believe live chat is the best method to contact us. You will normally get the exact person you want within a minute as they can multi-task on live chat better than on the phone. We also need to communicate our appointment booking options better.

Retainer Vs PAYG

Recently we received some negative comments from customers stating they don’t like being charged for every minute they use. The alternatives are 1) charging a retainer like most agencies and/or 2) charging standard rates like most agencies. Both are seen as a huge negative and clash with our unique ethos, so we want to avoid them.

The results of the survey confirmed you feel the same as we do. However, enough customers said they like the idea of a basic support package, so we will look into it.

Hourly Discounted Bundles

We recently offered discounts if you pre-pay by buying bundles of hours. Some customers have been using these and feedback is positive, but it was clear from your feedback that we should communicate these better as many of you did not know about them.

How do you feel about our hourly rate

We literally have the lowest rates around at 1/3 of the industry average, but we’re very conscious that we have a very diverse customer base.

So some customers think we’re too high priced, some think we’re too low. I think this is pretty typical. Even having the lowest rates around, some will think they’re too high. We’ve looked at this in great detail, but it’s not sustainable for us to lower rates unless customers pay upfront. We constantly have 2-3 months worth of overheads owed to us by customers from up to 6 months ago. We think we could reduce rates by forcing up-front payment, but it is extra admin and just doesn’t feel right. For this one, we’re going to leave the rates as they are, but promote our discount schemes more.

Phone Support

This was the most controversial change we’ve ever made. We recently stopped allowing ad-hoc inbound calls. You can still speak to us on the phone, but you need to request a call-back and a time-slot. The figures our end speak for themselves; we now get to your ticket quicker and solve it in less time on average – lowering your bill. Interesting that no-one wants our call centre back – we’ve heard you loud and clear. Enough of you said that you’d like us to open the phones again that we’re looking into it, but our priority at the moment is implementing 24/7 support. We believe that will be a game-changer! We’re in the late stages of having this sorted. It will be live chat or ticket system only.

Comments from you

Positives

• I like paying per hour in retrospect and always tried to pay on time.
• I’m sure you’ve done the sums to work out what you can & need to charge. I trust you!
• Happy with current offering
• We are happy with the current rate as we will do more work on website and other projects due to the pricing. If increased we would cut back on the extra’s.
• I have a real dislike for call centres answering clients calls. I stopped ringing due to this as they really did not have any idea about call back timings and or issues ongoing etc. Your friendly staff was all part of the Dorset Tech service levels that we all enjoyed, please don’t go back to using a remote service 🙂
• Support and work required can vary so much from month to month so paying for exact time used suits is as a SME
• When I email asking someone to call, the service is good and I receive a response in an acceptable time frame, so I am happy with the phone service.
• I’ve ticked the top two because of course I’m thrilled with the low rates but fully appreciate the pitfall of charging too little and I’m banking on you staying around long-term
• I haven’t used the new support channels yet, but the other system also worked well for me.
• Billing by the minute so you are paying for exactly what you get is great especially as some of the things I need doing are simple little jobs.
• I like that the invoice now includes the breakdown of everything that has been done and how much time was spent on each task
• As a long standing customer I think my fair is rate as there are always continued tasks being raised.
• Very grateful that you have a discounted rate

Neutral Comments

• I like paying for the exact time used, but I’d like to kept informed more on what my bill might be used. I’d also be interested to know what a basic support package would be and how much.
• I do feel sometimes it is better to have a conversation with someone over the phone as it can be easier to express exactly what you want/need
• I am happy with the charges for work I have instructed to be done. However if work was needed to correct errors caused by Dorset Tech, then I would be unhappy with £60/hour. [Note from Chris: If we make errors then the time is clocked to our own timer not yours]
• It would be good if we knew which members of staff were allocated to different types of work, so time isn’t wasted when someone else could of completed the work required in a shorter time frame [Note from Chris: If you log into the support platform, you can see who is on the ticket in the top left. As long as you raise the ticket via email or the support platform, it is always given to the most suitable person.]
• I like a retainer where monthly work is carried out each month (eg Adword maintenance) and then if extra needs to be done, this is charged adhoc
• An emergency number/hotlines be might be an idea?

Negatives

• My opinion is that having an option to book a call with a member of the team is great, I like that, but it only works if there is a non urgent issue. If there is something that needs to be sorted urgently there has to be a way how to contact you directly asap. Not sure if raised tickets are seen straight away so the urgent issue would be picked up quick enough. If raised tickets are seen soon enough and urgent issues picked up straight away, then I guess you don’t need to have the inbound phone service and you can save the time and be more efficient.
• Whilst I appreciate the rates are lower than the industry, the discounted rate is still high (for me) for a very small business like mine. I have used tech support in very essential cases, like when customers couldn’t place any orders.
• Currently I am not interested in bundles as I feel the support bundles are too excessive and I don’t feel secure paying so much upfront.
• It would be great if rates could be lowered for a very small business who are not selling much.
• Current system doesn’t have much visibility to me. Suddenly getting a £300+ bill is not good enough. Particularly when something else (like footer) suddenly doesn’t appear any more. I have to tell you when these things break, and then you charge me to fix them even though you built the site! [Note from Chris: Sorry to hear you’re unhappy. We’re looking at a live feed of time used, but it’s complicated. We can’t really be held responsible for 3rd party code when plugin updates conflict, etc. You are able to manage the site yourself to avoid any costs, this is the norm. We however, like to stick around in case you’d prefer us to do it instead.]
• Live chat is frustrating when it says you are online but nobody picks up then it sort of creates a ticket but it looks wrong. Ticket system for me is flawed – happy to give more feedback on this if you would like me to

Actions:

• Implemented a new process for the ticket system that is more pro-active in showing you that we’re looking at your ticket
• Investigating the next stage of our support platform
• The contact page is being redesigned
• 2 more team members are being added to live chat
• An additional front-end developer has been hired
• A cyber security specialist developer has been hired
• A new and improved booking section is being added to the website
• We’re investigating an option of a basic support package
• Pricing staying the same
• Investigating 24/7 support option

Thank you council members for your feedback 🙂