Acting on feedback is the most important part of any survey, which includes communicating the progress made.
Our latest client survey was in August and we wanted to share the progress we’ve seen in this and other recent surveys, as well as the areas we need to keep focused on.
We measure our progress by the percentage of positive responses only (9 or 10 when using the 0-10 point scale or 4 or 5 when using the 1-5 point scale). We don’t include any neutral or mediocre ratings to convince ourselves that we’re doing OK. OK is not our goal.
Ease
Our first survey in 2018 revealed the area clients wanted to see an improvement in the most was the ease of doing business or interacting with us.
In 2018, the percentage of clients giving us a 9 or 10 for ease was 12%. We weren’t happy with this and we have focused extensively on this since. The latest results show the number of clients giving us 9 or 10 has almost doubled to 23%. This has been through a combination of system change as well as our people taking simple steps to make day-to-day interaction easier. There is more to do and making it easier to work with us remains a central focus.
Support
Support is another area that we have been measuring - both through client relationship surveys and also post-support surveys. We are seeing improvement over time. Fixing underlying causes to remove the need for support is our ultimate focus. Reducing the time from initial request to resolution is also a priority in the event support is needed.
Overall, we are seeing more than 80% of those using Iress support giving a 4 or 5 to questions on availability, timeliness, ease, knowledge and communication of progress and root cause. We are pleased with the progress and the feedback we are receiving from clients and users overall, however, we continue to focus on removing underlying causes and improving all aspects of support.
Expertise, trust and COVID response
We continue to receive positive feedback around trust and expertise, as well as our support through COVID-19, with a desire by many for a more strategic approach to relationships. This is also a focus for us. Pleasingly, we have seen significant increases in scores by clients for delivery being in line with expectations.
Xplan
In 2020 we also surveyed users of Xplan to understand their experience of using the software.
Overall, we see a pleasing increase in users’ experience of using Xplan. Users have told us it’s increasingly delivering better outcomes for their clients, makes their job easier and remote access capabilities have been a big benefit during COVID-19 with more than three-quarters of users giving a 4 or 5 (out of 5) for ease of remote access.
More than three-quarters gave a neutral or positive response to whether Xplan was improving. While users are saying there has been an improvement, we know there’s more to do.
In addition to the scores, we’ve read through and analysed the more than 2,500 verbatim comments and grouped these into themes.
They are telling us they want us to continue to make Xplan easier beyond what we have done - and this remains an area of significant focus for us. They’ve also told us they want more opportunities for their feedback to be considered and for updates and improvements to be more focused on improving their experience of using the software.
We’ve completed our initial analysis but want to understand the verbatim comments more - so that we can improve the areas that will impact you the most. A number of users said they would be interested in being contacted to discuss further and we are now doing that.
If you would also like to be in this or any other future research projects, please contact @laura.cullimore in our research team: laura.cullimore@iress.com.
