2008-02-14 - IASTED Innsbruck 2008 - Customer Retention and Delivery Quality in the IT industry
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Only 29% of software development projects meet their promises, leading to customer dissatisfaction and potential abandonment of suppliers. Key findings emphasize that technical quality alone is insufficient for customer retention; factors such as reliability, empathic behavior, and responsiveness are critical. Recommendations for improvement include enhancing communication, ensuring a thorough review process, and addressing soft skill deficits to meet customer needs and expectations.
![Customers’ Perception of delivery Quality IASTED SE 2008, Innsbruck Jaap van Ekris, Senior Consultant [email_address]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2008-02-14-iasted-deliveryquality-110610104408-phpapp02/85/2008-02-14-IASTED-Innsbruck-2008-Customer-Retention-and-Delivery-Quality-in-the-IT-industry-1-320.jpg)
2008-02-14 - IASTED Innsbruck 2008 - Customer Retention and Delivery Quality in the IT industry
- 1. Customers’ Perception of delivery Quality IASTED SE 2008, Innsbruck Jaap van Ekris, Senior Consultant [email_address]
- 2. The current state of affairs Only 29% of all software development projects deliver what is promissed on time, within budget Around 72% of all customers consider abandoning current IT suppliers due to dissatisfaction with their current supplier How to retain customers ?
- 3. Retaining customers is a hard job
- 4. A lot of effort goes into improvement
- 5. Main focus of these improvement models...
- 6. The product on time on budget doesn’t suffice... Delivery is a closed brown bag Delivery is a tray of food Employees hardly speak local language Employees listen and verify order Process is completely out of sight Keeps process in front of customer Customers structurally ignored due to highly optimized process Employees are friendly to customers Pay in advance Pay upon delivery Product is good (for fastfood) Product is mediocre
- 7. Or more close to the industry What is needed to satisfy customers? Doing what you get paid for is not enough (Tracey and Wiersma) A lot of human factors (Paulk) Motivated personnel (Heskett) Surprising customers (Kotter) Delighting customers (Berry) Providing good service besides a perfect product (Kotler) By providing functional quality besides technical quality (Gronroos, Parazuraman, Berry & Zeithaml) Exceeding in the supporting processes (Porter)
- 8. A hierarchic model for customer satisfaction Delivery Quality Product Quality Functionality
- 9. Delivery quality? Aimed at the way of attaining the product Contains a lot of “softer” factors in human interactions during the project SERVQUAL defines these softer factors as being Reliability (meeting agreements) Empathic behavior Responsiveness Knowledgeable acting Visual appearance Does it mean the difference between “ not dissatisfied” and “satisfied” customers?
- 10. An exceptional case Relacement of a highly safety critical system The demands: Complete rebuild of an existing system (15 years in operation) Proven reliability of the total system of 10 -4 , realized by IEC61508 SIL-4 Prince2 ® , focused on frequent and open communication ISO9001 certified company Not meeting stated demands would result in large penalties
- 11. Method of investigation All teammembers at the customer cooperated in the investigation Investigation consisted out of several steps Initial structured interview covering functionality, product quality and delivery quality, focussing on need, expectations and percpetion The most positive and most negative experience Overall grade of the suppliers effort
- 12. Finding: A technically an exemplary project Budget: fixed price Delivery date: 2 weeks early Functionality: proven 100% complete Product quality: 100% according expectations
- 13. Finding: Delivery Quality fell short Reliability : all respondents satisfied Empathic behavior is below expectation for every respondent Responsiveness is a bit below expectation for a single respondent Knowledgeable acting is a bit below expectation for some respondents Visual appearance : most respondents indicated that the performance is below expectation
- 14. Finding: Customer retention is null NONE of the respondents would automatically buy again from the supplier Some respondents even indicated to explicitly select a competitor when given a choice! Respondents scored the suppliers’ efforts: Average of 7,5 (out of 10) Highest score 8 Lowest is a 6 These marks put the customer in the “zone of indifference”, as expected from the explicit statements about rebuy behavior
- 15. Findings: Critical incidents identified Not being involved with the customer Not checking how the process really works Not much contact between customer and developer No interest in finding out the surrounding context No regard for the customers culture Not conforming to locally (very established) ways of working Taking decisions that are contrary to the “safety first” culture Abundance of typo’s in critical design documents Presence attributes to the feeling of a less than perfect review process Not solving the typo’s when identified gave subjects the feeling they were not taken seriously
- 16. Findings: Suggestions for improvement 1 More thorough review process 1 Be an overall responsible contractor 1 Responsiveness 3 Knowledgeable acting 3 Empathic behavior Suggested area of improvement 3rd 2nd 1st Priority of Improvement
- 17. Results from the case Traditional project management goals fullfilled, recognized by customer On budget On time Right quality, right functionality Customer not willing to return due to delivery quality: Empathic behaviour Knowledgable acting Absence of delivery quality can cause serious unrest at the customer
- 18. Conclusions Just a perfect product does not help you retain your customers, it will only save you time in court To retain customers, you have to: Deliver what the customer needs, on time within budget perform above expectations on more “softer” areas of project management: Reliability/meeting agreements Empathic behavior Responsiveness Knowledgeable acting Visual appearance Work to be done Tailor SERVQUAL dimensions to the IT industry
Editor's Notes
- #16: Met name de laatste was een verrassing: medewerkers associeerden de kwaliteit van de spelling (iets dat ze wel konden meten) met de inhoudelijke kwaliteit van het document!