The Access4 Net Promoter Score (NPS) Journey: 5 Years of Focusing on Partner Satisfaction.

The health and happiness of our MSP partner eco-system is at the forefront of everything that we do here at Access4. Our partners have embarked on a journey with us – they’ve invested time and energy into understanding our product and how it can help their customers.

With that in mind, we like to be confident that our partners are following the path to a lasting and profitable relationship with us, so every year we run our partner NPS score survey. This process involves gaining feedback on the good, bad and the ugly of our platforms and partner systems and constructively using this feedback to build a better product and experience for everyone.

And, in the spirit of being honest and transparent we’re disclosing our NPS scores (alongside a cheeky challenge of ‘Show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ to some of our competitors!) and the journey it took us to get there.

When asked why the NPS score was important to Access4, Managing Director, Tim Jackson mentions:

“We measure everything in this business, and the NPS score is a clear indicator of partner sentiment. The scores we get are constructive – we realise we’re not perfect, and like every business, we have areas to improve. The areas of improvement are highlighted in the score and allows us to invest in the right areas that are important to our partners and their customers.”

This year we surveyed 97 of our partners across Australia and New Zealand across a variety of vectors including Product/Features, Communication, Response Time and Knowledge/Expertise around our primary product SASBOSS and unified communications products. Using an independent NPS survey provider who conducted surveys over the phone to partners who had opted-in guarantees results from people who want to participate, and who want to give honest feedback.

So, what were the results?

This years’ overall combined result of 46 is a 14% jump on last year, and a continuance of our planned upward trajectory. While Access4 is not a telco player or sole B2B software product, the 46 sits on average 20 basis points higher than industry standard.

Among the 97 partners who participated in the survey, it was evident that partner support and the response times provided by Access4 Partner Support Managers were areas of the business that performed exceptionally well, receiving an overall score of 77 points.

Partner quotes:

“Most of them are pretty prompt in getting onto things and getting back to us, there is never much of a delay in terms of getting a response to any technical questions, most of the issues that arise they can solve very quickly, they will get onto things for me quickly, they are fast in responding to my queries, things are resolved quite rapidly” – Anonymous Partner Testimonial

“They are flexible to adapt to change, it just seemed like they were willing to extend situations when needed to get the right results, they are always ready to help, they are just always helpful and happy to work on deals and work on things with us when needed, we sometimes have requests that might be a bit left of field that they help us out with, when there are difficult issues they do everything they can to help us out.” – Anonymous Partner Testimonial

“They explain everything to me in a clear manner, they always reach out and check to see how we are going, we can get them on the phone within minutes if we need to, they are easy to get hold of, when we escalate any issues they respond with instructions on how to do certain things, they get back to me within an hour or within the same day and that to me is excellent service.” – Anonymous Partner Testimonial

Another highlighted area of excellence is in Provisioning where SASBOSS™ (Access4’s proprietary CPaaS platform) assists and simplifies the deployment of Voice and UC solutions. In this area, partners voted with 75 points.

Regarding provisioning, one partner quotes:

“It is just straight forward and easy to deploy, we deploy through SASBOSS™ and it is intuitive, it is a simplified interface compared to other phone systems, I do a lot now and find it easy which is great considering the fact that I never had any technical background, it is easy to install and hassle free.”

Now, on the flipside – where do Access4 need to improve?

Managing Director, Tim Jackson states:

“A number of our partners have had challenges in accessing some of our Solution Consultants for the tricky technical issues post-sales. We’ve learnt that these people are sometimes difficult to get hold of – so this has validated our strategy to invest more in this area.”

“I’m really proud of our TAC team, they do a fantastic job, and putting in another level of support will just make things better. It’s a white-glove service for the small technical issues where partners can access solutions expertise for P3 or P4 issues. This will free up our Solution Consultants and Support Engineeers so they can manage the P1 incidents that may occur when on-boarding a new customer onto the platform.”

Another area for investment and improvement sits under the enablement and education of partners on how to port various services across the network. Access4 has an incredible porting team who provide great service to partners. However, to make it easier for partners to manage porting themselves, the team at Access4 will be developing better on-boarding, training and educating in the porting areas to ensure partners are more self-sufficient.

With company values focused on authenticity and transparency, Managing Director Tim Jackson quotes:

“We’re always on a journey to improve and we have a bit of humility about where those improvements need to be. Every successful business needs to take feedback and make changes for the better – our partners are the core of our success, so we need to listen to them and develop with them in mind.”

“Formerly being an MSP, we know all too well that our success is based on the partner experience – and if partners are having an issue, we need to improve. Our SASBOSS product has grown, but the NPS data shows that SASBOSS V2 will need to reduce complexity and create simplicity across a variety of Voice and UCaaS actions. This is particularly prominent to make it easy for MSP’s who have not sold or implemented voice solutions – we want new partners to use the platform seamlessly and feel confident provisioning products from it.”

“We’re on a journey to be great – and we’re doing it by gathering direct feedback and working on it. When you’re a small tech start-up you can’t be everything to everyone – however, you can put the right people in the areas that need improvement and focus on developing a ‘partner-first’ solution. With that in mind, I’m confident our NPS scores will continue to go up.” Tim concludes.

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