Service Excellence
Ensuring That Quality and Efficiency Underpin Our Pursuit of Client Satisfaction
Score: 92.2%
week of:
June 29, 2009.
At EDS, an HP Company, providing outstanding service, innovation and industry thought leadership is key to our continued leadership position in IT delivery services. Service Excellence means delivering on commitments and exceeding client expectations. It means being the most cost-effective at delivering high-value services with industry-leading quality. At EDS, Service Excellence is an essential element of our continuing plan to build the premier global outsourcing services company. It is central to our focus on client loyalty.
There is nothing hit-or-miss about delivering excellent service. It is a primary differentiator in the information technology (IT) marketplace. Our Service Excellence program underpins our relentless pursuit of client satisfaction. Our objectives are simple: 100 percent client satisfaction and 100 percent client retention.
Innovative and bold, yet in use for more than nine years, our Service Excellence approach embraces open, candid and collaborative relationships with our clients. These two words–service excellence–are part of the vocabulary and culture of the entire company.
- Download the Service Excellence Overview PDF, 1.4M
- View a demo of the Service Excellence Client Dashboard PDF, 3.7M
Service Excellence Dashboard
The Service Excellence Dashboard is the centerpiece of the program. We use this Web-enabled, real-time information system to monitor the quality of services we deliver to nearly 960 active clients. This tool is especially useful to our executives, who receive client summaries and bulletins or alerts, which keep them up-to-date. Our stoplight icon and red-yellow-green scoring are simple to understand and consistently used worldwide. This highly visual method transcends language barriers and provides an instant “quick picture” of the state of the client relationship.
Voice of the Client
At EDS, client satisfaction and delivery excellence are our top priorities. That's why we've turned up the volume on client feedback with the Voice of the Client (VoC) program. By improving the communication between clients and EDS, we are better able to evaluate our performance, identify growth opportunities, understand how our clients perceive us, and gain insight about how we compare with our competitors.
Ultimately, the client's rating of EDS' performance is the only score that really counts. By using the dashboard, clients can weigh in at any given time about our performance and their level of satisfaction. This presents EDS with opportunities to continually satisfy the client. In 2008, EDS received feedback from nearly 1,400 executives within 550 client companies. This included in-person interviews with more than 425 executives within our top 150 client organizations.
Client Dashboard
EDS clients have around-the-clock access to performance information by accessing the Service Excellence Client Dashboard via the Internet. With this tool, from their desktops, clients are able to monitor EDS' performance and provide direct feedback to their account executive, ask questions and make suggestions for improvement. At any time, clients can initiate surveys from the Client Dashboard. The client feedback is reviewed at the highest levels within EDS, action plans are put in place, then we execute to meet and exceed the client's expectations.
This private, customized view of EDS' internal performance monitoring system is just one more innovative way of building the trust we need to maximize relationships and succeed in today's highly competitive world.
Client Surveys
EDS puts client feedback squarely in the hands of our clients with client surveys. These online surveys enable our clients to submit real-time performance evaluations directly to responsible EDS parties. Surveys are available in 25 languages.
In February 2009, Service Excellence enhanced its Voice of the Client (VoC) survey, the Service Excellence Dashboard and the Client Dashboard in an effort to obtain more extensive feedback. More specifically, today there are different survey options based on whether the service provided is in a steady state or has recently undergone a transition. Additionally, the survey participant can take one of four types of surveys depending on his or her role in the organization: strategic, operational, a combination, or an end-user. A third improvement includes the new survey questions that vary based on the service line/offering in the areas of: Applications Development, Applications Development, ITO Data Center, ITO Network, ITO Desktop, BPO CRM/Contact Center, BPO HR Services, and BPO Other. These views align to Gartner groupings to enable external benchmarking and parallel marketing analyses.
Client Interviews
The Service Excellence VoC Interview Program enables EDS to capture client perceptions and expectations regarding EDS' teams, products and services in a one-on-one interview. This feedback is used to improve customer satisfaction at the client level, as well as provide key input to EDS business improvement initiatives and overall EDS service excellence objectives. Client interviews are one-to-one discussions between an independent representative from the Service Excellence team and client representatives. These candid one-hour interviews include open-ended questions about EDS' performance, deliverables and service quality as well as past disappointments, expectations and future objectives.
Each time a client provides feedback, EDS has the opportunity to improve delivery, build trust and demonstrate our ability to provide solutions to our clients. When feedback is received through a survey or interview, EDS leaders are required to complete an improvement plan and post that plan onto the Dashboard.
Perspectives
In the complex world of information technology services, addressing key business functions such as client loyalty, customer relationship management and process reengineering is an especially tough challenge. EDS has stepped up to this challenge in a way that distinguishes us from all competitors.
Our Service Excellence program has created new frontiers of learning in enterprise transformation and performance management practices. What we've done to achieve this marketplace advantage is fairly simple, yet bold. By opening the door to our clients for candid, collaborative dialogue, we're able to stay far ahead of the curve in measuring and anticipating clients needs, desires and possibilities.
The Service Excellence program is instrumental to our success in cultivating and maintaining long-term business relationships. It has become a catalyst for cultural change within EDS. Our employees rally their collective knowledge to address clients' business issues today and anticipate those which loom ahead in the fast-changing IT market.
Take a few moments to learn more about the EDS Service Excellence program and share your ideas with us through our online polls or e-mails to Tracy Gilman (tracy.gilman@eds.com), EDS Global Operations director of Service Excellence. In today's business environment service quality and client relationships are key to sustained business success.