Channel Satisfaction Survey: 'Rev up Support'

The survey that most vendors wait year long to lay their hands on is
finally out. The good news is that partners are happy with product quality and
brand image, which are the most important criteria while doing business with a
vendor.

The most serious revelation of this survey is that vendors have been rated
low on the third-most important criterion–after-sales service. Also important
is the fact that vendors are lagging behind in meeting the promised turnaround
times.

The fourth DQCI Channel Satisfaction Survey (CSS) 2003 conducted by IDC India
covered 1,002 partners across all types of channel categories. Key distributors,
resellers, retailers, network integrators, systems integrators, corporate
resellers, and assemblers, were all covered in this survey.

The survey was undertaken for a wide geographic coverage. Cities that were
covered in the survey are Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad,
Ahmedabad, Pune, Chandigarh, and Lucknow. The results of the survey were
concluded on the basis of 21 micro attributes that nearly covered every
parameter required in the building of a company’s equity through channel
loyalty.

Vendors have to increasingly look at quality, satisfaction and loyalty as
keys for achieving market leadership. Understanding what drives these critical
elements, how they are linked, and how they contribute to a company's overall
equity is fundamental to success. The 21 micro attributes were further evaluated
to arrive at the following seven macro attributes:

• Product quality
• Brand image
• After-sales support
• Marketing support
• Commercial terms
• Relationship management and
• Online support

Based on the importance and performance of these attributes, the survey
arrived at four tactical resource allocations that vendors need to ‘improve,
leverage, watch and maintain.’

The DQCI CSS findings say that ‘technology leadership’, ‘strong brand
positioning’ and ‘diversity of product range’ are given high importance by
channels. These are some of the areas that vendors should always address. ‘Product
pricing’ and ‘point-of-sales material’ are the two areas where most of the
vendors have maintained high performance. But considering the fact that these
are not very important concerns for partners, vendors may try and maintain these
at the current level.

Online support, and training and certification are two areas which partners
feel to be of lower importance, but at the same time have expressed
dissatisfaction over. But vendors should remember that as the industry’s
infrastructure improves, these parameters will become an important factor for
growth. So vendors will need to keep a watch on these areas too.

Top 10 Areas of Dissatisfaction

Reward systems Overall effectiveness of online support Training and certification programmes for channel partners Promptness of services through online resources  Profit margins Richness of online resources offered Transparency in commercial terms and policies Turnaround time of aftersales service Consistency and effectiveness of communication with partners Innovativeness of market development programs

A key finding is that vendors should improve on their ability to provide
satisfactory repair and replacement services with reduced turnaround time.
Obviously, this is a serious issue that they should take up immediately.

After-sales service, time and again, has proved to be one of the most
important criteria deciding the fate of any vendor in the long run. The survey
findings say that vendors have failed miserably in providing the right
after-sales support.

Partners are also dissatisfied over matters like transparency in commercial
terms and policies; richness of online resources offered; profit margins;
promptness of online resources; and reward systems.

Most Preferred Vendors

The methodology for arriving at the best vendor for each category does not
have any dependence on the calculation of satisfaction scores of vendors. A
simple voting was conducted to identify the best vendor. For each product within
a category, respondents were asked to name the best vendor and substantiate it
by choosing the strongest reason from a list of five generic reasons.

For arriving at the best hardware/software vendor, the vendor bagging the
number one position for the maximum number of products within the category was
chosen.

NELSON JOHNY in Mumbai  For full
report see DQ Channels India Dec 16-31 issue

Top Seven Macro Attributes

Given below
are the seven top-rated macro attributes listed in order of their
importance. Each macro attribute has a subset of three micro attributes.
All the 21 micro attributes were evaluated to arrive at the seven macro
attributes. Macro attributes were used to gauge the satisfaction level of
various vendors in the DQCI Channel Satisfaction Survey-2003:

1. Product Quality
   
   Technological leadership of the product
   
   Diversity of the product range
   
   User-friendliness of the product

2. Brand Image
   
   Strong brand positioning by the vendor
   
   Prestige in being a channel partner of the vendor
   
   Respectability image of the vendor in a target market

3. After-sales Support
   
   Availability and competence of managers/helpdesk
   services
   
   Ability to provide satisfactory repair and replacement
   services
   
   Turnaround time in providing after-sales support

4. Marketing Support
   
   Vendor’s advertising
   
   Point-of-sales material
   
   Innovativeness of market development programs

5. Commercial Terms
   
   Product pricing
   
   Profit margins
   
   Transparency in commercial terms and policies

6. Relationship Management
   
   Consistency and effectiveness of communication with
   partners
   
   Training and certification programmes for channel
   partners
   
   Reward systems

7. Online Support
   
   Richness of online resources offered
   
   Promptness of services through online resources
   
   Overall effectiveness of online support