CSAT Programs for Outsourced IT Services

Enterprises and service providers alike have not been able to find a consistent way to really tap into the the user perception of IT services that are outsourced to external providers. There are only a handful of them who have a well oiled framework to regular mine feedback from users of outsourced IT services, siphoning it back to the delivery teams and tracking the progress against the areas of improvement. Even there, the process is at best reactive. 

There are several variants of doing this but a lack of a consistent framework stands out --- and is so surprising that no one has really been making moves across the industry in this space, moreso with the growing trend of moving work to several countries outside the base country, multi-sourcing and other emerging trends which adds several moving parts to what was earlier a simple support model with in-house and mostly local IT support.

In most IT shops where CSAT programs run, these are mostly around service desk where a % of users whose tickets are closed are served with a 5-8 question survey to gather feedback on that experience. However there is need to include resolver groups in this or separately and also to track trends of root causes and teams scoring lower scores consistently. However this is mostly the B2C kind of CSAT if you may. The other is the qualitative feedback on a provider's ability to deliver the intended goals, service improvement and support for business which are more of the B2B kind of CSAT. These are more crucial to gather what the customer leadership team thinks of the provider and are most often modulated due to the "in-band" nature of information gathering. The teams which collect such information are part of the account relationship team and have a conflict of interest in collecting such feedback on performance which reflects their own. Also, it is not easy to standardize such B2B CSAT feedback as each client has its own unique set of requirements.

An ideal CSAT program covers both B2C and B2B CSAT feedback and analyzes these and finds trends to assess how the services are trending. A great area to improve and grow for both enterprises and service providers alike.