A nationwide US study has found that less than half of IT users are
truly loyal customers who want to continue doing business with
their IT suppliers.
Walker Information surveyed 2,259 decision makers, influencers and
IT staff and asked them to evaluate enterprise and infrastructure
software, network equipment, servers and storage systems.
Less than half of the respondents (47%) indicated a desire to
continue doing business with their existing suppliers, while 29%
said they felt trapped in that business relationship, and 21% said
they planned to dump their vendor for someone else.
The results show that corporate users have fairly high levels of
satisfaction with vendors, with about 80% saying they were
generally satisfied. However, just 61% rated product quality
positively and only 54% were positive about the value offered by
the products.
The companies evaluated most often were Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard,
IBM, Cisco, Sun, Dell Computer, Oracle, 3Com, Adobe and Seagate
Technology. Walker vice-president Marc Drizen declined to disclose
how customer satisfaction and loyalty levels scored for specific
vendors.
However, Walker did note some differences among the IT product
sectors. Software vendors may have a real challenge improving
relationships with their customers: Their products are seen as
having erected more barriers that keep users from switching
vendors, and software costs were rated most burdensome. Networking
equipment suppliers won the highest ratings for quality and value.
When the survey results are evaluated by type of respondent, they
indicate that the people responsible for implementing and managing
the technology are more keenly sensitive to lock-in issues than
those who made the buying decision. While 26% of IT decision makers
felt trapped, 30% of IT staff said they were unable to walk away
from their existing systems.
Drizen noted that the decision makers are also slightly more loyal
than the overall survey group, with half of them indicating
loyalty. This may be because they were the ones to choose the
vendor in the first place, according to Walker.
IT staff were also least sanguine about the quality of service and
support. Only 45% rated non-technical customer service positively,
while 17% rated it negatively and the remainder were neutral.
Technical support received less than stellar marks from this group
as well, with 49% positive and 19% negative.
Finally, in what may be a sign of a time when corporate malfeasance
is splashed across the newspapers, just 36% believed their IT
suppliers were highly ethical.
Walker Information can be found at
www.walkerinfo.com