Best vs. Better
In 2011, we got very clear about our mission: We guarantee your best information technology experience. With good intentions, we were anxious to see how it would be received, but the reception wasn’t what we had hoped for. Instead, it created more questions like what do you mean by best, how do you know what my best is, and how do you prove that. Conversations with our customers and prospects began to focus on defending our best instead of what was important to them.
Around the same time, I ran across the now very popular TED Talk video “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek. I started to wonder how Tobin’s “why” fits in with our mission of your best information technology experience. Soon after, Simon Sinek came to Milwaukee to speak about his work on Ted Talk. After the show, I shared my dilemma with Sinek. I was clear on our “why,” but was having a difficult time explaining it. I shared our mission with him and he looked up, thought for a moment, then said “change best to better.” The impact was immediately clear and I started seeing ways we could explain and measure better. I immediately changed our mission to: We guarantee a better technology experience!
Experience and Commitment
So, what does “We guarantee a better technology experience” mean? First, we start with the experience. We created our commitment supporting that experience – it’s our promise to you.
- A thorough understanding of your company’s needs and goals
- A consistent customer experience
- Professional, positive, I-want-to-help attitude from our staff with plain language communication
- Clear expectations management
- Consultative approach to problem solving and new solutions
- Explanations/education, options, and recommendations
- Solutions testing and verification
- Documentation of systems support
- Highly responsive with efficient ticket resolution and project management
- Timely, clear, accurate, and no-surprise billing
- Win-win partnership attitude
Our systems and people support this guarantee. We recruit people who want to give a better technology experience to run our systems that give a better technology experience.
We also asked ourselves how can we measure “better” and saw some great ways to do that. Here are some examples:
- Technology Survey – This is sent to a client so they can send it out to their whole organization. We gather the data, get measurable scores, then we create an action plan to improve the numbers. For example, if the average rating on “I understand how to use my computers effectively for my job” comes back at a 2, we can put together a plan for training and education and process improvements. A few months later, we send the survey again. If that question comes back with an average score of 3 or 4, we’ve now collaborated on a better technology experience!
- Goals and Outcomes – We get a list of goals and better measurable outcomes that our customer seeks. As those goals are completed and outcomes are generated, our guarantee of a better
- Better Outcomes – Our 7 steps to better outcomes supports a better technology. Here’s how:
