A marketing analysis of Cloud2 : thesis written in an internship

(1)

1

A marketing analysis of Cloud2

Thesis written in an internship

Weltevreden, T.

University of Amsterdam, 2016

This thesis is written while in an internship for Cloud2, a cloud service provider based in the Netherlands. It uses multiple surveys that were conducted on customers from the past few years to analyse how to improve overall customer satisfaction. This is done according to relevant theories from the book Marketing Management by Kotler and Keller, and shows how to keep track of customer satisfaction with the help of the customer value analysis from the same book.

The results from the surveys are reflected upon with the help of the customer benefits, that can divided be in functional, economic and psychological benefits, and customer costs, which can be either monetary or nonmonetary. These results are then discussed and conclude in recommendations for improvements.

20-02-2016

Bachelor thesis with internship Economics

Supervisor: S. Chan, MSc 10070427

(2)

2

Statement of Originality

This document is written by Student Terrence Weltevreden, who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this

document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

(3)

3

Summary

Introduction ... 4

Theory of customer satisfaction ... 8

Customer benefits ... 9

Customer costs ... 9

Customer value analysis ... 10

Presentation and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data ... 12

Yearly reseller satisfaction surveys ... 13

Support department ... 14

Sales department ... 16

Finance department ... 17

Technical department ... 19

2015 Reseller loyalty survey (Net Promotor Score) ... 20

Support department continuous survey ... 22

Insights obtained from surveys on new products ... 25

IaaS ... 25

Passive Fallback ... 29

Market analysis on non-resellers ... 30

Conclusion ... 33

How to analyse reseller satisfaction ... 33

Results from the reseller surveys ... 34

Appendices ... 35

Appendix 1: Services of Cloud2 ... 35

Appendix 2: Distributions and statistics of the yearly reseller satisfaction surveys ... 36

Distributions 2013 ... 36

Distributions 2014 ... 39

Statistics ... 41

Appendix 3: Distribution and statistics of the continuous support survey ... 42

Distributions over time ... 42

Statistics ... 42

Appendix 4: Distributions of the IaaS survey ... 43

Appendix 5: The Passive Fallback questionnaires ... 44

Appendix 6: Literature ... 50

(4)

4

Introduction

This thesis is written while in an internship meant to help Cloud2 improve their daily operations. Cloud2 is a Netherlands-based company that offers cloud services to various clients. In order to help Cloud2 see where they can improve, multiple customer satisfaction surveys are conducted and analysed in relation with other surveys taken at Cloud2 and compared to leading marketing theories on product development, customer loyalty and value recognition. This will help Cloud2 as they have only analysed their surveys individually, not in relationship with other surveys or marketing theories. By executing this final step, additional results will be found in the surveys and together with marketing theories, these results will point to specific implementations that will help Cloud2 grow in the eyes of their customers, which will lead to better relationships and therefore more revenue. The results will be found by answering the lead question of this thesis:

What improvements can Cloud2 implement to be valued higher by their customers?

Several surveys are analysed to answer this question: the customer satisfaction surveys of 2013 and 2014, a customer loyalty survey of 2015, a market analysis survey of 2013 and parts of two surveys of 2014 on two new services: Passive Fallback and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). These surveys will be explained more thoroughly further on. After these are analysed and compared with the mentioned marketing theories, the conclusion will bring interesting points of improvement for Cloud2. To start, this thesis begins with an introduction of Cloud2 and its operations for better understanding of the analysis.

Cloud2 offers various cloud services1_{: they shift local computing and storage to computing and storage} on specialized computers, often found in datacentres, which can be reached over the internet. Before cloud services, all digital activities needed to be operated on computers and servers stored locally: hosting websites, storing files, email, a database for administration, etc. Doing so would require large

(5)

5 investments in these computers, frequent maintenance at these computers which would mean downtime (the computer is not accessible) and huge vulnerability if something would happen to one of the computers. Cloud services take most of these disadvantages away as SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) can replace their local computers by cloud service.

When Cloud2 started, they only offered online backup (a backup of a local computer is stored in a datacentre, so data will be retained in case of a disaster) targeted at SMEs in the Netherlands. They did this with success: they survived the first five years, where about half of the start-ups from 2010 failed within that period according to the two articles of Van de Beld (2015) and Kromme (2015).

In the process of targeting the SMEs directly, Cloud2 found out that most SMEs have their IT-activities (partly) sourced out to specialists: IT-partners. These IT-partners help the SMEs optimize their practises by implementing, maintaining and consulting on their digital infrastructure, without the drawbacks of hiring someone on a fixed base. As long as these IT partners do their work properly, the collaboration stays mutually beneficial and the SME trusts the IT partner to make the right call. Over time, these IT-partners started to reach out to Cloud2 for its services and it became clear that this was a more efficient way to reach the SMEs: one IT-partner, acting as reseller, usually has multiple SMEs as customers. The choice was then made: IT-partners could act as resellers and Cloud2 shifted its main focus to these companies, serving the SME market through them. For simplicity and in order to not compete with the partners directly, each new customer (end user) is either allocated to a reseller or the existing IT-partner starts a collaboration with Cloud2 and becomes a reseller. Otherwise, Cloud2 could take over customers of existing resellers.

Without the resellers, Cloud2 would collapse. They sell the Cloud2 services to the end users, they are maintaining these services for the end-users and they help the end-users with prime support. Cloud2 then acts as secondary help if the reseller is not capable of solving a problem.

(6)

6 Selling cloud services via resellers is not unique: some competitors, such as Mindtime Backup, also operate this way. Other competitors, KeepItSafe for example, target the end users directly and offer a profit for the IT-partners who sign in their end users.

There are a lot of ways to supply storage based cloud services such as file sync products or online backup as the exact definition of this could be fulfilled by any computer that is accessible via internet. Because of this, the offered services range from personal computers with attached hard drives to specialized datacentres with carefully selected, redundantly conducted hardware.

2_{The author’s own representation of the market wherein Cloud2 operates.} Figure 1: The market chain in which Cloud2 operates2

The drawing above shows the chains with possible ways for an end user to use the service. This thesis focuses on Cloud2 and the specific chain of Cloud2: storage in datacentres is added to the software of multiple developers and sold to IT-partners, who can sell it to the end-users with margin over the support they provide on the service. IT-partners that buy from Cloud2 are called resellers. Note the other possibilities: end users can be targeted directly by Cloud2’s direct competition, IT-partners can manage a service completely by themselves or with just the software from a developer.

(7)

7 As the services differ, so do the suppliers, prices, consumers and demands. To illustrate this, compare the datacentres and functionalities of Apple iCloud, Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive with hobbyists who got a hard drive accessible over the Internet for a few friends. One quickly sees how characteristics of cloud services can differ on professionality, features, security, availability, performance, price, guarantees, service, etc.

With such a wide range of characteristics it is hard to exactly define the market of cloud services. Cloud2 positions its services as professional with high-end security, performance and features for an affordable price. This usually deters the private market from reaching out to Cloud2 as they tend to look for products with no monetary costs. To reach the SMEs that match with Cloud2, Cloud2 focuses on a certain type of IT-partners to resell its services: SMEs in the IT industry with 3 to 100 Full Time Employees (FTEs). 1 or 2 FTE(s) are usually less professional, IT-partners with over 100 FTE are too likely to operate their own cloud services, possibly with the help of software developers. Of course, IT-partners with less than 3 or more than 100 FTE whose needs match with Cloud2’s offerings, will be helped. For example, Cloud2 its biggest reseller has over 250 FTE.

It is estimated on numbers collected from the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and LinkedIn that a couple thousand of IT-partners with 3 to 100 FTE exist in the Netherlands, Cloud2 has an active collaboration with over two hundred of them.

As these relationships with the resellers are the key for Cloud2, much effort is put into maintaining and improving these relationships. The surveys on customer satisfaction and reseller loyalty are created solely for the purpose of keeping track on how the resellers think of Cloud2.

The market analysis survey was designed to become familiar with how IT-partners regard cloud service providers in a broader view than just the opinions from the existing base of Cloud2.

The last few surveys used in this thesis were constructed to determine the demands for two new products Cloud2 was working on: Passive Fallback and IaaS (these are explained in Appendix 1). Only parts from these surveys that are relevant to customer satisfaction are used.

(8)

8

Theory of customer satisfaction

Humans tend to maximize their utility by allocating all available resources in the most efficient way (Nicholson & Snyder, 2008). This means that customers will always consume to satisfy their needs. In reality, multiple options exist so customers have to choose where to allocate their resources.

They ought to do that in such a way that they obtain the highest utility, which is the way that gives them the most back. As this can be subjective, it should be the way that gives the most according to this person’s perspective.

According to Kotler and Keller (2012), this is the option where they believe they obtain the most benefits, which can be functional, psychological or economical, in relative to the costs, which can be monetary costs or nonmonetary costs. As a producer wants customers to buy their products or services, he needs to let them perceive that his offer is the best there is by giving the highest benefits for the lowest costs.

Kotler and Keller also tell that after a customer picks an offer, the producer needs to live up to the expectations of the customer to make them repurchase. This is precise

work for the producer: he cannot set the expectations too low as customers will choose a competitor, he cannot set the expectations too high or he will not be able to live up to these expectations.

3_{Image retrieved from: Kotler & Keller (2012). Marketing Management. Pearson Education, page} 125.

Figure 2: Kotler & Keller’s customer perceived value3

(9)

9

Customer benefits

Increasing the customer benefits can be done in three ways, according to Kotler and Keller (2012): by improving the economic, functional or psychological benefits for the offer. These objectives can be achieved by improving the product, the service around it or the image that it has.

The functional benefits can be described as benefits from the use of the product: how good does this vacuum cleaner work? Economic benefits can be seen as benefits that ease possible circumstances: a component of my vacuum cleaner is broken, how quickly can it be replaced? The psychological benefits contain nontangible benefits such as: how good do I feel when I buy from this brand, knowing that their products are manufactured by adults that are given fair wages?

Customer satisfaction is the next step and follows directly after the purchase. It is the result of the created expectations on and actual experiences of the product (Kopalle & Lehmann, 2006). A producer would want to create high expectations and meet them or even surpass them, to get highly satisfied customers. Highly satisfied customers are ideal: according to Homburg, Koschate and Hoyer (2005), highly satisfied customers stay longer, buy more, are less interested in competitors, offer new ideas and talk more about their satisfaction with others.

An easy way to measure the satisfaction of your customers is to ask them how satisfied they are. Kotler and Keller warn on this method that customers can differ in their definition of satisfaction. It reflects the feeling of the customer at that specific time and while some tend to give higher scores, others grade relatively low.

Customer costs

Customer cost reductions can be made on two sides: Kotler and Keller (2012) mention monetary and nonmonetary costs. A monetary cost reduction is essentially a price cut, but can be achieved in more creative ways such as a customer loyalty program that discounts when the product is repurchased.

(10)

10 Nonmonetary costs are more complicated. They can be seen as the thresholds customers experience when they consume: they do not know every option, they cannot (realistically) find every option, they cannot reach every option, etcetera (Pepall, Richards & Norman, 2002). To overcome these thresholds, they must invest time, money and effort. This time, energy, effort or psychological investment that a customer must overcome to get in touch with the product are called the nonmonetary costs.

Customer value analysis

Kotler and Keller argue that even if a customer views option A as the best option as it delivers the highest benefits in relation to its costs, it is not guaranteed that it will be chosen. This because the buyer might be under orders to choose a specific attribute over others (price, for example) or he could enjoy a friendship with a certain competitor. Or perhaps the buyer is not planning on staying in the long run and another offer looks better on the short run.

Nevertheless, understanding customer value by interpreting the respective benefits and costs and knowing how to influence these benefits and costs, will prove of value for each company. To do this, Kotler and Keller sketch a customer value analysis with five steps:

“1. Identify the major attributes and benefits customers’ value. Customers are asked what attributes, benefits and performance levels they look for in choosing a product and vendor. Attributes and benefits should be defined broadly to encompass all the inputs to customers’ decisions.

2. Assess the quantitative importance of the different attributes and benefits. Customers are asked to rate the importance of different attributes and benefits. If their ratings diverge too much, the marketer should cluster them into different segments.

3. Assess the company’s and competitors’ performances on the different customer values against their rated importance. Customers describe where they see the company’s and competitors’ performances on each attribute and benefit.

(11)

11 4. Examine how customers in a specific segment rate the company’s performance against a specific major competitor on an individual attribute or benefit basis. If the company’s offer exceeds the competitor’s offer on all important attributes and benefits, the company can charge a higher price (thereby earning higher profits), or it can charge the same price and gain more market share.

5. Monitor customer values over time. The company must periodically redo its studies of customer values and competitors’ standings as the economy, technology, and features change” (Kotler & Keller, 2012).

Right now Cloud2 performs certain customer satisfaction surveys, but besides the 2015 Net Promotor Score the surveys are not built on a strong theoretical basis. They are more or less launched out of a feeling that they need to and this shows when the totality of surveys is held against the customer value analysis plan of Kotler and Keller: the attributes and benefits are neither assessed against their importance nor against competitors’ performance.

The first advice for Cloud2 would be to construct a long lasting customer value analysis plan and act according to that plan: fully identify and chart each major benefit and attribute, identify the importance that customers attach to these attributes and find the customer’s perspective on what major attributes competitors have and how they and Cloud2 perform on these points.

(12)

12

Presentation and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data

4

Cloud2 only deals with its resellers instead of the actual users of the products. Therefore the resellers can be seen by Cloud2 as its customers. Because of this, customer satisfaction is called reseller satisfaction to prevent confusion. Four surveys are included in this category: the 2013 reseller satisfaction survey, the 2014 reseller satisfaction survey, the 2015 Net Promoter Score survey and the continuous survey on support satisfaction. This last survey is used only by the support department, who helps resellers with all technical questions. After a reseller has been helped, either over phone or email, they are asked to fill in a small survey on how they experienced the help.

The yearly reseller satisfaction surveys conducted in 2013 and 2014 make up the core of the analysis: they give insight on many aspects of customer satisfaction. In 2015, Cloud2 used the Net Promoter Score survey, which is based on brand loyalty instead of satisfaction and only consists of the question whether a reseller would recommend Cloud2 and a field for comments or further explanations. This field proves to be a rich source of qualitative data. The continuous support satisfaction survey, which is only sent after a reseller reaches out for Cloud2 its help, is used in addition for extra insights.

The surveys on new products also has some information on how resellers view Cloud2, the sections containing this information are extracted from these surveys and listed below so the new insights can be added to the data obtained from the reseller satisfaction surveys. The last survey used is a survey on IT-partners that, at the time, did not act as reseller of Cloud2 and was about how they saw the market for online backup. This survey is used for generalization of the found data.

4_{This section shows the surveys and the analysis of these surveys, which focusses on the room for} improvement. This room for improvement is explained and illustrated in each section and is determined by low scores, logical relationships and experience. The analysis does not cover every point of all the ssurveys, whenever a point of a survey is not covered it means that Cloud2 cannot be expected to improve on this point at this moment.

(13)

13

Yearly reseller satisfaction surveys

Cloud2 started in 2013 with yearly reseller satisfaction surveys: large surveys with multiple, precise questions per department5_{. Resellers were asked to grade Cloud2 on very specific aspects of reseller} satisfaction, but the surveys had a low response: 18 resellers responded in 2013 and only 13 in 2014, out of over 100 (150 in 2014) partners with which Cloud2 tries to have a warm and personal relationship.

As these two surveys are very similar, the results are listed side by side for an easy comparison. Most differences between the two surveys are straightforward: a few questions were added or removed, unrelated to specific occurrences. One difference is related to a specific occasion: the traditional newsletter over email was replaced with a so called digital magazine6_{, a certain web page that has} more graphic and practical possibilities.

The full distribution of scores, which are scaled from 1 to 10, can be found in appendix 2 together with an elaboration on the statistics7_{that compares the two surveys. The difference are mostly statistically} insignificant because of the low number of respondents, which weakens the power of the test. Within these small overall differences, most differences point out that Cloud2 was doing slightly better in 2014 in the perspective of the resellers.

Each department will be discussed after their respective scores8_:

Table 1: the yearly reseller satisfaction surveys and discussions

Subject 2013 scores 2014 scores T values

General satisfaction 8.19 8.18 -0,0173

5_{Cloud2 has four departments: support, sales, finance and techique. Each of them is explained in} further on in their respective section.

6_{http://magazine.cloud2.nl/}_{always redirects to the latest magazine made, not necessarily meant for} resellers. Visiting this page gives an idea on how this differs from a traditional email.

7_{A t-test is used to compare each subject from 2014 to its counterpart from 2013, when available.} Some subjects are clustered for this comparison.

8_{Three scores are marked with an asterisk, these are aggregated scores used for the t-tests and not} asked in that year.

(14)

14

Support department

Subject 2013 scores 2014 scores T values

Telephone Overall score 8.17 8,50* -0,1845 Kindness 8.60 Professionality 8.50 Knowledge 8.40 E-mail Overall score 8.28 8,56* -0,1059 Kindness 8.67 Professionality 8.50 Knowledge 8.50 Overall Speed 8.39 8.58 0,2487

Satisfaction on given answer 8.06 8.45 0,4324

Report functionalities Ahsay 8,75 Crashplan 8.75 IASO 9.25 StorageCraft 9.00 Other

Install and configuration service 8.25 9.75 2,1213

Ahsay management portal 6.33

Note: the 2014 score for Ahsay management portal includes a 1.

The support department has reactive and proactive tasks. The reactive tasks are responding to incoming phone calls or emails from resellers who got a technical issue. The responses over telephone and email are graded separately on kindness, professionality and knowledge, speed and satisfaction for response over telephone and email are graded together.

The proactive tasks consists of maintaining the report functionalities, management portals and the install and configuration service, which helps a reseller setting everything up in the right way. These tasks help preventing issues by providing resellers more insight to fix a problem at the start or prevent problems at all with the right configuration for the customer’s specific system.

The support department is graded high on every point that involves direct contact with the resellers and this is logical as it is part of Cloud2 its philosophy to satisfy the resellers at all cost. This shows in the

(15)

15 qualitative data, which reflects both the proactive and reactive tasks of the support department: resellers take time to fill in a small compliment in the comments: “good job”, “keep on going” or “perfect”. Only three negative comments were given in the support section of two surveys: one reseller wishes for a quicker response over email, another one would like more feedback when this is promised and the final one thinks the department to be too polite. These comments are about the service that is provided with Cloud2 its products and can therefore be classified as (a lack of) economic benefits in the customer benefit framework mentioned earlier. The comment on being too polite could also be classified as a psychological benefit as this influences the image Cloud2 has in the eyes of this reseller. One can argue that these comments do not point out improvements as Cloud2 is already scoring high on the satisfaction, speed, kindness and professionality.

The ‘install and configuration service’ is the only score in the surveys which is increased significantly at α=0.05, although no mentions are made in the qualitative data. The lower score on ‘Ahsay management portal9_{’ is reflected in the qualitative data: resellers mention in 2014 they were unaware of the Ahsay} management portal or do not think it adds value. This contradicts a reseller comment from 2013, where he specifically asks for more insight in end user accounts, which is exactly what the Ahsay management portal does.

Last, one reseller mentions the wish for a central system for all support issues. This can be classified as a chance for an economical benefit improvement as this will improve customer service. Cloud2 is currently configuring which system will be used for this and how to implement it in the organization.

9_{Ahsay (from Ahsay Systems Corporation Limited) is backup software with the possibility to send the} backup to a special backup server elsewhere. Cloud2 has chosen to enable its resellers to manage their backups with a management portal called MyClient, which is not developed by Ahsay itself. For this reason and because the majority of Cloud2 its resellers uses Ahsay for their backups, Cloud2 decided to have this question in the survey.

(16)

16

Sales department

2013 2014 T values Newsletter Digital magazine 7,74* 8.25 0,4040 Frequency 7,76 Interesting 7.71 Overall Marketing help 7.70 8.50 1,2305 Knowledge 7.72 7.91 0,3329

‘Out of the box’ thinking 8.23 8.25 0,0258

Easy to reach 8.22

Portfolio

Price 7.81 7.64 -0,2668

Clarity portfolio 7.50 7.27 -0,2757

Note: the 2014 score for clarity portfolio includes a 2.

The sales department maintain the relations with the resellers through visits, phone calls, emails, newsletters and social media, determines Cloud2’s portfolio and helps resellers to sell Cloud2’s products. The questions are on this department’s capacities, the newsletters and Cloud2’s portfolio.

The most interesting point is the difference in questions under ‘newsletter’ as this is related to a specific occasion: the traditional newsletter over email was replaced with a digital magazine in 2014, a certain web page that has more graphic and practical possibilities. Only an overall score of the digital magazine was asked because Cloud2 already got much feedback on the digital magazines by speaking to resellers directly, this overall score is higher than the combined score of the newsletter in 2013 (but not statistically significant).

Another interesting change was on marketing: Cloud2 hired someone to do marketing on a regular basis in 2014 instead of occasional, which shows off as also marketing improved (again, not significantly). The other scores do not differ remarkably.

The qualitative data shows mixed responses: while one reseller thinks of Cloud2 as a “real partner that thinks and grows along with us” and another says he is “very satisfied, especially on all the backup possibilities Cloud2 offers”, three others suggest points for improvement: “You should take the prices off

(17)

17 your website as resellers should be able to determine their own prices”, “my customers want their accounts to be extended monthly instead of yearly” and “there should be a cheaper solution when large quantities of data are bought”.

Two of these suggestions have been implemented, resellers can only see prices after they log in and large blocks of data have cheaper prices. The final comment, that accounts should be extended monthly instead of yearly, can be seen as a functional benefit as it changes the product and the way it can be used. This change is exactly the reason why Cloud2 chooses not to implement it as it would allow resellers to switch more easily, whilst it does not make IT-partners more eager to choose for Cloud2 as products regarding an IT infrastructure are used for a longer period of time instead of a few months.

One could also argue that Cloud2 scores relatively low on ‘clarity of proposition’ and ‘price’ in 2014 and that Cloud2 should take measures to improve these two points. The clarity of proposition, which can be regarded as a nonmonetary cost as it influences the ease of buying Cloud2 its products and the transparency of what Cloud2 offers, should have improved as Cloud2 drastically changed its proposition at the end of 2014.

Cloud2 would decrease the monetary costs if it lowers its prices, but many consider Cloud2 to already have competitive prices and taking lower prices would also cut directly in Cloud2 its revenue, which would make Cloud2 less profitable.

Finance department

2013 2014 T values Overall Administrative issues 7.20 7.75 0,6394 Cancellation process 7.20 8.50 0,8110 Invoice process 7.39 7.82 0,5305

(18)

18 The finance department, which manages all administrative and financial affairs with regard to all relations including resellers, only has three questions as it does not interact with the resellers as much as the other departments. The cancellation and invoice processes each have their own score, everything else is clustered together under ‘administrative issues’.

In 2014, the finance department was graded higher on all three points, with the biggest progress on the cancellation process. No noticeable events have occurred between the two surveys so my best guess would be more experience from the finance department (which was manned by only one employee). As the current finance employee started in March of 2015, he also could not point out why his department scored higher in 2014 than 2013.

The qualitative data reflects the improvement, as only one suggestion was given in 2014 (a solution that sends the automatically sent reminder e-mails according to this new agreement instead of the standard times if an aberrant agreement is made) versus two complaints in 2013 (wrong invoices and issues when an account is wrongfully terminated by Cloud2).

Cloud2 has managed to take the suggestion from 2014 into account in the already planned new CRM system, but the complaints from 2013 can hardly be overcome as they involve human operations. They can be reduced to a minimum by optimization of the processes, which would increase the economic benefits of choosing for Cloud2.

(19)

19

Technical department

2013 2014 T values

Overall

Uptime platform 8.71 9.00 0,4071

Communication when having unplanned downtime 9.00 8.11 -1,2794

Backup speed 8.12 8.09 -0,0485 Restore speed 7.88 8.00 0,1607 Reliability restore 8.50 8.70 0,3141 Reliability software 7.81 Functionality Ahsay 8.38 8.34 -0,0690 Crashplan 8.00 8.33 0,2944 IASO 7.33 9.00 0,8998 StorageCraft 9.00 8.50 -0,8165

The final department is the technical department: responsible for the maintenance of all hardware in the datacentres, research and development, implementations of new features or updates and availability of Cloud2’s services10_.

Although the technical department is perhaps the highest scoring department, the qualitative data shows negative comments instead of compliments: “l often experience malfunctions with Ahsay backup software, sometimes these malfunctions are persistent” and “it should not be necessary to call the technical department every time when something in the reseller website needs to be changed”.

This last one has been taken into account: resellers can change their own information in the reseller website, the first one is a typical complaint on functional benefits that every computer related helpdesk can expect, as IT has been evolved to such a complex matter that errors cannot be prevented 100%, just like human health.

10_{Availability is measured in uptime or downtime (uptime = 1 – downtime), with uptime as total time} that the services are available and downtime when not available. Downtime is usually planned to perform maintenance, unexpected disruptions are called “unplanned downtime”.

(20)

20

2015 Reseller loyalty survey (Net Promotor Score)

Cloud2 changed the survey drastically in 2015. Instead of a long list of questions, they asked only one question11_{and had a field for} additional comments, which should encourage more resellers to fill in the survey. It helped: 52 respondents versus 13 in 2014 and 18 in 2013. This was a huge improvement as overall reseller satisfaction is regarded as the highest purpose by Cloud2, so more insight in the overall satisfaction means better knowledge of how Cloud2 is doing. The downside is that Cloud2 is graded as a whole and the number does not show which specific points are good or bad.

The net promotor score

The Net Promotor Score (NPS), as introduced bij Reichheld in 2003, says something about the loyalty of the customers towards a provider. Low scores (0-6) count as Criticasters and each percent subtract one point from the Net Promotor Score, Promotors rank high scores (9 or 10) and add one point to the score for every percent and the Passives (7 or 8) do not affect the score. The total score is between 100 (100% Promoters) and -100 (100% Criticasters). Table 2 shows the outcome of this survey:

Table 2: The 2015 Net Promoter Score survey

Total respondents: 52

Criticasters (0-6) Passive (7-8) Promoters (9-10) Net Promoter Score 8% 4 38% 20 54% 28 46

Note: one reseller gave a 0 as he would not recommend Cloud2 because he does not want his competitors to be supplied by Cloud2. You could argue that the NPS of Cloud2 should be slightly higher.

11_{The question was: “On a scale from 1 to 10, would you recommend Cloud2?”}

The Net Promoter Score is developed by Frederick Reichheld at Bain & Company, one of world’s largest management consultancy firms. It is utilized by some of the largest enterprises and has left its mark: Marketing Management by Kotler and Keller (2012) tells successful stories how NPS significantly improved the healthcare unit at General Electrics Europe and Intuit’s TurboTax product.

According to this book, a typical score is between 10 and 30 and world-class companies score over 50.

(21)

21 This score is comparable to the scores of large American storage providers according to NPS Benchmarks12_{. The latest score of Dropbox is 32, OneDrive has a 45, Apple Cloud Storage 62 and Google} drive 50. Veeam, a software developer for Cloud2, has 62. These are all scores from comparable products as Cloud2’s products but from enterprises with a remarkably larger size. One would like to see more information to find out if these scores can truly be compared with Cloud2’s scores, but there is not much other information on these scores available for free.

As more resellers filled in the survey, more side notes were given: 33. This gave Cloud2 more feedback, exactly what they were hoping for. The comments were mostly positive and contain many unspecific remarks such as: “well done”, “keep up the good work”, “great job”, etc. The positive comments that are directed at specific points show that Cloud2 is doing great on all customer benefits, especially the economic, and the monetary costs. One could argue that this is not surprising as the survey is filled in by IT-partners who have chosen for Cloud2 and thus think that Cloud2 has the best offer in the market.

The negative comments also fit in almost every aspect: restore issues can be seen as a lack of functional benefits, unclear invoices and backup notifications fall under lesser economic benefits and high prices, especially when larger amounts of storage are used, can be seen as too high monetary costs.

Only the nonmonetary costs cannot be found in the comments, this can be explained by the fact that nonmonetary costs prevent potential resellers from reaching out to Cloud2 and thus prevent them from collaborating with Cloud2 and filling in this survey.

One can ask whether the NPS is a step too far in shrinking the survey as the numbers only reflect the company as a whole and no quantitative information is gathered on which aspects contribute to this score in either a positive or negative way. Some enterprises, such as Apple and Microsoft, use multiple NPSs so they have more insight on which services or products can be improved.

(22)

22

Support department continuous survey

As mentioned before, this survey is not part of the yearly reseller satisfaction, but a standalone survey: it is only sent after a reseller asks Cloud2 to help solve an issue. It is relatively small and overlaps with the yearly reseller satisfaction survey on some questions.

Because the questions are answered on a different time, after a reseller reaches out for help instead of without the reseller having an issue, resellers can react different and therefore this survey provides additional information on how resellers regard Cloud2.

This different reaction is because of the recency effect, which make you remember the latest memories better than the ones before (Tzeng, 1973). The latest memories will then be the issue and how Cloud2 dealt with it.

The table, scores are on a scale of 1 to 10:

Example of issue

“A lot of my Crashplan backup accounts do not start the backup on their scheduled moment. Even the manual start function is greyed out. It only works after rebooting the process. Also, the software responds slowly and freezes frequently. Can you help?”

It is hard to say what exactly is the cause of this as multiple causes are possible. There can be another active process that also scans/works the file(s) or a problem in the interaction with the clock on the machine, to just name two options that can cause the first symptom. Resellers often give less information than required or overlook relevant parts.

Table 3: the support department continuous survey

Title

Score

Subject

Respondents

In case of issue 8,4 Support over phone 10

8.0 Support over email 12

8,2 Response time 11

8.0 Information during issue 11

(23)

23 The average score on the satisfaction on given solution is lower than the other questions. This 7.2 is still sufficient, but one could argue that if higher scores are given on the other points, customers tend to be lesser satisfied by given solutions and therefore this point can be improved to increase the economic benefits of Cloud2. The comments do not say anything about the quality of given solutions, they only bring up points on communication or the way of handling.

The main reason for the lower score is because one reseller gave a 1 as score. Leaving this out enlarges the score to 7.8, making it less notable. But even if the 1 is not left out, the difference between 7.2 and the average of the other scores13_{is still not statistically significant, even at alpha = 10%.}

As this survey started shortly after the first yearly reseller satisfaction survey and is still running, it is possible to look at the grades given over time. This allows an easy comparison between the scores given on the support department section in the yearly reseller satisfaction surveys and this continuous survey:

Scores given in 2013 Scores given in 2014

Date 03/07 ‘13 30/09 ‘13 29/10 ‘13 04/12 ‘13 28/02 ‘14 23/05 ‘14 03/07 ‘14 10/11 ‘14 Phone 10 - 8 8 9 8 9 8 Mail 9 9 8 8 9 8 9 8 Time 9 9 8 - 9 7 8 9 Info 9 8 8 - 9 7 9 8 Results 9 7 8 - 9 7 9 8

These scores are roughly the same as the scores given in the yearly reseller satisfaction surveys so the recency effect is negligible or absent in this comparison. The scores do look lower in 2015:

13_{(8.4 + 8 + 8.2 + 8) / 4 = 8.15}

(24)

24 Scores given in 2015 Date 20/03 ‘15 24/06 ‘15 10/11 ‘15 Phone 6 - 9 Mail 6 7 7 Time 6 9 8 Info 6 7 8 Results 6 1 8

Unfortunately, the scores given in 2015 cannot be compared with scores from a yearly reseller satisfaction survey as the NPS was introduced that year.

(25)

25

Insights obtained from surveys on new products

IaaS

IaaS (Infrastructure as a service), which is the general term for the service, enables an end user to operate their IT infrastructure from the cloud, so no local servers are required. While cloud services such as Dropbox for online storage or Gmail for online mail operate as online applications, IaaS can be seen as the layer below these applications. This allows the end user or its IT partner to build the IT infrastructure exactly how it is needed, for a perfect fit.

Figure 3: the layers of virtualized computing14

An end user now only needs to access these virtual machines, which can be done from any personal computer.

14_{Image retrieved from}_{National Instruments, 2009.}

This figure explains virtualization graphically. The shared hardware consists of the physical servers on which an operating system (usually VMWare or Hyper-V) is installed. This operating systems can be seen as a bridge between the hardware and the commands it receives, to translate these commands into specific physical actions which the processors need to perform.

Each end user gets his own environment in which he can create Virtual Machines (VMs) and allocate resources such as processing power or storage to these VMs. Services such as online backup, email or Secure File Sync are applications and can be operated on such a VM, an end user can also use these VMs as databases, mail servers, terminal servers, for hosting websites, etc.

(26)

26 A whole new platform was needed to operate IaaS and this required a large investment, therefore Cloud2 wanted to know the opportunities in the market to make the launch of this service successful. An intern was hired to research the market opportunities in advance and he conducted a survey to know the opinions of Cloud2’s resellers.

The intern showed a promising business case and Cloud2 decided to supply its own variant of IaaS, which is planned to be launched in September 2016. At this moment, the platform and service have been developed by the technical department and is used for preliminary tests by resellers so the final flaws are repaired. This also happens under the supervision of the support department as it helps them to get familiar with the service and its possible issues. The final steps are for the sales department as they will determine its position and price in the proposition of Cloud2, together with the set up for the launch of this service.

Only two parts of the survey that the intern conducted are used in this thesis as not every question is relevant. The first part is on how the resellers of Cloud2 grade five major attributes of the current suppliers and service of IaaS services in the Dutch market: price, flexibility, quality, security and simplicity. This part is graded on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high).

The second part is on how important they think of six major attributes of IaaS services: price, quality, Dutch support, Dutch provider, data stored in the Netherlands and help with migration to the cloud. These are also graded on a scale of 1 (important) to 5 (not important).

The overall satisfaction on current IaaS solution is graded on a score from 0 to 2:

Table 4: the IaaS scores that reflects reseller’s demands. Complete distribution is found in Appendix 4.

Part Score Subject Respondents

Overall satisfaction 1.7 (out of 2) On current IaaS solution 13

Current supply in market 2.52 Price 23

(27)

27 3.87 Quality 15 4.00 Security 15 3.09 Simplicity 22 Importance 1.82 Price 33 2.48 Dutch support 33 1.24 Quality 33 2.06 Dutch provider 33

1.82 Data stored in Netherlands 33 2.36 Help with migration to Cloud 33 Resellers of Cloud2 regard quality as the most important characteristic and it scores well in the current supply. This is reflected in the named qualities as most demands that fall under quality, such as redundant hardware, availability and a better environment for the servers15_{, are fulfilled by current} IaaS products.

Price and the fact that data is stored in the Netherlands16_{are regarded as the most important attributes} after quality. Price scores low however and this is reflected in the qualitative data where price is mentioned as a positive as well as a negative point.

It is hard to tell the prices of other IaaS providers: users can customize in order to get exactly what they want and the prices that associate with these possibilities range from a few euros per month to hundreds of euros per month. For example, Amazons EC2 asks explicitly for operating system, (graphic) memory, storage, geographical location, etc., offering only the virtual machines with these resources

15_{Datacentres usually have an extensive climate control system to exactly determine the} temperature and humidity, which improves the lifecycle and performance of the hardware.

16_{After 9/11 the U.S. government introduced the Patriot Act which allows the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. to ask} every American enterprise for its data, including data on offshore (European) servers or subsidiaries. Basically means that an American cloud service provider cannot ensure the privacy of their customers’ data, even if it is stored on a Dutch server of a Dutch subsidiary. Because of this, America’s Safe Harbour declaration (which ensures the privacy of European citizens’ data) was withdrawn in October 2015, making it illegal to store data of European citizens or enterprises in America. (You can store an empty preview of an invoice for example, but not once the blanks have been filled in with specific customer or sender data).

(28)

28 (just like Cloud2 is planning to). Microsoft’s Azure asks what function the machine needs to have and offers some standardized sets of resources on these, besides other specifics such as support response times, geographical location and payment alternatives which all affect the price. This makes it hard to tell how much a ‘typical IaaS’ service costs the end user, the same way as it is difficult to say how expensive a ‘typical car’ is.

The importance of data stored in the Netherlands shows in the security scores: these are high. Security is more than the fact that data is not obtainable by the U.S. government, it is about keeping everyone out of the data. For this reason, you can split security in physical security and technical security.

All data in the cloud is stored on physical servers somewhere and this means that these servers can be damaged or stolen. Physically securing these servers is therefore important to offer a proper cloud-based service. Technical security is the next step: installing a firewall, encrypting the data and prevent hacks or other malicious attacks.

As the intangible cloud sometimes needs to convince end users of its safety, resellers demand multiple qualities based on security: geolocation must be known, trustworthy look and feel, and the mentioned urgency of data stored in Netherlands are all specifically named in the qualitative data.

Simplicity and flexibility both score average and are not regarded as very important. Curious thing is that some main advantages of IaaS are in this corner and named in the qualities: clarity and simplicity of payment, no investment, no commitment, no hardware maintenance (by end user or reseller), etc.

Simplicity can be seen as the ease of use and ease of service. As mentioned in the price section, IaaS services have many variable aspects and suppliers can offer IaaS only as a customized service where you need to tell how much you need of everything. To stay in the analogy with the cars: most people will know how much horsepower or how many cylinders they want in their engine, but it is hard to say how the suspension should be adjusted. Next to this, you can also include the service, payment and other economic benefits in the simplicity. Flexibility can be both be seen as the ease in changing these

(29)

29 attributes while already using this service because you need more resources for example, and as the flexibility it allows a user as it is accessible at all places with an internet connection.

Passive Fallback

Passive Fallback can be seen as the extension of online backup and is used in case of emergency: a backup is restored on a pre-configured IaaS environment to get an infrastructure up and running as soon as possible. Simply put, Passive Fallback is a blueprint of an IaaS environment with the possibility to actually use that IaaS environment when needed.

Like the IaaS survey, the Passive Fallback survey was also conducted before the product was launched in order to chart the demands and wishes of the resellers of Cloud2. Unlike IaaS, the service is already running and the platform is used as this thesis is written. The survey is built up different and has qualitative data only: resellers were asked to determine the segment of the SME market they serve and what their end users think is important in the Passive Fallback service in terms of methods of payment, which can be described as economic benefits, technical characteristics17_{, which are} functional benefits and monetary costs.

The most important notion is that price and especially the price-elasticity with regard to perspective of importance are very hard to estimate and do not move in the same way as with other cloud services. Other characteristics such as security, quality and in a lesser degree simplicity and flexibility, do have similar response as with the IaaS service, but with some differences: recovery point objective and recovery time objective are objectives only for PF, but the mentioned times differ a lot and can be seen best in relation to price. The criteria for which “the more, the merrier” applies, such as uptime or these objectives, are also only sensible in relation to price, so there is a negative relation between functional benefits and monetary costs.

17_{These are the same characteristics as the IaaS characteristics: quality, security, flexibility and} simplicity.

(30)

30 Furthermore, the survey shows two additional points of interest:

1. Resellers have a lot of influence, if they tell their end users to have product A because of reason 1, 2 and 3, the end user probably will end up buying product A.

2.

Smaller companies incline to migrate to cloud services sooner than larger enterprises as their infrastructure is less complex and this eases this migration. Besides, most SMEs already operate a few cloud services such as hosted e-mail, Microsoft Office365, online CRM or ERP services or online storage. Resellers mention that larger enterprises prefer continuity and certainty, so Passive Fallback would be an ideal add-on for online backups of their local infrastructure.

Market analysis on non-resellers

In 2013, Cloud2 held a small survey on IT service providers in the Netherlands to get an idea of how they regard the market of online backup, how Cloud2 was doing in this market and what opportunities lie ahead.

The unique point of using this survey in the thesis is that it can be used to compare Cloud2 its performance with competitors or alternative options on existing products. This can be used to put the other surveys in perspective, as this survey illustrates how resellers generally view their current choice, alternative options and previous solutions.

The points are graded on a scale of 1 to 5:

Table 5: Market analysis on non-resellers

Title

Score

Subject

Respondents

Satisfaction of current backup solution 3.50 Price 4

3.75 Ease of use 4

3.75 Quality 4

3.75 Features 4

Satisfaction of current backup software 4.15 Ease of use 13

4.33 Restore possibilities 13

3.92 Settings 13

(31)

31

4.23 Overall quality 13

IF BACKUP SOLUTION AND PLATFORM IS MANAGED BY IT PARTNER

Experiences of operating the solution yourself 4.44 Sense of responsibility 9

4.11 Financial costs 9

3.56 Enjoyment of work 9

4.56 Costs time / effort 9 4.11 Professional service 9

4.22 Possibilities 9

Perspective if this was sourced out 2.11 Sense of responsibility 9

IF BACKUP SOLUTION IS OUTSOURCED / PLATFORM IS MANAGED BY A SPECIALIZED BACKUP PROVIDER

Satisfaction on current provider 4.25 Price 4

4.33 Service 3

4.50 Quality 4

4.25 Communication 4

4.00 Support 4

IF IT PARTNER HAD A DIFFERENT BACKUP PROVIDER IN THE PAST

Satisfaction on past provider 1.00 Price 1

4.00 Service 1

4.00 Quality 1

4.00 Communication 1

4.00 Support 1

IF IT PARTNER USED TO MANAGE SOLUTION AND PLATFORM

Experiences of operating the solution yourself 2.00 Sense of responsibility 1

These data relate easy: perspectives on current solutions are regarded as good – very good, previous solutions always have one or more substantial drawbacks and the alternative solution is seen as worse.

(32)

32 A lot of requirements are named under the qualitative data and all or most are met in the solutions, explaining the high scores on the current solutions, meaning that IT partners are satisfied. When asked for drawbacks when one would change, multiple drawbacks were mentioned and the advantages should outweigh these before a switch of providers is made. This is hard however, as some points (trust, support, communication, etc.) can only be experienced and losses on these points are not acceptable for the IT partners. In general, most IT partners are willing to risk a switch if they can cut costs without experiencing any of these losses.

The most interesting things here are the differences of the perspective of a backup provider between the group who use these provider and the group who do it themselves. The latter regard backup providers to be much worse on every aspect. It is curious that almost nothing about this is mentioned in the qualitative data, except for the urge to be in control and have independency.

This does not match with the actual experiences of IT partners who use backup providers: they give high scores on quality, possibilities or service. Psychology calls this the confirmation bias: people tend to believe their choices are right, accepting arguments that support this belief and doubt those that contradict their choice (Klayman, 1995).

(33)

33

Conclusion

How to analyse reseller satisfaction

Resellers are important for Cloud2: several resellers mention in the Passive Fallback survey that end users follow their advice, which includes buying Cloud2 its products. The resellers are satisfied as they regard Cloud2 as a good cloud service provider, Cloud2 its Net Promoter Score (NPS) is on the same level as some world class cloud service providers like Microsoft, Dropbox or Apple. It is still necessary to evaluate ones business to keep the customers happy, so Cloud2 should continue to ask its resellers what their perspective is of Cloud2 and Cloud2 its intention is to keep using a single NPS with an additional field for comments and suggestions.

This would give a high response ratio and many comments but also leaves out the quantitative values of the satisfaction of Cloud2 its major attributes, which eventually builds up to the total satisfaction of the resellers. Charting these major attributes is the first step in Kotler and Keller’s customer value analysis and should not be that hard for Cloud2 to do as they already have experience and interact with the resellers on a daily basis.

The customer value analysis also tells that one should compare itself to its competitors and to segment the customers in order to compare different groups. This would yield additional information as relations, relative performance and group characteristics can also be seen.

Cloud2 should therefore use NPS for each product and ask resellers to grade the product for each major attribute, as well as how (in the eyes of the reseller) the main competitor scores on this product. As not every reseller uses every product, resellers would be asked to give grades on an estimated 20 points on average.18_{Cloud2 should also keep the additional field for comments or suggestions.}

(34)

34

Results from the reseller surveys

When combining the surveys with Kotler and Keller’s model for customer benefits and costs, it shows that the suggested points of improvement mostly fall under the functional and economic benefits. Cloud2 has already taken a lot of these points into account, especially the larger ones. Only some small points are left over and these are hard to solve (as they involve human actions) or have drawbacks (would slow down the process, for example).

The main reason for this is that the reseller satisfaction surveys only show Cloud2 its absolute performance as they do not contain a comparison with the competition. When this is included in the surveys, Cloud2 can measure their relative performance and continue to find points for

improvement.

The reseller surveys also do not contain questions on psychological benefits of Cloud2. Resellers have mentioned that they like to work with Cloud2 and be associated to Cloud2, which indicate that they experience psychological benefits from using Cloud2 its products but this is hard to measure as there is no quantitative data for this. Cloud2 should consider adding a question on the psychological benefit of using Cloud2 its products in their next surveys, but one could also argue that they need to keep a low number of questions for a maximal response.

As mentioned in the Net Promoter Score survey, no comments on nonmonetary costs can be found in the comments as they prevent potential resellers from reaching out to Cloud2, which prevents them from collaborating with Cloud2 and filling in these survey. Cloud2 could perform additional research on how easy it is to find and reach them in the Dutch cloud market to help finding their nonmonetary costs.

The monetary costs are also mentioned, but this is more difficult as lowering the price would cut directly in Cloud2 its profits. As Cloud is already one of the cheaper Netherlands-based cloud service providers and other resellers confirm this, one could argue that Cloud2 should not lower its price.

(35)

35

Appendices

Appendix 1: Services of Cloud2

Ahsay Backup software suited for personal computers and servers. It is easy, straightforward and relatively cheap which makes it an ideal solution for those with few demands.

MyClient The management portal for Ahsay accounts and from 2015 onwards also for StorageCraft. Backup accounts with these software can be managed from the MyClient portal, which shows usage, capacity, history of backup statuses and files, an error log, etc.

IASO Backup software suited for personal computers and especially servers. It is more expensive than Ahsay but has more features and works better and faster, especially on more complicated or larger servers.

Veeam Backup software for virtualized servers, regardless of size. The central maintaining tools makes this a good solution even for enterprises with hundreds of virtualized machines.

Crashplan Backup software only compatible with ‘flat file’ structures: the common files stored on a personal computer such as office files, text files, movies, etc. Not suited for Windows servers with SQL databases or mail servers. Also offers additional features which makes it outstanding for laptops or pcs.

StorageCraft Backup software that takes ‘snapshots’ of an exact situation on the system. This eases the restore and offers extra functionalities, such as restores on different systems. Most expensive, but suited best where the end user demands a lot (such as low RPO & RTO, fallback option, etc.)

Secure File Sync Synchronizes files across multiple devices and the cloud, just like Dropbox or iCloud does. Includes multiple features on security, retention, management, etc. which are a necessity for enterprise-level file sync services

IaaS (2016) IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service: it provides the digital infrastructure (virtual machines) for the end user, which they can use instead of local machines.

Passive Fallback A dedicated IaaS platform solely used to bring up the data from a backup in the datacentre. A ‘template’ with all the necessary installations and configurations is made up front and when needed, the backup is restored upon this template. Only activated when needed (passive) and quickly operational if so (fallback). The main benefit is that end users have quick, workable access to their data whilst the IT-partner implements a new infrastructure.

Active Fallback (2016) A dedicated IaaS platform solely used to bring up the data from a backup in the datacentre, continuously. After each backup, the new data is brought up on this platform right away (active) so if a disaster occurs, this fallback

(36)

36 installation can take over within seconds, reducing downtime to the absolute minimum.

Appendix 2: Distributions and statistics of the yearly reseller

satisfaction surveys

Distributions 2013

Hoe beoordeelt u onze

telefonische support? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N.v.t. Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 1 0 3 7 5 2 0 18 8,17 1,788907

Hoe beoordeelt u onze support

via de e-mail? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N.v.t. Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 6 2 0 18 8,28 2,078121

Wat vindt u van de snelheid waarmee problemen worden opgepakt?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N.v.t. Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 1 0 3 4 7 3 0 18 8,39 2,07047

Wat vindt u van de resultaten na het melden van een eventueel probleem?

0 0 0 0 0 3 4 2 7 2 0 18 8,06 2,595643

Hoe beoordeelt u onze installatie & configuratie service?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 1 4 8,25 1,274755

Wat vindt u van de inhoudelijke kennis van onze Sales & Marketing afdeling?

0 0 0 1 0 1 3 10 2 1 18 7,72 1,554016

Hoe beoordeelt u de

bereikbaarheid van onze Sales & Marketing afdeling?

0 0 0 0 0 0 4 8 4 2 18 8,22 1,703284

(37)

37 Wat vindt u van onze Sales &

Marketing ondersteuning? (O.a. organiseren van Lunch & Learn sessies en het aanbieden van Backup Folders).

0 0 0 0 0 2 1 5 2 0 8 18 7,7 1,529706

Wat vindt u van de maatwerk mogelijkheid / flexibiliteit voor backup mogelijkheden?

0 0 0 0 0 2 1 4 4 2 5 18 8,23 1,920696

Wat vindt u van de frequentie

van onze nieuwsbrieven? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N.v.t. Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 1 0 2 2 7 4 1 1 18 7,76 1,957039

Hoe interessant vindt u de artikelen in onze

nieuwsbrieven?

0 0 0 0 0 2 6 4 5 0 1 18 7,71 2,132957

Hoe beoordeelt u het facturatie

proces? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 1 0 0 1 1 6 4 4 1 18 7,39 2,381438

Wat vindt u van de afhandeling van eventuele problemen die betrekking hebben op de administratie?

0 0 0 1 1 1 3 1 2 1 8 18 7,2 2,063438

Hoe beoordeelt u het

annuleringsproces? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N.v.t. Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 1 2 2 4 1 0 8 18 7,2 1,641138

Wat vindt u van de 'uptime' van

ons backup platform? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 0 0 3 2 9 3 17 8,71 1,769928

Hoe beoordeelt u het communicatieproces bij een onverhoopte storing op ons platform?

(38)

38

Wat vindt u van de snelheid van

de backup? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 0 1 3 8 3 2 17 8,12 1,537303

Wat vindt u van de snelheid van

de restore? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 1 0 2 2 6 4 2 17 7,88 2,1044

Hoe beoordeelt u de betrouwbaarheid van de restore?

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 6 6 1 3 17 8,5 1,315587

Wat vindt u van de pricing van

onze pakketten? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 0 3 1 9 2 1 16 7,81 1,70344

Hoe duidelijk is onze huidige

propositie voor u? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 2 1 5 4 3 1 16 7,5 2,065591

Hoe beoordeelt u de

functionaliteit van de Crashplan PROe software?

0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 2 1 8 16 8 1,511858

Hoe beoordeelt u de functionaliteit van de Ahsay software?

0 0 0 0 0 0 2 5 5 1 3 16 8,38 1,398273

Hoe beoordeelt u de functionaliteit van de IASO software?

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 13 16 7,33 3,055053

Hoe beoordeelt u de functionaliteit van de StorageCraft software?

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 14 16 9 0

Hoe beoordeelt u Cloud2 over

(39)

39

0 0 0 0 0 1 3 5 6 1 16 8,19 1,738566

Distributions 2014

Hoe beoordeelt u onze

telefonische support? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N.v.t. Respondents Average Std. Dev. Vriendelijkheid 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 3 2 2 12 8,6 1,398412 Professionaliteit 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 5 2 2 2 12 8,5 1,433721 Inhoudelijke kennis 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 4 2 2 2 12 8,4 1,566312

Hoe beoordeelt u onze support

via de e-mail? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N.v.t. Respondents Average Std. Dev. Vriendelijkheid 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 3 6 2 0 12 8,67 1,419507 Professionaliteit 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 5 4 2 0 12 8,5 1,522558 Inhoudelijke kennis 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 4 4 2 0 12 8,5 1,537412

Wat vindt u van de snelheid waarmee problemen worden opgepakt?

0 0 0 0 0 0 3 2 4 3 0 12 8,58 2,017721

Wat vindt u van de resultaten na het melden van een eventueel probleem?

0 0 0 0 0 0 2 5 1 3 1 12 8,45 1,881422

Installatie en configuratie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 4 9,75 0,612372

inhoudelijke kennis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 0 0 4 5 1 1 11 7,91 1,378706

Wat vindt u van onze Sales &

Marketing ondersteuning? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N.v.t. Respondents Average Std. Dev.

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 3 1 3 11 8,5 1,133893

Hoe beoordeelt u ons Digitaal

Magazine? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N.v.t. Respondents Average Std. Dev.