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We - that is, NetQoS - recently had our customer service independently evaluated by First Market Research, to try to find out what our customers really thought about us. Apparently, they like us.
In the report, based on a 50-case telephone survey, eight out of ten NetQoS customers had "very favorable" opinions of NetQoS compared to other companies they deal with, citing excellent customer support and high quality products. They also said, overwhelmingly (9 out of 10) that our network performance management products and services have a beneficial impact on their organization, including lower costs, better resource utilization, ability to completely identify the source of problems, greater visibility of network traffic, ease of receiving help, quickly solving problems, and improving application performance.
Additionally, nine out of ten said it was "very likely" that they would recommend NetQoS to friends or colleagues, eight out of ten gave excellent ratings to NetQoS employees for competency, responsiveness, and accessibility. Nine out of ten customers also characterized their investment in NetQoS as "excellent" or "good."
Here's the kicker. 100 percent of customers in the 50-case study said that NetQoS employees are doing at least a "good" job - and 80 percent of them said that we're doing an "excellent" job.
(Continued with the wrestling reference explained, below…)
You can read a little more about the study from our press release, if you're interested in that kind of stuff.
One of the big secrets to getting customer results like this is to hire brilliant people and allowing everyone to be brilliant in their own way.
One of the ideas that NetQoS takes seriously in the corporate culture is that everyone has different strengths - and to try to work towards them, rather than working on improving the weaknesses so that everyone "fits in." If you spend all your time improving things that you're, at best, going to become mediocre at, all you get is mediocre performance. What good is hiring the best people and then telling them to do the things they're not best at? Instead we compliment each other's strengths to compensate for each other's weak points.
I'm sure I could name more than a few examples of hiring exceptional talent but then forcing them into mediocrity from the Tech industry - but the one example that sticks in my mind is from mid 1990s professional wrestling. Sure, pro-wrestling is just about the lowest form of entertainment on television outside of some of the more exploitative reality television shows, and it's full of questionable content. Still, that doesn't mean there aren't lessons to be learned there.
In the mid 1990s, there was nobody bigger in the WWF (now WWE) than Bret Hart. Not only was he excellent at bringing in crowds, he was, by all of the standards of professional wrestling, a model employee. In addition to his technical wrestling prowess, he never seriously injured another wrestler (in an occupation fraught with serious injuries) through fault of his own, the only shows he ever missed were due to traffic or flight difficulties - and he missed only two of them, and he was always willing to help other wrestlers out by "jobbing" - or losing to another opponent.
In 1997, Bret Hart went to work for WWF's competitor, WCW. While financially, the deal worked out well for Hart - he was paid a seven figure salary - WCW never let Bret Hart play to his strengths and let him dwindle down to mid-card status from the main-event status he had at the WWF. WCW took a red-hot talent and made him, well, mediocre.
At the same time, when the WWF was back in an upswing during the late 1990s and early 2000s, they had on staff some veteran wrestlers from the 1970s, now too old to take the ring for themselves, named Gerald Brisco and Pat Patterson. They could no longer wrestle as well as they did in the 1970s, but by recasting them in a comedy role, "the corporate stooges," to which they turned out to be very well suited to them - playing to their new strengths - the WWF was able to allow Brisco and Patterson to become bigger stars than they had even "back in the day." A lesser company would have dismissed Brisco and Patterson out of hand because they "could no longer wrestle." The WWF said: "But look what they can do!" and played to their strengths - comedic timing and stage presence.
Today, the WWF is now known as WWE, a monopoly in its (admittedly strange) field, and the WCW no longer exists. There's a lesson there, and that lesson is: Take your best talent and let them go as far as their genius will take them.
And if you don't think NetQoS takes the idea of letting people run with their genius seriously, would you imagine another enterprise vendor that would take the risk of letting their new media guy opine about professional wrestling on the company blog?
