Bamboo is currently conducting a survey of customers and visitors to our Web sites.  Participants are eligible to win an iPad, an iPod Nano and other prizes.  So far the response to the survey has been amazing!  We invited over 20,000 individuals to participate, and so far we have over 1,200 responses.   We will continue to run the survey through August 31^st, so there is still plenty of time for you to voice your opinion and get a shot at winning the iPad.  Click here to enter now: https://bamboo.questionpro.com/

Before I share some of the data we've collected, I would like to apologize to anyone who experienced technical difficulties while attempting to complete the survey.  Although the vast majority of users completed the survey quickly, a small percentage reported issues with the tool.  We've been working with our survey provider, QuestionPro, to resolve the issue, but I've seen one or two new reports of problems as recently as today.  Next time we're going with SurveyMonkey.

Our primary goals with this survey are to learn more about how well Bamboo is meeting the needs of our customers, and to guide our ongoing product development.  We're extremely pleased with the input we've gotten on both fronts.

Who Responded to the Survey?

We asked participants to tell us about their role in their organization.  We appear to have good representation across the full spectrum of job titles and functions.  The breakdown looks like this:

Job Title	Percentage
Executive / Senior Management	9.40%
IT Executive	13.43%
SharePoint Administrator	26.45%
Program Manager	4.95%
Project Manager	8.40%
Software Developer	8.98%
Software Architect	4.62%
Information Worker	2.43%
Business Analyst	4.37%
Consultant	6.63%
Other	10.33%

 

We've always known that SharePoint Administrators are strongly represented in our customer base, and it was great to know that number remains high.  Many of our products are designed to make life easier for SharePoint Administrators.  This is a customer segment we value highly.

We're also pretty excited to see strong growth in the number of Project Managers working with us.  With the introduction of PM Central, our solution for SharePoint Project Management, this is also a very important group.

What Do Customers Say About Bamboo?

I think it's fair to say that Bamboo's top three operational priorities look something like this:

Quality of Bamboo Software

Quality of Bamboo Technical Support

Quality of Product Documentation

Based on your feedback, we are pretty happy about our progress against these priorities.  Here is the data:

• Fewer than 7% of all respondents described themselves as Unsatisfied or Very Unsatisfied with the quality of Bamboo software
• Fewer than 8% of all respondents described themselves as Unsatisfied or Very Unsatisfied with Bamboo's technical support
• Fewer than 8% of all respondents described themselves as Unsatisfied or Very Unsatisfied with Bamboo's product documentation

Don't get me wrong, these numbers tell us we need to work harder than ever to fully satisfy 100% of our customers.  If Federal Express lost 7% of the packages I shipped, I'd switch to UPS pretty quickly.  But for the software industry, these numbers are excellent.  High satisfaction rates with technical support and product documentation are difficult to deliver. 

Although I'm not going to disclose exact numbers around the level of customer satisfaction, I can share some ratios to give you a sense of what we're seeing.

• Customers are more than 8 times as likely to report being Very Satisfied with the quality of Bamboo software than they are to report being Very Unsatisfied
• Customers are more than 3 times as likely to report being Very Satisfied with Bamboo technical support as they are to report being Very Unsatisfied
• Customers are more than twice as likely to report being Very Satisfied with Bamboo technical documentation as they are to report being Very Unsatisfied

Again, I don't want to be glib about these numbers, and I want to stress that our goal is 100% customer satisfaction.  If you are a customer who has had an issue or a problem, please know that we want to hear about it and would love a chance to make it right.  Please send me a note at steve.gaitten@bamboosolutions.com.  I promise to follow up with you personally and own your issue until it is resolved. 

I plan to keep blogging about the results of the Bamboo Customer Survey all week.  Tomorrow I will share data about our customers plans to upgrade to SharePoint 2010.  Later this week I will feature a post about your suggestions for new products and new solutions.  There's so much data to talk about, I can't wait to share more.

Thank you to everyone who has already participated in the survey.  Please know that I am personally reading ALL of your comments and suggestions.  If you haven't had a chance to complete the survey yet, remember that iPad could still be yours.  Here's the link again: https://bamboo.questionpro.com/