ACE Audit and Certification

	“At Ariba we needed recommendations on how to improve our customer service through the use of best practices. The ACE Certification process was a great learning experience; the audit helped us to understand what works, what doesn’t, and where we can improve.” —Roger Blumberg, Ariba Corporation Senior Director of Customer Advocacy

CustomerSat Achievement in Customer Excellence (ACE)™ Audit and Certification systematically assesses all aspects of your customer feedback programs, from data collection, to enterprise-wide action, to bottom-line results. It reviews your questionnaire design, sampling, reporting, alerts, actions, and linkages. It examines the quality of your management support, customer communications, and employee engagement. Additionally, it evaluates how the various feedback programs in your enterprise, such as call center, web site, win/loss, and overall relationship survey, work together.

CustomerSat ACE Audit and Certification lets you demonstrate that you are using sound practices for measuring customer feedback across business units. It identifies the gaps between your customer feedback program and industry best practices. ACE Certification helps your organization create an environment of continuous improvement, which translates to higher customer retention and increased profitability. Receiving ACE Certification provides you with an industry-recognized benchmark that demonstrates your organization’s commitment to customer excellence.

Scope

The ACE Audit starts with the definition of scope, which consists of a business area and customer segment(s) that use one or more feedback surveys.  The business area can be your entire organization, one or more units of your business, or specific touchpoints such as contact center or website. The customer segment(s) could be all, or one or more geographical regions, product lines, or vertical markets.Examples of possible areas and segments are shown below.

ACE Audit scope is a combination of business area and customer segment.

Assessment Areas

Once scope has been determined, there are seven major areas on which customer feedback programs will be assessed:

1. Key customer segments and touchpoints or events.
2. Feedback process design.
3. Survey management and deployment.
4. Analysis and report generation.
5. Action management.
6. Management support and employee involvement.
7. Actual customer satisfaction performance.

Upon completion of the audit, the auditor prepares a detailed report providing the assessment of each area, rating and comments and concluding with overall score, identification of outstanding areas, and recommendations for improvement.  Your audit score determines whether you are awarded CustomerSat ACE Certification. Regardless of your final score, you will gain valuable insights into your feedback program and process.

ACE Certification Program Benefits

The ACE Certification Program addresses the key measurements and best practice benchmarks of customer feedback programs across the entire organization. By quantifying this data, you can:

• Answer the key question, “How are we doing?”
  
• Get feedback on best practices from experienced, independent auditors.
• Measure enterprise-wide customer satisfaction against industry driven performance standards.
  
• Receive industry certification from a recognized customer satisfaction authority useful for marketing and public relations as well as to drive process improvements.
  
• Obtain an annual recertification that ensures growth and consistency in best practices.

Partnership with Service Strategies

To deliver the strongest audit and certification program possible, CustomerSat partnered with Service Strategies (www.servicestrategies.com). Their Support Center Practices (SCP) Certification is the authority for audit and certification in customer service and support. Through their partnership, CustomerSat and Service Strategies share audit and certification best practices. The resulting programs are offered by CustomerSat as ACE Audit and Certification, and by Service Strategies as the Customer Feedback Module of the SCP Certification. View other CustomerSat Partner Programs.

View the ACE™ Audit and Certification data sheet.

For questions about an ACE audit, contact ACE@CustomerSat.com.