MS Partners - what do you think of the CSAT requirement?

peakbagger66

Personally, I think it is a waste of time. Obviously you are going to ask only your clients with whom you have a good relationship with (hopefully that applies to your whole client base .) The results they get back are skewed and not accurate. I dislike that we have to put upon our clients to get them to take the survey in the first place.

We've taken to giving them gift cards for the trouble. Mind you this could be taken as bribery. I hope not! That's certainly not the intention.

Agree? Disagree? Perhaps I am looking at this the wrong way. Would love to hear from anyone who is going through this process.

jibbajabba

I think worse than the CSAT requirements are the additional requirements to retain "Gold Status" with the new way the partnerships will work from April on (or June / July , can't remember) , especially the amount of MCTS/MCITPs with even more strange exam specifics.

We are partner for a long time now, with multiple competencies and now, as Microsoft changes the way the partnership works over the next few months, we suddenly had to get more MCITPs / MCTs in areas we didn't need before, for the same competencies.

We suddenly had to get a lot more MCITP:SA, MCITP: Database Administrator 2008, MCITP: Database Developer 2008 and also an MCITP:MA

Not a big deal for a company if you are willing to send pepople to trainings courses, but it does add to the budget somewhat .. Plus you need to bribe the staff to even go for those exams

Something I don't mind either, it is just "inconvinient" to say the least

But back to the actual question, I never saw CSATs being an issue to be honest. The survey they receive is a simple tick and click next survey as far as I remember and customer we ask normally don't have a problem in doing so.

Those customer are normally happy customer and as a result don't need to be bribed

peakbagger66

Gomjaba wrote: »

We are partner for a long time now, with multiple competencies and now, as Microsoft changes the way the partnership works over the next few months, we suddenly had to get more MCITPs / MCTs in areas we didn't need before, for the same competencies.

What is nice about these new MCT/MCITP requirements is that it forced me to get off my duff and start studying for exams. This last minute push on our end has got me burnin' for more learnin'! Have to keep it up while the momentum is still there. I think this will be my new hobby.

It also emphasized to our bosses that there really is value to getting certifications (in the form of hundred of thousands of dollars of licenses via the MS Partner program).

Gomjaba wrote: »

We suddenly had to get a lot more MCITP:SA, MCITP: Database Administrator 2008, MCITP: Database Developer 2008 and also an MCITP:MA.

What sucks is that for the Gold competencies you cannot double up on Certified resources. Once you assign someone to a Gold competency you can't assign them to another competency, except maybe to a licensing or sales assesment. For SILVER level, you can do so to your heart's content.

Gomjaba wrote: »

Not a big deal for a company if you are willing to send pepople to trainings courses, but it does add to the budget somewhat .. Plus you need to bribe the staff to even go for those exams .

Bribery schmibery - for us it was "Do this and you can stay employed. Fail and you are on the street!" Just kidding. Sort of. .

Gomjaba wrote: »

But back to the actual question, I never saw CSATs being an issue to be honest. The survey they receive is a simple tick and click next survey as far as I remember and customer we ask normally don't have a problem in doing so.

Yes, this is the second year we had to do the CSATs. I just think they do not present an accurate picture and it's just one more hoop we have to jump through. Our clients were happy to do them last year, but this year we thought we would give them a "Thank you" for helping us - because that is what they are doing, helping us!