Our customers give us a "thumbs up"

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Invetus Customer Survey – 2Q2018

Background

Invetus was formed in late 2016, and in May 2018 the leadership decided that it was important to seek feedback from customers. Invetus has around 800 unique clients, who range from the farmers and graziers using our Fecal Egg Count service, through to most of the global animal health companies. We sent our small survey out to around 150 customers by email, and received 33 responses – a 20% response rate, which is regarded as quite good for this sort of survey – thanks to all who responded.

Findings

  • The 33 respondents were a representative cross section of our customer base.
  • 80% had been customers of Invetus (and the legacy companies VetX and VHR previously) for more than 5 years; the rest are more recent.
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  • There were uniformly positive views of the service, staff and quality of Invetus.
  • And importantly, these customers would use positive words to describe Invetus: reliable, high quality, timely, outcomes focussed and good value for money (although, full disclosure – one respondent said we are overpriced!)
  • ALL respondents are likely to contract our services in the future.
  • The survey allowed us to calculate a Net Promoter Score (NPS), and for Invetus it was 58.
    • There is a lot of literature on NPS (you can read more here), and a variety of views about its usefulness.
    • We used Survey Monkey and their benchmark questions for our survey. This means we can compare our results to their database of 216,000 organisations (for the period Jan 2017-March 2018.)
    • The average NPS across all these businesses is 13. (Lower quartile -30, Median 26, Upper quartile 66)
    • That means Invetus, with 58 is in the top 50-75% of this data set. We were delighted that our customers think so highly of us, and will be trying to exceed this in future years.

Verbatim comments

There was room for some open comments, a few of which are included below for your interest.

  • A pleasure to deal with Invetus, very positive can/do staff (University department)
  • Very happy with service and professionalism of all staff (multinational company)
  • The service is very prompt and we usually have results within 24 hours of posting tests (Farmer/grazier)

There were some suggestions for improvement:

  • Services are of high quality, however timely reporting and editing can be an issue (e.g. Q3 outcomes).  Staff regularly appear to be short on time.  Otherwise, very happy with your services. (multinational company)
  • Presentation of staff and facilities does not demonstrate the quality of work conducted or the attention to detail staff put in.  Office presentation, vehicle presentation and staff presentation (uniforms etc can all be improved ) to reflect a quality research organisation that not only undertakes good work but visually demonstrates it. (Australian company with global operations)
  • To be the best CRO you can be, I would like to see: 
    • Greater transparency of the new pricing structure (prices for services have gone up considerably).
    • Faster turnaround of reports.
    • More oversight and development of junior staff who need to focus on improving reports.
    • The good stuff: your stats and general animal health knowledge is excellent. Your service and accessibility is excellent - I always have my calls returned. Your staff are really experienced and pleasant to work with. You help me to get the best outcomes from my research. Thank you! (multinational company)

Our takeaways

Our staff are busy and at times, this impacts on their service to you. We have hired two new technical staff members at ARC and are in the process of recruiting another veterinarian for WRC. We are also starting to build a “bench” of trained casual staff who can step in at busy times and relieve the pressure on the organisation.

Re pricing – we seek to price competitively, cover our costs and make a modest profit. When Invetus formed we implemented new financial and project tracking systems; this revealed inconsistent pricing approaches which in some cases did not cover costs. We understand that you would like early warning of any price changes for your budgeting purposes – we will endeavour to do that.

Our ARC facilities are old and this shows. We have decided that we want to remain on the University of New England precinct and continue our partnership with them, and are discussing options for other/new premises. This won’t be a quick fix, but we will be in new facilities in the future. At WRC our landlord is in the process of adding some new facilities to make it more pleasant for staff and visitors.

Many thanks to those of you who responded, we appreciated that you took time out of your busy day to help us improve. We are delighted that in general we are meeting your needs, and we promise we will continue to do our best to answer your questions.