Mint, a Gold Certified Microsoft partner, was awarded the Customer Experience Award 2007 at the Microsoft Partner Summit 2007. The award was made in recognition of the substantial gains the company made in improving its customer service.
This honour is only bestowed on companies that have made significant improvements in customer service, as vouched for by their customers.
The Partner Summit is an annual conference at which Microsoft affords its many partners an opportunity to get to grips with Microsoft's strategy and vision for the next year. It culminates in a banquet where Microsoft recognises specific partners' achievements through its Partner Programme Awards.
Pfungwa Serima, MD of Microsoft SA, says the Partner Programme Awards recognise partners that are going "above and beyond" to help customers reach their full business potential and are delivering unmatched innovation and value to customers.
"Mint is a great example of a customer-centric business," says Serima. "It has implemented a thorough customer satisfaction survey process and has been more than willing to share the results of these surveys with Microsoft in an effort to improve its already high customer satisfaction ratings."
Grant Hodgkinson, MD of Mint, says partners are able to partake in a quarterly customer satisfaction survey, driven by Microsoft. "Partners voluntarily provide Microsoft with their client details, which the company then uses to ascertain the real level of service clients feel they are obtaining.
"The award recognises the huge strides Mint has made over the past two years in ensuring our customers are happy, not merely satisfied with the solutions and services we build and deliver," states Hodgkinson. "We have invested heavily across the company in ensuring customers obtain the highest level of service in every area of our business."
This is the fourth award Mint has won since 2004. In 2004 Mint was the .NET Partner of the Year. In 2006 it won the Winning Customers Award for South Africa and the same prize in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region for its groundbreaking work in creating an innovative global collaboration and content management and search solution on the Microsoft platform for Sappi.
Few Microsoft partners have the courage to partake in its survey as the results are presented with verbatim comments as they were collected from customers.
"This can be an eye-opener as you and Microsoft get to hear exactly what customers think of the services you provide," Hodgkinson adds. "Fortunately, all the comments we received were positive, forward-looking statements that let us know we are definitely on the right track."
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Mint enhances people's productivity. It helps its customers implement and properly utilise technology solutions. In order to do this, it moves beyond mere technology deployment, ensuring the value-added adoption of its solutions. Mint addresses needs in the areas of process automation, regulatory compliance and governance, collaboration, content management and enterprise search.
Mint has twice won the Customer Award for Enterprise Search from Microsoft, an accolade that recognises the innovative and successful adoption of technology solutions for customers. It has also won the Customer Experience Award from Microsoft that recognises the satisfaction of its customers. www.mint.co.za
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