IRIS improves service despite snow

The accountancy and practice wing of IRIS told AccountingWEB that the recent snow disruption demonstrated how it was getting to grips with customer service issues.

The division’s headquarters near Windsor was in one of the worst affected areas when the snows came last Tuesday afternoon. “We did close our telephone support lines on 13 January as it was physically unsafe for employees to get to work,” said Phill Robinson, managing director of IRIS Accountancy Practice Solutions.

But with a business continuity plan in place, IRIS explained to customers via email that while the telephone support centre was out of action, staff would answer customer queries by email, with telephone follow-up calls if needed.

At this time of year, IRIS typically handles 250 support calls a day, Robinson said. “We responded to 250 emails that day. The same level of service was offered, but people couldn’t physically talk to us on the phone,” he said.

Over the past few years, Robinson acknowledged there had been some issues with customer satisfaction and when he joined the company last year, he said, “I made a commitment to resolve this and improve the overall level of service.”

One of the ways IRIS has addressed the issue is through implementing the net product promoter (NPP) approach which measurement a sample of customers to see what proportion of them would recommend the product to other users. Market leader Sage and Access Group both use the technique.

IRIS carried out NPP surveys in April and November of 2009 and also follows up support queries to rate the quality of service customers receive, Robinson said.