This is the third in a series of articles about findings from the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS)* that shows how a global sample of more than 1,000 broadcasters of different sizes ranked broadcast technology vendors on a variety of metrics. For information about how these results were collected, please see the bottom of this post**.
Previously I’ve discussed how broadcasters of different sizes ranked broadcast technology vendors for innovation and reliability. Today I am going to look at how this group ranked vendors “great customer service.”
But first it’s worth noting that “Great customer service” is something that I wrote about in a previous article. That post talked about how broadcast technology vendors were ranked for “great customer service” by all types of buyers (including broadcasters, systems integrators, post production facilities, government etc), and broke out the data on a geographic basis, regardless of the size of the respondent’s organization.
For a quick recap, here’s the chart from the previous post that shows the regional breakdown of the global sample.
Please note that in all cases, these brands are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order of their ranking in the study
Question: How would you rate [Brand X] on the following attribute [Great Customer Service] where 1 = very poor and 10 = best in the market?
The above chart is shown here only for the purpose of comparison, and I am not going to be discussing it here. However, I did put together some thoughts and analysis on these findings, and you can find them in the previous post.
Now let’s move on and look at the same question, but from a different perspective by taking the responses of just one customer type – broadcasters — and breaking the data out by the size of the respondent’s organization.
The chart below shows the responses from more than 1,000 broadcasters and is broken down by size of organization. For the sake of comparison, I have also included the rankings of all respondents (regardless for organization type, geography etc), and all broadcasters (regardless of size or geography), in the first and second columns respectively.
Please note that in all cases, these brands are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order of their ranking in the study
Question: How would you rate [Brand X] on the following attribute [Great Customer Service] where 1 = very poor and 10 = best in the market?
When I first saw this chart I found it very interesting. Here are some thoughts on these findings:
* There are 12 vendors in this chart, making customer service the most varied and least concentrated of all the factors I have explored. Keep in mind that there were only 25 vendors in the entire study, so to find almost half of them in a single chart about one metric is significant. This is an area of the broadcast market that does not appear to have clear global leaders, and as I mentioned in my previous post about customer service: “there is a real opportunity for vendors to step up to the plate and differentiate themselves on the basis of great customer service.”
* However, not one of these 12 vendors makes the top five list for great customer service in all six categories. Evertz came the closest with 5 appearances. Both Sony and EVS made the top 5 list in all categories in the previous post (all respondents broken down by geography).
* Here’s how many times each company appears in the chart above: Axon (2), Evertz (5), EVS (4), Florical (1), Harris (3), Miranda (1), Network (now Nevion) (1), Nvision (now Miranda) (1), Ross Video (1), Snell & Wilcox (now Snell) (3), Sony (4), Thomson / Grass Valley (2), Utah Scientific (2)
* There’s an interesting mix of companies in this chart, including some that are very large and some that are not so large. This reinforces the point I made above about there being an opportunity for vendors to differentiate themselves with customer service, and it also shows that customer service is not about size.
* Five different companies appear one time in this chart – Florical, Miranda, Network, Nvision and Ross – and they do so in a variety of different categories. Miranda appears in the 50-100 employee list; Florical and Network (now Nevion) appear in the 101-500 employee list; Nvision (now part of Miranda) appears in the 501-1,000 employee list; and Ross appears in the 1,001-10,000 employee list.
* Despite their difference in size and product ranges Utah Scientific and Harris appear in the same categories –broadcasters with 51-100 and 101-500 employees.
* As mentioned above, Miranda appears only in the smallest category (51-100 employees), but Nvision, which was acquired by Miranda is also in the 501-1000 employee category. When Miranda announced their Q3 results last week, said that said that they are moving the manufacturing of Nvision products from Grass Valley to Montreal, but that they are leaving some specialist positions in California. Obviously this makes financial sense for them, and it will be interesting what impact it will have on the perception of their customer service.
* Does size matter? Some of the industry’s largest vendors did best with the smallest customers; while some of the industry’s smaller vendors (like Axon) did best with the largest customers.
* Axon, which appears twice on this chart makes the top five list for “all broadcasters” (regardless of size or geography) and also for the large broadcasters (1,001-10,000 employees)
* Along with Axon, Ross Video which appears once on the above chart also makes the top 5 list for the largest broadcasters (1,001-10,000 employees)
* Thomson / Grass Valley, one of the broadcast industry’s largest vendors, makes the top 5 customer service list for the overall market and for the smallest broadcasters (50-100 employees), but is absent from the top-five list for other broadcasters.
* Harris, another of the broadcast industry’s largest players made the top five customer service list for all broadcasters as well as for the small and medium (50-500 employees) broadcasters.
* EVS, Snell & Wilcox and Sony each appear in the top 5 lists of medium (501-1,000 employees) and large (1,000-10,000 employees) broadcasters. All three companies also makes the top five customer service list for the overall market. However only two of them (EVS and Sony) make the top 5 customer service list for all broadcasters.
* As mentioned above, Evertz make the most appearances in this chart (5). In addition the of global sample, Evertz makes the top 5 customer service list for all broadcasters as well as for small and medium sized broadcasters (50-1,000 employees).
* The annual Big Broadcast Survey (BBS) is the largest ever and most comprehensive studies of broadcast technology vendor brands and industry trends. The BBS provides insight into market trends and the perceptions of leading broadcast industry vendor brands by practitioners across the world. It also delivers vendor brand ranking in a variety of product categories; all of which can be segmented by geography and customer type.
** Respondents to the BBS were asked to rank their opinion of twenty-five broadcast technology vendor brands in a variety of categories including awareness; overall opinion; change of opinion; recommendation; and a variety of brand attributes and brand drivers such as innovation, reliability, quality and great customer service. The responses were then aggregated into a series of industry “league tables” that rank each broadcast technology vendor brand against the metrics mentioned above.
