The results, published in Computer Weekly last week, polled 30,000 Data Centre customers in order to investigate their purchasing habits and general sentiments towards the customer service they receive from their Data Centres.

Unfortunately, in our experience, this is not a surprise and typical of the majority of service providers out there. Many customers end up being sold services they don’t really understand and have little experience of what to expect from “good” Data Centre customer service. As a result, dissatisfaction with the service they receive is widespread.

At the same time, the pressures customers’ businesses face continue unabated. In our recent report Responding to the IT Infrastructure Challenge, it was revealed that 70% of UK SMEs could not survive for more than 24 hours without their critical IT infrastructure. With so much hinging on quality IT provision, poor customer service is simply unacceptable.

You may recall that about a year ago our MD, Andy Gilbert, set out the Five rules that guided our first 10 years in business. One of these key principles was to ‘be nice’ and we’ve stuck closely to this mantra, ensuring good customer service is at the centre of everything we do. We see this as distinguishing Node4 from its competitors.

The success of this approach seems to be confirmed in the results of our most recent customer satisfaction survey, which saw stellar feedback from across the board. Customers described our services as everything from ‘excellent’, to ‘superb’, and our staff as ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘fantastic’.

Additionally, Node4’s contributions in improving this sector earned  the accolade of UK National Champion at the European Business Awards, which promote success, innovation and ethics in the European business community.

We recommend that those providers that continue to provide poor customer service take a moment to appreciate how the landscape, and the sentiments of their customers, are changing and take steps to improve. If not, they may well find that their customers don’t stick around for long.

For more information on Cloud provision that works and does not disappoint, take a look at our introductory page.