Big Valentine for CenterBeam

97% Client Satisfaction
92% Employee Satisfaction

SAN JOSE, CA - February 14, 2005

“This is a memorable Valentine’s Day,” said Kevin Francis, president and chief executive officer of CenterBeam, Inc.  Today, CenterBeam is announcing that in 2004 it earned 97% customer satisfaction and 92% employee satisfaction.

“Customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction are fundamentally linked,” said Francis.  “A company must have one to earn the other.  Together they create a virtuous circle of benefit.”  Francis joined CenterBeam as CEO in 2002 and since then has implemented a total quality program resulting in a sharp growth in sales, greater operational efficiencies and, as announced today, unprecedented customer and employee satisfaction.  “Our satisfaction scores, combined with the dramatic growth of our business, is a clear signal that CenterBeam is on the right path.” 

Two-Thirds of Clients Give CenterBeam Perfect Score

CenterBeam’s customer satisfaction is measured on a nine-point scale divided into three sections:  “dissatisfied,” “satisfied” and “very satisfied.”  CenterBeam’s 97% score is arrived at by combining the satisfied and very satisfied scores.  For 2004, CenterBeam clients were 91% very satisfied and 6% satisfied for a total of 97%.  Of the 91% very satisfied two-thirds of these gave CenterBeam a perfect score of “9.”  CenterBeam’s customer satisfaction is measured by Quality Resource Associates (QRA) on an ongoing basis. 

QRA measures one portion of the CenterBeam / client relationship, the experience of clients who contact CenterBeam for support.  What QRA’s measurement doesn’t reveal is that CenterBeam clients make fewer than half the support calls than the industry average for call volume as published by Gartner.  This ‘silent’ satisfaction means that CenterBeam clients spend more time online and are more productive than typical PC users. 

CenterBeam Rated Best Place to Work

Employee satisfaction is measured annually and CenterBeam’s 2004 score of 92% showed an improvement of seven percentage points over its 2003 score of 85% as independently measured by Catalyst Consulting.  CenterBeam has a long-standing reputation for high employee satisfaction:  In 2002 Computerworld selected CenterBeam as one of its “best places to work.” 

“Customer First” --  CenterBeam’s Foundation for Success

“CenterBeam has combined the best IT management tools and practices to offer our clients enterprise-class support.  But what separates CenterBeam from all its competitors is our people and their “customer first” focus,” said Francis.  “Every member of CenterBeam’s Express Access customer support team is constantly evaluated on their individual customer satisfaction scores.” 

Francis continued, “CenterBeam leveraged its customer satisfaction into a competitive asset.  In 2003, we recognized that dynamic mid-sized businesses wanted the flexibility of IT outsourcing but didn’t want to be locked into a long-term contract with complex service level agreements.  Based on our customer satisfaction scores, we decided it was a low-risk proposition for CenterBeam to offer its clients a month-to-month contract based on one service level agreement: Total Satisfaction.  Since then, CenterBeam sales have dramatically increased.” 

“CenterBeam’s Total Satisfaction guarantee also serves to further focus our staff on the quality of every interaction with our clients,” Francis said.  “Offering a Total Satisfaction contract was the best possible way to reinforce CenterBeam’s most important corporate value:  Customer First.  We’ve built our company on the value of Customer First and we’ve bet our future on it.”

CenterBeam’s success regularly attracts the attention of important opinion makers such as leading IT industry analyst Gartner.  Gartner has published a case study on the CenterBeam service and cited CenterBeam’s innovative approach when the firm named CenterBeam one of the “Cool Vendors” in IT management.  A book by Cisco Press, The Business Case for Virtual Business Processes, includes a case study of CenterBeam as an example of how companies can use IT outsourcing to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and focus on their core business.  And CenterBeam’s expertise in computer security and outsourcing has been profiled on CNBC and in The Wall Street Journal. 

About CenterBeam, Inc.