Customer Satisfaction Survey 2023: Results Show We Exceed Client Expectations in Quality of Data, Customer Service, and Pricing
In January and February of 2023, Private Equity Info surveyed clients to understand our customers' perceptions of how we are doing, relative to the type of company we aim to be.
My goal, when I founded Private Equity Info in 2005, was to create the data and tools I wished I had while working as an investment banker - to easily identify highly targeted lists of the private equity companies that best fit my M&A transactions.
Primary importance to me from the beginning was to develop a high-quality product, to offer a differentiated level of bespoke service at a reasonable price, and to create meaningful long-term relationships within the investment banking and M&A community.
To help gauge our effectiveness at executing these values, we recently sent a customer survey to better understand our customers’ perception of product quality, customer service, and pricing. The survey results were overwhelmingly positive.
Here’s what we learned:
- Interestingly, half of the survey respondents have been customers of Private Equity Info for more than five years, some more than a decade.
- Overall, our customers said they are “Very Satisfied” with the Private Equity Info service.
- Our clients gave us the highest possible score for our Data Quality.
- We are fanatical about data quality. Consequently, we spend much time and energy ensuring our data is accurate, concise, and up-to-date. Of course, no database is perfect. There’s always room for improvement. But I was pleased customers perceive our data quality as excellent.
- We received top marks in response to our question about Customer Service. I was proud of this score as it underpins everything we do - we strive to be customer friendly in constructing the data, building the user interface to search efficiently, and in our interactions with customers. It’s good to get verification when that sentiment comes through in a survey metric.
- We scored a 4.5 (out of 5) on our customers’ sentiment about the Value delivered for the price. I suppose we could score higher if it were free. But alas, we also need to stay in business. So, I am pleased with this score as well.
- We also asked how familiar our customers are with some of the new data and tools we have recently launched. Apparently, we don’t do a good job informing our customers about new features added to the platform. Too many of our customers were unfamiliar with the latest tools and data sets we recently launched. Specifically:
Exact Executive - saves ~ 20% of research time
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- Exact Executive – quickly determine the single best contact at each private equity firm to contact for your deal. Contextual with the search results, Exact Executive identifies the PE Executive who holds the Board seat to the portfolio company of interest, or the person in charge of inbound deal flow (Business Development). Exact Executive saves ~20% of your research time by short-cutting the time required to identify the right person to contact about your deal.
Auto-Search is a game changer for M&A research
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- Auto-Search – performs the research for you, compressing hours of research into just a few minutes. Auto-Search maps the landscape of companies operating in an industry, and provides the results in 3 categories:
- Private Equity Owned Portfolio Companies
- Privately Held Strategic Companies
- Publicly Traded Companies
- Search Portfolio Companies by NAICS codes – we now also provide the ability to filter portfolio companies by industry codes (NAICS). This provides investment bankers with an efficient tool to identify potential financial buyers with a strategic interest within a specific industry.
- Portfolio Company Executives – in addition to tracking senior executives at the private equity firms, we now also track the key executives at the portfolio company level.
One more thing…
We have recently embarked on a digital transformation designed to improve communications and to offer ever-increasing levels of service, and soon-to-be-announced product innovations.
Thank you to our customers who took the time to complete the survey. It’s good to hear our customers are pleased with their experience with Private Equity Info. It’s also great to hear where we can further improve.