This week, Event Temple earned Hotel Tech Report’s level III Global Customer Support Certification (GCSC) for its investments into tools, processes and strategies to ensure the ongoing success of its customers across the four of the key pillars of the GCSC Rubric including: pre-emptive support, reactive support, coaching and customer validation.
The Hotel Tech Report GCSC certification program analyzes software vendors along critical dimensions of customer support infrastructure in order to help hoteliers minimize risk and maximize positive outcomes when selecting technology partners. In order to become certified, companies must open their internal systems to Hotel Tech Report for assessment along HTR’s rigorous 34-point GCSC Rubric.
“Event Temple’s customer success operation is focused on what their team refers to as creating an ‘effortless experience’ of which their primary goal is to strip away any and all friction in the customer experience. Delivering on that promise requires a substantial investment of time, money and energy and to that end it's clear that the Event Temple team has executed flawlessly. Everything from their continuous approach to knowledge management of which their department head team lead is KCS Certified, to their ongoing satisfaction monitoring process, to their regimented intake and prioritization of customer feedback is evidence that hotels who choose to work with Event Temple will find themselves in the hands of a true long term partner that has their interests at the center of the organization, product and processes,” said Hotel Tech Report co-founder Adam Hollander.
Event Temple’s Head of Customer Success, David Perry’s industry leading onboarding and education program has increased user adoption and workflow efficiency by as much as 50%. These results inspired the company’s latest initiative - a continuing education program for Event Temple legacy users.
“We are constantly releasing new features and iterations of our software based on client feedback and industry trends. We want to make sure all our longest standing clients are aware of all the changes that have happened in our system since they were initially onboarded,” said Perry. “We’ve developed a retraining bootcamp for our legacy clients to ensure they have the tools necessary to leverage the software to its fullest potential.”
"Our goal is to empower our clients with the tools and education necessary so they can be sales leaders in their respective markets. We take a customer-centric approach with multiple touch points throughout their time with Event Temple. Ultimately, we see our customers as an extension of our company - we are successful when they are successful," said Bob Graham, Event Temple CEO.
This is not the first time Event Temple has been recognized by Hotel Tech Report. The hospitality software company received the top awards in 2021 from HTR for Best Event Management Software and Best Group Sales Management Software.
The below GCSC assessment outlines the verified systems and processes that Event Temple has in place to educate, train, retain and support customers.
Event Temple's GCSC Assessment Summary
- Rubric Score: 27/34
- Certification Level: III
- Customer Orientation: Customer Centric
- Recommendation: Highly recommended
- Support Team Size: 6
- Support Team Leaders: David Perry, Head of Customer Success
- Certification Period: November 2021 - November 2022
- Support Stack: Intercom, Hubspot, Freshstatus, Teachable, InMoment, Canny.io
GCSC Support Rubric Section I: Pre-Emptive Support
The Pre-Emptive support pillar of the GSCG Scoring Rubric audits the tools and processes the vendor has in place to provide customers with easy access to self-help resources. These self-help resources serve as a basis to offer easy troubleshooting as well as to preempt answers to product related questions before they arise providing a more intuitive and seamless experience for clients. The following are the rubric items that Hotel Tech Report has verified that Event Temple has in place for clients:
- 1.1 Online knowledge base/help center: Vendor offers a searchable help center for customers to easily find answers to common customer questions.
- 2.1 Online training videos: Vendor offers pre-recorded videos that clients can access 24/7 for self-teaching and deeper product knowledge.
- 3.1 In-app guided tours: Vendor offers in-app guided tours that are embedded within their interface to provide coaching and education for users to organically discover and easily access while using the product.
- 3.2 Tooltips: Vendor offers helpful tips and hints presented when users hover over buttons and UI elements in the interface. (min of 10 in-app tooltips)
- 4.1 Implementation documentation/roadmap: Vendor offers clients a visual map of the steps, processes and stakeholders upon onboarding to ensure that all stakeholders are aligned to make the implementation process more seamless.
GCSC Support Rubric Section II: Reactive Support
The Reactive Support Pillar assesses the company's responsiveness to clients and their ability to resolve issues quickly when they arise ensuring prompt response and service to clients. The following are the rubric items that Hotel Tech Report has verified that Event Temple has in place for clients:
- 1.2 Transparent process: Vendor has opened up their systems to Hotel Tech Report via screen share to verify their tools and processes in place to deliver customer support.
- 1.3 Email support or phone support: Vendor at least one of the traditional methods of customer support channels, email or phone support (additional channels: phone, chat, email)
- 1.4 Multi-lingual support: Vendor offers support in the languages where they have active clients (English, French, Spanish)
- 1.5 Purpose built support and ticket management tool: Vendor utilizes professional customer support software that has functionality to effectively manage support tickets, followup, escalations and analytics.
- 2.2 Live Chat support: Vendor offers website or in-app live chat as an alternative customer support channel.
- 3.3 Contract SLAs: Vendor has service level agreement (SLA) terms in place in client contracts to guarantee that service levels are upheld.
- 3.5 Feature request tracking: Vendor offers the ability for clients to easily submit feature requests and has a methodology in place for escalating high priority features.
- 4.5 Verified Contract SLA monitoring: Vendor has SLA terms fully integrated into their customer support software that has automatic notifications ensuring that SLA's are monitored and upheld.
GCSC Support Rubric Section III: Customer Success & Coaching
While keeping customers happy is commonly thought of by software companies as the top priority, keeping them well informed is of equal importance. The third pillar of the GCSC Rubric identifies the key ways that vendors inform, educate and train their customers to realize successful outcomes with their products. The following are the rubric items that Hotel Tech Report has verified that Event Temple has in place for clients:
- 1.7 Customer satisfaction monitoring (ex. NPS surveys, CSAT): Vendor has processes in place to regularly monitor customer satisfaction.
- 2.3 Product updates/changes (release notes/changelog): Vendor offers easily accessible robust documentation of feature updates and product improvements to educate clients on new ways to maximize usage of the product.
- 2.4 Quarterly success check ins: Vendor offers [at least] quarterly customer success check ins to review progress, share best practices and ensure that clients are successful and happy with the product or service.
- 3.6 Performance reporting: Vendor offers reporting and analytics to show clients the value of the product or service.
- 3.4 Managed Services: Vendor offers additional consulting and managed services to help clients maximize their usage of the product.
- 4.6 Learning Management System (LMS): Vendo has a Learning Management System in place that offers videos, guided trainings and assessments for customers to be able to expand product knowledge in a structured way over time.
GCSC Support Rubric Section IV: Customer Validation
The GCSC’s 34-point rubric and Hotel Tech Report’s verification of internal tools and processes validate the vendor's systems in place; however, the validation of the success of these tools and processes can most significantly be validated by the unbiased perspectives of real hotelier customers. This pillar looks at unbiased verified client reviews and satisfaction scores to validate that the processes in place are working in the eyes of customers based on their satisfaction ratings. The following are the rubric items that Hotel Tech Report has verified that Event Temple has in place for clients:
- 3.7 Public Feedback Validation: Vendor shows exemplary client relationships and is a top performer on Hotel Tech Report with more than 87 verified client reviews.
- 4.12 4.9 avg. customer support rating: Vendor has outstanding customer support ratings averaging more than 4.5/5 across all client reviews.
- 4.13 Vendor Confidence: The vendor has revealed their private internal customer satisfaction scores to Hotel Tech Report showing high degrees of confidence in their support infrastructure and outcomes which can be a strong indicator of transparency and positive vendor-client relationships.
About the Hotel Tech Report Global Customer Support Certification (GCSC)
Support is one of the most critical aspects of the vendor selection process and yet historically there has never been a way to know the quality of a company’s support, until now. Using Hotel Tech Report’s proprietary framework, companies are assessed along four key dimensions: pre-emptive support, reactive support, coaching/success and client validation to provide hoteliers unprecedented levels of transparency to more easily identify top technology partners.
For more information please visit: https://partners.hoteltechreport.com/global-support-certification/
