Unless you commit your goals to paper you have intentions that are seeds without soil. – Anonymous Objective or Goal setting is demanding, which is one of the reasons only 3 percent of us have a goals program. The thought of investing the time necessary might be overhelming, and many might feel they don’t have the time right now.

Setting goals for a company, the size of Bobcares is probably more demanding. Despite this, every year, we define our business and quality Objectives. It helps us clarify our thoughts, helps us do away with things that do not directly contribute to our aims.

Objectives for 2006

95% Customer Satisfaction

Every month, our Customer Service Reps measure Customer Satisfaction through surveys and questionnaires, through email, phone and chat. This helps us gain an idea on how many of our customers are really really happy with our service. If they are not entirely happy, then what remains for us to improve? We glean as much as we can from this data. Every 3 months, we prioritise this feedback and undertake its implementation.At the end of the year, we calculate the percentage of customers who were happy with our service. Last year, our customer satisfaction index was 93%. This year, we aim to improve it to 95%

Why not 100% customer satisfaction? An important aspect of goal setting is achievable goals. That is why, no one aims for 100% server uptime, but 99.9% uptime. We feel 95% customer satisfaction index is a challenging target in itself to maintain.

Continual improvement by introducing 3 new innovations in service every year.

Its important for a company, never to be stagnant. We may have the best service, but its important to keep innovating and introducing new services. This year, we aim to introduce at least 3 innovations in our service.

Innovations can be new services, or changes in our existing services, which makes us different from our competitors. Something that makes our customers remain excited in Bobcares.

Retain at least 90% customer base in 2006.

Every year, we lose a few customers. Some leave us because of a downturn in their business, or because they have gotten cheaper service elsewhere. A small percentage leave because they were not satisfied with our service. The Bobcares aim, has always been to never lose customers due to dissatisfaction with our service. This year, we aim to increase customer retention to 90%.

Its important to be able to retain as many customers as you can. This helps in many ways. It means, we won’t have to work that hard to replace lost customers. It means more word of mouth referrals with us. Happy customers are the best referrals. We always say at Bobcares, never lose your happy customers.

60% Overall Growth Rate for 2006.

Our main business objective this year is to grow 60% in terms of revenue. This is an exciting time for us. We have a good customer base of over 80 Web Hosts and Software companies. Our employee strength stands at 140.

Conclusion

Perhaps the greatest advantage of having a goals program is the freedom that goes with having direction in life. When your goals are clearly defined and intelligently set, you have, in essence, taken a major step toward programming your left brain. That frees our right brain to be its creative best.

Direction creates time and frees the brain to think creative and innovative.

About the author:
Sangeetha Naik heads Bobcares.com. She is the co-founder of Poornam Info Vision Ltd., Software and IT services company specializing in Linux based solutions for Webhosts and ISPs. Poornam Info Vision is an ISO 9001:2000 certified company with a team of over 140 engineers.

Sangeetha is a Computer Engineer based in India and has over 7 years of experience in the Hosting industry. Her articles have been published both online as well as in print.