We Heard You: PG Calc’s 2010 Client Satisfaction Survey

Thank you to the 788 clients who took the time to submit responses to our 2010 Client Satisfaction survey, conducted throughout July 2010.

We’re pleased to report that 95% of you said you would recommend PG Calc to a colleague. We’re thrilled with that number, and the truth is, if we could ask you only one question, that’s the one we would ask. We imagine your high opinion of us was based on the rest of the topics covered in the survey – the quality of our products, the responsiveness of our client service staff, the reliability of the information you receive when you talk to a PG Calc representative on the phone or at a booth at a conference, and finally, the degree to which you believe PG Calc is invested in the mission of your organization. While we are encouraged by the results of our survey, we are also committed to responding to your comments as thoughtfully and comprehensively as possible.

One of the foundations of our survey was anonymity, a double-edged sword that facilities honest feedback, which is, of course, the most helpful kind, and at the same time prevents us from personally responding to clients who indicated any level of dissatisfaction or even hinted at an unresolved issue. For this reason, we’re publishing publicly the feedback we’d otherwise respond to personally.

We’ll be providing responses over the next few months to address what was revealed in the survey results. This month, we respond to the comments submitted in the Education section.

Education
We are very proud of our educational programs; they are a component of our service offerings that we consider essential to our commitment to the practice of planned giving. We review our educational service offerings constantly to ensure that we are providing relevant, timely, and affordable training.

First, we provide an abundance of material to our clients for no cost at all, including the following:

• White papers.  Each of our white papers has received over 1,000 downloads and is the result of experience, expertise, and countless hours of writing and organizing.  We are proud to have published three this past year: “State Gift Annuity Registration: A Primer on What It Means to Your Organization,” “The Stewardship Challenge: Managing Complexities in Gift Administration,” and “Sharing Success: What Non-Profits Can Learn about Marketing from For-Profits.” Download them today.
  
  
• Online Knowledge Base.  PG Calc’s Knowledge Base is a hub of planned giving information that is updated frequently – and we believe every planned giving professional should keep it bookmarked. The solutions to your planned giving questions are in our Knowledge Base. Search features include browsing by category or Google-enabled search. 
  
  
• Monthly eRate.  Our monthly eRate always includes a feature article on an important trend or relevant topic in planned giving, a marketing tip, topics to encourage optimal use of our software programs, and company news. Past and current editions of our eRate newsletter are available.
  
  
• PG Calc-U-Letter. Our quarterly PG Calc-U-Letter is a print publication that contains case studies, instructions on modeling popular and complex gift situations, and coverage of current and relevant gift planning topics in each issue.
  
  
• Speeches and Published Articles. PG Calc’s experts make it a priority to contribute to the advancement of planned giving knowledge through published articles and papers, as well as speeches at conferences. We’ve shared our knowledge about planned giving with tens of thousands of practitioners. Our most current list of published articles is available online.
  
  
• Self-instruction. Opportunities for self-instruction abound in the PG Calc universe.
• Introductory guides to our software programs are available:  Planned Giving Manager 6.3 and GiftWrap 4.0. The guides are hands-on tutorials that take approximately one hour to review.  
  
  
• The Online Help systems in our software include planned giving material that goes far beyond documenting our software. Comprehensive and easy-to-use, they are a valuable tool for any fundraiser. Watch one of our HelpClips to see a demonstration of our Online Help.
  
  
• Unlimited Telephone Support. Registered users of PG Calc software are entitled to unlimited telephone support from our expert Client Services team – support that ranges from installation issues to help modeling a gift situation and running reports.

Of course we also have educational options that do have costs associated with them. Our intent is to keep these options as accessible and affordable as possible. Our training options with costs include:

• Group Training. Our group trainings are held in cities throughout the United States (many times corresponding with national conferences) on the topics of gift planning and gift administration. We frequently receive grateful feedback that these sessions are above and beyond software instruction.  Our group training schedule is available online.
  
  
• Distance Learning. Our Distance Learning program, conducted over WebEx, is flexible, convenient, economical, and effective. Training on topics on gift planning or gift administration, as well as fully customized educational programs, can be conducted on WebEx. For more information email Michael Heep.
  
  
• Resource Manuals. We are well known for our publication on charitable gift annuities, Charitable Gift Annuities: The Complete Resource Manual – the comprehensive guide to managing a gift annuity program. We also publish Planned Giving for Canadians, a primer on gift planning across borders, which is updated annually and published electronically.
  
  
• Seminars. Our seminars are widely regarded as “musts” for planned giving programs. They include “Operating an Effective Gift Annuity Program,” designed and frequently conducted by Frank Minton, “Lead Trust School,” dedicated to reviewing the advanced concepts of this valuable charitable giving tool, and "Planned Giving by the Numbers," a session for experienced gift planners who desire a deeper understanding of common planned gift calculations.
  
  
• Webinars. Our monthly Webinars have become a cornerstone of our educational program.  We put a lot of effort into making our Webinars affordable to all gift planners at $95 per site. Of course, we recognize that in tough times such as now, budgets are sensitive even to items under $100. Still, we consider Webinars an incredible value for the following reasons:
• Our expert presenters prepare and deliver not only the Webinars themselves, but in-depth papers on the subject at hand that are available to every attendee.
• Our Webinars are not “lead generation” programs; they are focused on education, not on selling our products and services.
• Our fee is based on individual sites.  Each site can have unlimited attendees. We hope that our clients are filling rooms with colleagues in planned giving, major gifts, and the annual fund, Board members, senior managers, allied professionals, and anyone else they think will benefit from our presentations. 

We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback on our Webinar program, and we hope all of our clients can join us at least a few times a year.

Our survey confirmed that we provide excellent service to our clients, and that they are extremely happy with us and refer us to their colleagues.  Even better, it has given us an opportunity to respond to concerns – whether common or uncommon – and to consider our processes critically so that we may improve the level of service we provide. 

In the spirit of the survey, we invite any client with an unresolved problem to contact Dyke Tilt, VP of Client Services, or call 888-474-2252 so that Dyke and his staff have an opportunity to resolve these outstanding issues.