How to Manage Your Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Data in APN Partner Central

By Ian Kirkwood, APN CSAT Program Manager at AWS

On April 1, 2019, the AWS Partner Network (APN) announced updates to the overall APN program. This included updated benefits for APN Partners, such as prescriptive funding based on your current tier and program attainment, and new APN tier requirements.

The APN Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Program is one of the new requirements we added for 2019.

In this post, I will explain what’s new with the APN CSAT program, how to access your unique customer review form URL, and how to see your CSAT data available in APN Partner Central.

The APN CSAT program helps businesses gather feedback and understand the impacts they’ve had on Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers.

The goal of the APN CSAT program is for APN Partners to demonstrate ongoing customer success to AWS. By capturing the voice of your end customers, we can ensure APN Partners continue to meet and exceed the high quality bar promised by the AWS Partner Network.

How it Works

The APN CSAT program asks AWS customers how likely they are to recommend an APN Partner on a scale of 0-10. By maximizing the number of satisfied customers and decreasing the overall amount of dissatisfied customers, you can increase customer retention and grow your business.

The program has undergone a complete overhaul in preparation for being added to the new APN tier requirements in 2019. Updates include CSAT count requirements and an automated way of surfacing both count and data from customers. At this time, we are not sharing or tracking aggregate scores with APN Partners, as our requirements are only based around response count.

All members of the AWS Partner Network are now eligible to receive CSAT data, and have been provided a unique customer review form URL that you can find in your APN Partner Central account.

To learn more, please see our CSAT Overview Guide >>

New APN CSAT Tier Requirements

We are now requiring APN Partners to have a specific number of customers submit responses via the “Rate this Partner” function within your APN Partner Solutions Finder (PSF) listing. This creates a direct line of communication between AWS and customers, who can share more information about their experiences working with APN Partners.

The table below outlines current CSAT tier requirements for APN Partners.

APN CSAT Updates-1

All APN Partners must acquire the responses within the trailing 12 months of their APN membership renewal date. APN Partners can track progress towards these requirements on the Partner Scorecard in APN Partner Central.

Accessing Your APN CSAT Data

Beginning April 1, 2019, AWS began sharing limited CSAT data with partners via APN Partner Central. You can access the data by following these simple steps:

Log into APN Partner Central.
Click on View Partner Scorecard.

Look at the Customer Satisfaction Responses to see your overall count.

Scroll down to the Customer Reviews object to see your approved CSAT data.

The final question on the APN customer review form asks all users to proactively consent to sharing their submitted response with the concerning APN Partner.

If a customer opts in to sharing the response, you will be able to see the customer’s name, email, company, and open response comment. Today, most responses come in without the customer opt in, so don’t be alarmed if you have many responses in the count section but no additional details down below.

Best Practices for Managing CSAT Counts

Customer satisfaction data is a powerful tool that can change your business, but it requires a commitment to getting more feedback and reviewing your scores regularly.

Here are some best practices for capturing CSAT data:

Create a redirect link to the customer review form URL based on your web domain.
Add the customer review form URL to your website.
Continually ask customers for feedback two weeks to two months after a project has been completed.
Request responses from multiple individuals in the same organization that has worked with you.
Ask the same people multiple times throughout the year to provide responses so you can build a continuous feedback loop with customers.
Offer an incentive to customers for completing a customer review and opting in to share their information

Learn more about APN CSAT best practices >>

Next Steps

In short, APN Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) data provides organizations with:

A system to evaluate, monitor, and improve customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Deeper understanding of how AWS customers view your business and the reasons why.
Opportunities to repair customer relationships after a negative experience.