Conferon Clients Speak Out We have recently completed and tabulated Conferon’s Annual Client Survey. We would like to thank all of our clients that responded! Your input will be used to help us continually improve the quality of our service delivery to each and every one of you. As you will see by the results, we are very pleased with the ratings on this survey. The chart below shows a synopsis of the key services that we provide and the average ratings of each of those services. These ratings are on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being an excellent rating. Why you work with Conferon In part two of the survey, we asked our clients to rank the top eight reasons that they choose Conferon to assist them, from the most to the least important. Here are the results: Extension of your staff Industry knowledge Recommendations/consulting Buying power Cost savings Value for price paid for services Integrity/ethics of our staff Technology Account team ratings In part three of the survey, we asked our clients to rate their satisfaction with the quality of service received from the Account Executive and Account Planner that service their account. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being an extremely satisfied rating, our team scored a whopping 4.68! Client recommendations and other survey findings As you may expect, not all ratings and comments were excellent. Some of our clients offered their insight on how our service to them could be improved. Here is a synopsis of the recommendations made. Supplier recommendations and negotiations - Several of you would like to see us improve and expand how we service you in this area. Expansion areas were noted for speaker selection and assistance with BMI and ASCAP licensing. Additional comments were made on improving negotiations, timeliness and bid comparisons. We are currently looking to hire a new position within Conferon to provide our Account Planners with additional support and expertise to improve and increase our service offerings in supplier selection. AE and AP workload - Some of our clients commented that our team seems to be busy and we need to evaluate their overall workload. We are currently working on a project to measure the time that it takes our Account Planners to service their meetings. This is anticipated to be completed this year and will enable us to better distribute workload based on time availability. Assist us with our smaller programs - Many of our clients would like us to provide our services for their small meetings. We have created Conferon Express specifically to help in this area. Conferon Express will give you a fast turnaround for your site selection and contract negotiation needs while maintaining the same quality that is provided by your Account Executive. Contract processing is also part of this service. Consistency in our team - Many of you made extremely positive comments about the benefits of having the same individual(s) working on your account for a number of years. You are extremely complimentary of their trouble-shooting and problem solving skills, especially while on-site at your meeting. Comments like “part of our team,” “trust,” “friend,” “consistency,” and “family” truly speak volumes for the way many of our clients feel about their Conferon account team. Clients are pleased that we enable them to focus on delivering their core services to their membership and company. Our employees are truly one of the main reasons our clients are loyal to Conferon for the long haul. On the flip side, several clients commented about the turnover that we have experienced recently. We have had our fair share of babies born and individuals desiring to “move back to their roots”. We have made some great new additions to our staff and hope to fill the shoes of the individuals that serviced you well for so many years. Consider more hotels - Some of our clients would like us to consider and propose more hotels. While we are willing to do this, consider the advantage of the opposite. When we are able to communicate to hotels that they have a one in five chance of getting the business, they tend to put their best foot forward in opening quotations and set the stage for successful negotiations. Quicken the contracts process - Many of you would like to see the hotel contracts come to closure more quickly. This is also an issue with our hotel partners. We are working on developing standardized contracts with a number of chains that should help quicken this process, yet deliver the same quality that you have come to expect from us. Several chains have already finalized “short form” contracts with Conferon. The turn around time of these agreements has improved dramatically when these are used. Offer lead retrieval services - Several clients would like us to adopt the technology to offer lead retrieval services for their exhibitors in conjunction with our registration services. We are currently implementing 2-D bar-coding to deliver this request to the clients that have this need in the exhibit, CME or CEU areas. Several of our clients would like us to take a tougher stance on some issues during negotiations. They understandably focus on their own needs and want us to get the hotel to see it their way. This was less daunting a task in years past. In the current heavy sellers’ market we often have to work doubly hard to achieve fairness in contracts. While we are communicating our clients’ needs, we cannot be blind to the heavy demands that hotel salespeople are also under. We would love to achieve all the concessions that are requested--but may not be able to if they are harmful to our hotel and supplier partners. We believe our clients’ meetings are best served when we have negotiated great value and have maintained the confidence of our hotel partners. Once again, we appreciate your feedback in helping us to improve our operations and our service to you! If you would like to share any additional comments or recommendations, please communicate them with a member of your account team or contact Bruce Harris or Dave Lutz in our Twinsburg office.