It's easy for any company, regardless of validity, to say it ranks high in overall customer satisfaction. It's quite another to have that claim independently verified. IAL Services, a Denver based comprehensive language services company, recently had to put this claim to the test and have our past performance independently analyzed by Open Ratings, a Dun & Bradstreet company. The purpose for this evaluation is to qualify as a GSA (General Services Administration) vendor who can sell directly to the federal government. The evaluation includes such criteria as price, response time, communication and relationship / integrity issues. The evaluations are conducted anonymously to prohibit undue influence by the organization being evaluated. The surveys included both government and private sector companies who have utilized IAL's services for document translation, simultaneous and consecutive interpretation, web conferencing and multilingual desktop publishing. These organizations have a range in annual revenue from less than $1 million to several billion dollars. Regardless of the size, one thing was consistent - IAL received a score of 97 out of 100 from all of them.
"It's nerve wracking", says Vince Ciccolini, "You 'think' you're doing a good job but when you are witnessing triple digit increases annually you also worry that you lose sight of the bigger objective of why you got into the business in the first place. That objective has always been to create a high touch environment for our clients and linguists while providing them best price services that exceed industry standards. It sounds lofty but I think everyone within the IAL organization believes it."
According to Open Ratings, IAL Services score ranks in the upper 20% of all companies - large and small - that have been evaluated. If you know anything about the volume of GSA companies bidding for federal work, that's a significant number and a great accomplishment for an organization that didn't exist even five years ago.
"My primary concern has always been to exceed the expectations of both our clients and linguists first. I've always believed that profitability would follow." says Ciccolini, "Perhaps that's not the way they would teach it at Wharton but the model has worked well. We saw this upward trajectory starting in the middle of last year and made some organizational changes we believed were necessary to ensure our service levels didn't drop. Since that time we've continued to see growth in our core sectors but, as a result, have been able to expand to other areas including federal. Our objective is not to be the biggest, although that's not a bad thing, but to continue to have a benchmark in outstanding service and delivery and I think we've achieved that but we'll continue to earn it on a daily basis. All in all, I'm very grateful to our clients for placing their trust in our service. What more can I say?"
Congratulations Vince!
