Are you failing your customers?

The news isn’t so good for contractors in our latest Washington Technology Insider Report: Inside the Mind of Your Government Customers.

In this research project exclusively available to WT Insider members, we asked government decision makers a serious of questions about the performance of the contractors, what attributes they value in their contractors and what is most important to them when they pick a contractor to work with.

Our survey focused on factors such as technical expertise, teamwork and customer knowledge. We also asked about how easy contractors are to work with, transparency in the relationship and small or large business preferences.

Respondents graded the performance of their overall group of contractors and their single best contractor.

The differences between the scores are telling. The overall group scored lower than the single best, which was expected. The gap in the scores indicated areas of where contractors can focus if they want to improve their performance and be considered a single-best contractor.

But also telling is that the gap between the best and the rest isn’t huge.

When we compared the findings from this report to a similar report we did in 2014, the scores for both the overall group of contractors and the single-best contractor came down.

This indicates that there has been a decline in the perceived quality of contractor performance.

This finding held true in other areas of the report as well. For example, more people believe the relationship between customer and contractor is getting worse when compared to our findings in 2014.

But there are positives in the report. Pricing is important to government customers when picking contractors. But scoring higher are attributes such as technical expertise and customer knowledge.

Your government customers also want a better relationship and that means better communications, better controls on price and costs, and improve technical expertise. They want contractors who will meet timelines and schedules.

So take a dive into the report that you can download here. You’ll learn what you can do better and what your customers value most. We urge you to use the report as a roadmap to better performance. You should ask your customers some of the same questions we asked so you can learn if you are meeting their needs.

You should also ask how the relationship is going. Are you easy to work with? How can you do better?

If you aren’t a WT Insider, consider joining. This is the 17th Insider Report we have produced for our members since 2013. Here is a list of all of the reports. We are providing unique and value insights into some of the most important issues shaping the market.

More Insider Report are slated for 2018. We will soon launch the research phase on our Contractor Confidence and 2018 Outlook report.

Later in 2018, we’ll produce reports on the quality of contract debriefings, trends in IT modernization and a 20-year outlook on the future of the market.

You won’t want to miss these, so for more information on becoming an Insider click here.