NOTE: This post was written in July of 2009, and the information herein may be outdated/no longer applicable. I’ve elected to preserve the post here for posterity.
As of October 2009, Microsoft is requiring all of its Gold-level Partners to participate in a Customer Satisfaction Index (CSAT) Survey:
“Effective October 2009, partners re-enrolling at the Gold Certified level will need to have participated in at least one CSAT Index survey prior to re-enrolling, and receive ten or more survey responses (up to eight responses can be from the same customer organization).”
In my case, my employer is an ISV that develops web-based applications for use on a Microsoft platform (IIS/.NET/SQL Server etc), but don’t actually resell Microsoft products. This requirement is big headache for us for a number of reasons:
- Most of the questions are geared toward resellers, and won’t apply to ISVs (e.g. “…Assuming [Company Name]’s performance remains the same as it is now, do you expect your company’s future purchase levels from [Company Name] will be…”)
- The questionnaire is around 30 questions long, and can’t be shortened! You can only add additional questions.
- The partner points you can earn for these surveys are negligible (as little as 2 points for 10-19 responses, as much as 20 points for 200+ responses).
After several weeks of exchanges with various Microsoft representatives, I was finally told that although participation is mandatory for Gold Certified partners, incomplete surveys would still count toward the requirement if inapplicable questions were left unanswered (specifically, questions 14 and 15 as those pertain to sales performance).
I hope this helps someone else out there who might find themselves in a similar predicament!