Classification and Definition

Category

Operations, customer-related indicators

Definition

In the Wordbee translation management system, Client Ratings is a numeric value between 1 and 5 (bad to exceptional) expressing the overall assessment of a vendor by its customers. It may be seen as a performance indicator within a business and as a component of the Quality Index.

Rationale

Business analytics (BA) help you gain insight into strengths, weaknesses, trends, and business opportunities. They also help you measure your business performance, which can be even more useful when insight comes from clients’ feedback.

In Wordbee, clients are given the opportunity to leave feedback and rate orders, projects, jobs, and more. The statistics are visualized through the Business Analytics tools.

The default option “All” provides the overall rating of a project and the associated work. Other options are available, including a few pertaining to the SERVQUAL instrument, such as reliability (labeled as “Work Quality“), responsiveness (labeled as “Timeliness“) and empathy (labeled as “Friendliness“).

Work Quality is the capability of performing a given task in a dependable and accurate manner. Timeliness expresses the capability of completing any assigned task within a given time. Friendliness determines the capability of showing consideration for the customer’s needs.

Impact

In Wordbee, users can rate orders, projects, jobs, and more. Both the client and the LSP’s in-house staff can rate client orders and deliverables. User profiles can be further customized to specify who can submit and see the various ratings.

Clients may use ratings to signal the quality provided by suppliers, while managers can monitor performances of vendors. These ratings can help make changes for future projects.

Always remember that Client Ratings are mostly subjective as they’re typically based on how well a clients needs are met. Also, clients may not be willing to leave ratings or may only leave one every few orders. Therefore, always take this inconsistency into account when considering possible changes to established work procedures.

Keep in mind also that there are many factors that can affect Client Ratings. It’s generally good practice to double check enthusiastic ratings as well as very poor ones. For example, users should run diagnostics on their side to determine any unforeseeable causes for unreasonably long delays. Any technological hindrance might affect changes that need to be made or that are planned.

Usage Advice

With the User Ratings option, clients, suppliers, and in-house staff (managers, translators, revisers, proofreaders, etc.) can rate different aspects of a translation project. This information may be used to choose a supplier, to better meet client needs, and to increase the quality of work done on future projects.

Timeliness

Based on who this rating applies to, a few measures can be taken to improve performances. Let’s focus on the Timeliness rating, i.e. the perceived capacity of delivering the requested translation projects at the time expected. This BA is comparable to DIFOT, a classic KPI that measures the percentage of items delivered on-time and in-full. It may also be seen as a component of the overall Quality Index.

Timeliness is an important performance criterion as it can impact customer satisfaction. It also gives your company an insight into the efficiency and the effectiveness of your own translation processes and of those of your vendors.

A poor Timeliness rating might be a symptom of inadequate responsiveness, in which case automation may be extremely beneficial. To further automate your translation workflow, you might want to refer to Wordbee’s suggestions to speed up your translation projects or to ship content without getting slowed down.

You may also consider reshaping your workflow template and possibly customize email notification to maintain control over the whole workflow and also help users stay on top of content modifications.

Quality is a somewhat complex aspect that will require a separate article from the Wordbee Team. In the meantime, you may try and improve your Work Quality rating by exploiting Wordbee’s QA feature or try and improve your vendor management strategy.