At Crowe Horwath LLP, we want to build strong relationships with our clients and continuously seek to understand ways in which we can ensure the services we are providing are in alignment with their needs. We believe it is important to strive for continuous improvement in the ways we interact with and deliver services to clients. We do this, in part, by adhering to defined client service standards and seeking feedback on our performance from our clients.

Our Client Service Standards

Crowe’s Client Service Standards guide us toward providing an exceptional customer experience, one in which we become a trusted adviser to our clients and bring innovative ideas and solutions that deliver value to them.

• We Understand. We follow our Seek1st® process
  to gain a thorough understanding of the client’s business, current situation, needs, and expectations which ensures that there are no surprises and we are successful in creating an exceptional customer experience.
• We Communicate. We communicate before, during, and after an engagement – open and consistent communication at the right time with the right people is a critical component of effective service delivery and the customer experience.
• We Collaborate. We collaborate across Crowe to bring together the right expertise to meet the client’s needs. Execution of our collaborative service model earns us a position as a trusted adviser to the client.
• We Deliver. We deliver what we promise – on time, on budget, and with the highest quality. We anticipate and proactively address issues that arise and our solutions help our clients accomplish their business objectives.

It is important for us to understand how our performance is being perceived by our clients and whether we are delivering value. To help us better understand how well we meet our clients’ expectations, we have developed a three-part client feedback process to enable our clients to provide us with immediate and direct feedback.

• Engagement survey. Crowe’s engagement survey is created for clients to evaluate our performance, including how we meet value expectations. This Web-based survey is initiated for engagements upon their conclusion and provides the Crowe executive the opportunity to obtain immediate feedback regarding our performance, which can be used for future planning or immediate issues resolution.
• Issue resolution process. If a client experiences challenges that he or she is unable to resolve with his or her Crowe executive, the client is encouraged to contact our dedicated client feedback manager at 877.430.3900, or e-mail clientfeedback@crowehorwath.com. The client feedback manager will work with Crowe leaders and the client to understand the issue and resolve the situation while helping to ensure that similar circumstances do not occur again.
• Annual client relationship survey. In 2002, Crowe established this process to assist us in furthering our understanding of the needs of our clients and ways to meet those needs. This survey is conducted annually with a random sample of our clients and provides detailed information regarding our clients’ overall level of satisfaction with Crowe, how likely it is that our client will continue to use our services, and how likely it is that our client will recommend our services to someone else.
  

Administered by independent market research firm Burke Inc., Crowe’s annual client relationship survey was most recently distributed to a sample of more than 2,200 of the firm’s clients between October and November 2008. The survey is designed to help Crowe better understand the value that clients expect and receive from Crowe. The survey findings enable Crowe to measure its Secure Customer Index^® (SCI^®). A secure customer is defined as one who indicates he/she is “very satisfied,” “would definitely continue to use us,” and “would definitely recommend us to others.”

Crowe is pleased to announce that its SCI improved again in 2008. The findings indicate that Crowe outperformed the comparative norm in SCI – this year by 30 percent. Crowe has consistently outperformed the Burke normative data in each relationship survey conducted since our first survey in 2002, by an average of 25 percent. Normative data is calculated from surveys Burke sends to other professional and financial services firms’ clients. Crowe’s SCI ranks in the 83rd percentile overall for U.S. companies and the 78th percentile for business-to-business companies in Burke’s normative database.

Secure Customer Index and SCI are registered trademarks of Burke Inc.