As 2013 draws to a close we have to reflect upon what an interesting year we've had. Over the course of the past 12 months, we had North Korea detonate nukes, the Pope resigned and there was a tragic bombing in Boston. We found out that the US Government was spying on everyone. Croatia became part of the EU, Egypt had another government coup, and the Philippines suffered a devastating typhoon.

Although it might seem minor in comparison to the rest of the world, here at B2BGateway we have had some big changes we are very proud of. During the course of 2013, we had a major reorganization and a huge increase in support staff, in order to provide better support to our clients. As a result of the reorg, we implemented the Rapid Response Team (RRT) and developed a Setup Queue system that tracks the progress of setups.

The new RRT is a great way of handling production issues and has brought the average response time down to 2:46 (two hours and 46 minutes). The setup tracking and thermometers in the client portal gives you an at-a-glance view of what your setup status looks like. We have also have reduced our average time of setup by 45%.

In 2013, we also rolled out the new Warehouse Support System (WSS), which is much more user friendly, faster and more competent. ASNs and shipping labels are much easier and more efficiently processed. Some other smaller improvements we introduced were the online chat, for general issues, and an online chat embedded within the client portal for dealing with technical issues. We have also added the phone blast, which rings simultaneously at a large number of our support staffer's desks, when calling B2BGateway with technical issues. The phone blast is an addition to the already available Emergency V-Mail.

So, at B2BGateway, our responses are quicker, our setups are quicker, our Warehouse Support Site is much more user friendly and we are easier to contact. Some would say, "What else could you want?"

Thanks to all the people who replied to our survey conducted during mid-2013, we actually know what you want. I think it is safe to say that our client still want quicker responses, faster setups and an improved WSS. As such, even though we have made great strides this year, we still want to be quicker in the RRT, we want to have setups completed in a week and we intend to make more improvements to the WSS. As new means of communicating become available we will embrace them.

We had a great time in 2013, and we made some major improvements, however, we have some more really fantastic changes coming in 2014. I can't wait to roll them out! Thank you for your continued support. Have a wonderful holiday and a great new year!