Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Steven Ashley - Robert W. Baird & Co.
Steven Ashley - Robert W. Baird & Co.
You talked about the fact that at the end of September you actually saw the number of new customers being added, pace to that business, accelerate. I have a couple of questions on that. Number one, why do you think that happened and number two, could you also comment on the renewals you were seeing from existing customers and whether there was any change in the monetary amounts you were seeing on the renewals later in the period.
Steve Singh
First and foremost, the mean customer sales in the last few weeks of the quarter did in fact accelerate from what we expected. A lot of that, in all fairness, was probably the same that we had seen over the quarter for last year [audio breaking up] the fact that we had seen the economy slow over the last year and what we have seen is customers are more opportune to looking at ways to reduce their operating costs.
What we provide happens to be a service that is a relatively quick ROI, low up front costs, and compelling in that no monthly fees that are exceptionally better than anything the customer can do on their own.
And the other part is that we have great execution by our field organization. So I think both of those drivers are behind it but there is nothing new relative to behavior that changes that.
The other question you asked was around retention rate?
Steven Ashley - Robert W. Baird & Co.
Renewal and the dollar amount of renewals compared to what you had seen.
Steve Singh
A couple of things to understand about our renewals and how they work is that our customers automatically renew so it’s not a process where you go through on an annual basis and say would you like to renew. It’s an automatic renewal. Customers use our service and effectively are replacing it from a manual system. [inaudible]
We renew [inaudible] retention rate and we would no value for the retention rate across the broad customer set. Having said that, clearly, I commented on the call, that we saw a certain level of upheaval within the financial services sector with the companies that had been mentioned. We made our best estimates of what we expect those relationships to look like in the year and in fact related to our guidance.
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