Full Sail Partners Blog | Client Relationships (5)

Each of your clients, like you, are individuals that have a unique definition for what a positive client service experience means to them. We can no longer treat everyone the same way – it just doesn’t work!  Sending client surveys gives your firm the opportunity to ask clients what that terrific experience looks like to them – each of them. It also gives you the chance to show that your firm is serious about their satisfaction and to build stronger relationships. As a result of the thousands of survey results and comments we’ve seen, we wanted to share with you the top 3 reasons clients want you to send them a client survey.

1. Ease or Dis-ease: Your clients want to be at ease in their relationship with you. They hired your firm in the first place because they believed you could provide them with something they needed. So what happens when something is not exactly right? We all know that tension we feel when some relationship we have is not flowing smoothly. Your clients feel the same way. When you send them a client survey and give them the chance to let you know that something could be a little better, it creates a greater sense of ease for them because you gave them a voice. 

2. Build Trust: Trust is a funny thing, it takes time to build and usually involves both positive (and negative) interactions. We all want to be seen as ‘an expert’ for our clients and sometimes may think this means that there are never any miss-steps or misunderstandings. Clients understand that nobody is perfect – what they are looking for is corrective action when something has not gone as expected. The interactions you have with your clients often have consequences you may not even be aware of – how they look to their team, their boss, maybe their clients. When you send a client survey and follow up in a timely manner, your clients grow in their trust that you will handle situations in a positive, professional manner. 

3. Creates Affirmation: Everybody wants to be appreciated and acknowledged. In fact it is such a basic human need, that we hear and read about client appreciation and satisfaction in a great many marketing materials. The reality is however, that more times than not, these are empty words and there are no actions behind the words.  When you send a client survey and follow up, your actions, not just your words, tell your client that you value them, their input, and their satisfaction. That is a very powerful message.

For firms in the project-driven Professional Services industry, managing a defined set of tactical project management metrics is key to meeting strategic objectives.

Although it might seem efficient to have a single indicator of project success that measures the firm’s profit growth — for example, project profitability — there are pitfalls with such an approach. A better solution is to measure across a finite and efficient set of indicators that together track whether the firm is meeting its objectives, whether the specific goal relates to market penetration, service offering penetration or key account growth.

Project Management Metrics — collectively known as the Project Management KPI — fall into six major categories. One way to remember these categories is to use the acronym TRACQS. 

Is your project on TRACQS?

Time - How is the project tracking against schedule plans?

Keeping projects on schedule increases profit growth by lowering overhead and increasing labor margins. For example, when a project is off schedule and staff is reallocated it increases overhead to readjust the schedule may reduce realized utilization.

Metric calculation: Schedule Performance Index (SPI) = Earned Value of the work performed ÷ Planned Value of the work performed (to date).

Resources – Are we within anticipated limits of staff-hours spent?

Using staff and labor multipliers as budgeted is essential to maintaining project margins. When evaluating which resources to use, it is sometimes argued to use a more skilled person that will use fewer hours than a less experienced person. The thought is the margin will ended up the same. However, when this decision is made business development and client relations to do the production work can result in the firm’s backlog and pipeline suffering.

Metric calculation: Total Hours variance for budget vs. spent AND Labor Multiplier
Budgeted versus Labor Multiplier Attained.

Actions – Do we have action items outstanding or past due?

It may seem obvious, but without a metric tracking action items (completed, missed, and planned), project performance cannot be corrected. Maintaining visibility and monitoring deliverables can increase client satisfaction and reduce inefficient cycles of “catching the project up”.

Metric calculation: Number of project collaboration tasks that are past due.

Cost – How are we doing against the budget?

Monitoring this project performance metric provides direct insight into a firm’s profit growth.

Metric calculation: Cost Performance Index (CPI) = Budgeted Cost of the work performed ÷ Actual Cost of the work performed.  

Quality – Does client feedback indicate project success, or the need for correction?

On a regular basis, survey clients about results and milestones, based on meeting the client’s expectations to the deliverables.  There is little to no change that can affect the project, if you wait until the end of the project to conduct a survey, there is little to no change that can affect the project. A satisfied client results in more work (client retention), reference-ability (more clients) which are essential to firm growth.  

Metric calculation: A rating greater than X means quality, and anything less requires attention.

Scope – Is the scope staying within budget? If not, do we have authorization for variances
of planned from baseline?

Clearly define an agreed upon scope, the client’s role or responsibilities, and qualifying what constitutes a change in scope is an essential first step. When the scope has changed, documenting “why” will allow for margins to remain intact for
client requested change orders and allow management to take corrective action when the scope creep is due to the firm’s lack of performance to the initial scope.

Metric calculation: Comparing where planned exceeds baseline, and ensuring that original scope plus authorizations equal or exceed the estimate at completion.

Clearly, a firm needs to have mechanisms in place to measure these project management metrics. Almost as important, however, is finding a way to indicate variance from expected (budgeted) results in an easy-to-reference graphical format — e.g., blue for good, red for bad. Doing so will ensure that staff, project managers, and executives are all on the same page for tracking firm growth and responding to any obstacles or problems that may appear.

Many of us are familiar with the idea of measurement improving outcome. Whether it’s Karl Pearson’s Law: “That which is measured improves” or the concept of losing weight by counting calories, we understand that measuring results is crucial to understanding how to improve results. 

But it’s not just the act of measuring – it’s measuring the RIGHT things and then utilizing what was learned from the results. When trying to improve the performance and evaluation of your team or team members, what should be measured (and how) become critical questions. 

Professional services organizations are beginning to follow the lead of other industries and explore areas such as Voice of the Customer (VOC), Client Experience Management (CEM), and Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM). And while 86% of organizations across all industries employ some form of customer/client feedback as part of their performance and evaluation strategy, only 5% of professional services firms do so. 

If you are planning to implement a feedback process, consider these three key steps to creating an effective performance and evaluation strategy powered by client feedback. 

1. Any measurement strategy should promote desired employee performance. Therefore, it’s important to measure things employees can control or greatly influence. If employees feel they are being held accountable for measurements beyond their sphere of control, they may reject the system, game the system, or lose hope. So when capturing client-centered metrics like feedback, don’t focus on the scores provided by clients. If you focus on feedback scores, rather than what employees do with scores, they may avoid feedback in the most critical situations. Instead, measure, monitor, and promote the successes of those who gather the most feedback, maintain the highest response rates, and follow-up most effectively to challenging feedback. 
    
2. Craft questions that measure improvable actions. Keep personalities out of your surveys. People don’t change quickly or easily. When faced with personal criticism, most people will reject the information. Instead, focus on the processes and practices of delivering the service. Processes are more easily documented, adjusted, and customized to a client. 
    
3. Measure early, measure often. Monitoring client expectations-the real source of success as a professional service organization-is just as critical as managing your income statement and balance sheet. You look at your financial reports every month, and carefully track progress over time – but when was the last time you looked at metrics from your clients’ perspective? How well are you doing for them? To maximize performance with clients, feedback cannot be a once a year (or once every five years) activity. Track constantly, during projects, when you have time to create better outcomes for your clients.

The most important way to measure staff performance in a professional service firm is from the clients’ perspective. It’s really the client’s perception of reality that matters most. To summarize, to best measure performance and evaluate it from the client’s perspective:  make it easy and comfortable for the client to offer their feedback, have questions focus how well the process worked for them, and ask them often throughout a project, not just at the end.

Project delivery is all about taking an idea from concept through to production. Firms want their projects completed in the fastest and most cost-efficient manner possible, all without sacrificing quality. Incorporating feedback into a firm’s process helps the team perform at their best, while the very act of asking for feedback shows clients proactive and professional care. To help jumpstart your client feedback process, we’ve listed the top 10 feedback techniques to facilitate project delivery. 

1. Make it Comfortable.

When requesting feedback make sure the process is comfortable to use for all parties. The more comfortable the process, the more likely both parties are to participate. A comfortable process means clients will not feel put on the spot and concerned about a confrontation. Focus questions on processes, not personalities, and offer a flexible answer scale to capture subtle nuances of perceptions. 

2. Create Actionable Results.
An effective feedback technique requires data to enable follow-up. Be sure you are asking questions that allow you to retrieve measurable, actionable data. If the questions are too vague or too open ended, you won’t have the information that you need to take action.  

3. Process Focused.

The questions asked should be about process rather than people or products. We aren’t looking to find out how well the client “liked” us, but rather where our process is working great and where it might need some improvement.  

4. Go Beyond Satisfaction.

Ask your clients questions focused on their expectations, instead of their satisfaction, because satisfaction is the expected norm. The client’s perception of how you performed compared to their expectations is the key to knowing where to improve your project delivery process. Additionally, you’ll find 500% more exceptionally positive feedback than you will challenging feedback – and we all love to discover good news. 

5. Reduce Liability.

When asking for feedback, focus on questions that can reduce liability and encourage positive outcomes. Just by asking for feedback throughout a project, you are creating a record of the service perceptions all along the way, reducing the chance of a lawsuit and increasing your ability to meet their needs. Feedback helps keep you and your client aligned on a common goal - a successful project outcome. 

6. Don’t Wait.

Collect feedback throughout the project, not just at the end - when it’s too late to improve that project. Response rates are highest when the client senses his feedback might improve the project outcome. Once the project is over, the incentive to respond is gone. 

7. Make it Trackable.

Tracking feedback responses isn’t complicated, but making sure everyone on your team gets the feedback they need, reviews it, and takes appropriate action can be much more challenging. Deploy good tools to capture who is asking for feedback, who’s responding, and who takes what action on each critical response. 

8. Use Instant Alerts.

Collect feedback in a way that you can be instantly alerted to new feedback and drive real-time follow-up.  A good system will establish score thresholds that indicate, in real-time, when follow-up is required for exceptional circumstances. Make sure the right people are alerted so nothing falls through the cracks. 

9. Keep the Client First.

Structure your feedback techniques so that it is quick and easy for the client to give you feedback. Don’t waste their time with long surveys or questions with answers that only matter to you.  Response rates are higher with multiple short surveys over a period of time, than with one or two long surveys sent less frequently. 

10. Follow up.

Don’t neglect the follow up! A survey should always start a conversation, not replace one. Typically, follow-up is simply a personal acknowledgement that you saw and read the response. However, if any special situations were noted (either in scores or comments) be sure you open a dialogue to show how the feedback will change the process and project going forward. 

Each of these feedback techniques focus on a deliberate approach to your feedback collection efforts. Set your goals to collect actionable feedback in way that is easy for the client. Make understanding the results and following up easy for you too. See feedback as the opportunity that it is to improve your process, reduce your liability and become your client’s expert.

Interested in learning more about how you can start collecting client feedback?

In keeping up with CRM related forums, someone asked about the best approach to handling and maintaining their CRM system.  It started to make me think about the value of what is communicated in these forums and how much people trust advice from others they believe to be their peers. It made me wonder why people instantly trust others that may or may not have all of the background information that top consulting firms discover when providing their services.  

In this situation, I observed people giving advice as opposed to just sharing experiences.  I found it curious that contributors to the forum assumed many of the variables the person inquiring had not provided and further, the person making the inquiry hoped to find solutions without providing any background or specifics.  

No two companies are alike. Sure there are similarities, but my experience in consulting has led me to believe that if you want a true solution to your issue, you have to take the time to identify the “who”, “what”, “where”, “when”, “why”, and “how” (wwwwwh) questions and the most important question, “What do you need?”.  As the forum conversation continued the inquirer thanked people for their input, but soon added more information as the responses were not really the direction they were looking for.  This occurred to me to somewhat frustrate many of the individuals that had already offered their “advice”.  One such comment was “well if you had told me that when you asked the question.” 

So What Happened?

When we ask a question, individuals drive off of their experience and what worked for them. However, they don’t necessarily provide context of why that worked for them and include those specific reasons. This poses a huge problem to the answers they receive. Many people go directly to wanting a solution without having any true understanding of the context of their question. When the basic “wwwww” are not qualified, the inquirer runs the risk of not addressing their true needs. Even some of the top consulting firms tend to take the same approach with their clients.  In fact earlier in my career I used the phrase, “when I was in industry, what worked for us was…”. 

So why do individuals seek a solution in these forums before building context and clearly defining what they need?  Here are a few thoughts I had on why this may occur:

1)     We seek good ideas from others in the same industry

2)     We crave solutions with little challenge

3)     We need immediate answers

4)     We love FREE advice!

Just like the advice provided by contributors in a forum, consultants sometimes fall into this pitfall of providing quick advice. In order to not challenge a client, consultants may diminish the level of anxiety to both their client and themselves by giving “a solution”.  As a consultant, ready-made solutions give a sense of accomplishment.  But sometimes that solution is short-term because the question asked is out of context of the bigger issue.  Because the question was asked in a vacuum (forum), there is little room for further qualifying discovery. 

Inquiring about what others in industry are doing and or have done allows one to know others experiences.  From this may come ideas that generate further inquiry, but the inquirer should look to put this further inquiry in context of their “wwwww” questions.  The key here is to be able to have these “wwwww” questions already established and to quickly hear the advice against what you already know.  The same preparation should be part of ones working relationship with the consultant. The difference is, one can dynamically interact with a consultant and establish the context.

So an important distinction the next time one works with a consultant: if the consultant is not looking to build the context of your issue, they likely are going to only provide short-term solutions that do not fit well in the long run with your company’s needs. 

Do you have any stories to share about a consultant that applied the “wwwwwh” principals that allowed you to develop a true solution and avoid thinking short-term? Share in our comments section below. 

When evaluating your professional services firm, understanding your past trends can provide valuable insight into the future.

In a recent, SMPS Technology Committee survey, only 56% of firms stated they tracked this information, which is surprising. This type of report allows you to evaluate the overall hit rate by the firm, a division, the pursuit lead, or other criteria.  You can also evaluate it by percentage or by revenue.  Knowing both provides you a different story.

Take William Apple, who has a 50% hit rate for the number of projects he has pursued.  He pursued 10 and won 5.  Ann Johnson on the other hand only has a 33% hit rate. She pursued 3 and won 1.  Seems like William is doing better, right?  However, if you evaluate them on revenue, William only has a 24% while Ann has a 73% hit rate.  Why the difference? 

Well, the one project Ann won, was a large project worth millions of dollars.  William however, won a lot of smaller projects and lost out on the bigger project. Both are important to the business.  However, if you start to see that William is constantly losing out on the large projects or maybe particular project types, this type of analysis would be valuable information that could be acted upon.

Key metrics like the Win to Loss Ratio allow a quick snap shot to determine if you need to dig deeper.  The historical progress of an opportunity sometimes provides further clues. 

• Were you realistic with your expectations?

• What stage did you lose the opportunity?

• Did you have an established relationship and effective pursuit strategy?

Is your firm able to answer these questions or are you repeating the same mistakes? Let us know how your firm learns from your success and failures and how your firm is improving your hit rate by leaving a comment. Interested in more historical trends information?

Good customer service is a rare commodity in this day and age of virtual customer support agents.   Business is done in an ultra-competitive arena where your direct competition is only a Google search away.  As a result, firms are developing customer relations management plans to help better serve their client base.  Has your firm ignored developing a plan to manage your customers?

A good customer relations management plan will act as a guideline for your firm when dealing with clients.  However, it is important to remember that there is no end-all-be-all remedy for customer support.  Some battles cannot be won, no matter how diligent and worthy your efforts.  This is why I compare having a strong plan, to a game of poker!

Much like in a game of poker, the typical customer service interaction involves some 'hidden cards' that you are not always privileged to see.  These hidden cards can be anything from possible prior negative history with your company, temperament, and maybe even personal issues that the customer is dealing with in their life.  It is because of these cards that we as customer service representatives, much like a seasoned poker player, must approach every hand as though we are playing with pocket ACES.

Pocket ACES are a poker player’s best friend.  The ACES acronym also happens to be easiest to remember four step processes for dealing with every day client interactions.

ACES stands for:

As a professional, it is your responsibility to play like poker legend Phil Hellmuth and go ’all in’ for your customers with pocket ACES!

Anyone that knows me, knows I love music and sing karaoke.  I was learning one of Adele’s songs and listening to the lyrics: “Should I just keep chasing pavements, even if it leads nowhere?” I started thinking about the things we chase in our own life that lead nowhere. Even though this song by Adele is referring to love, it really can apply to pursuing business or ways to grow business.  Does your firm have a way to analyze if the business you chase is leading anywhere?  Better yet, do you know what efforts are paying off?  Below are things to consider when evaluating the effectiveness of your business building strategies:

Are You Chasing the Flavor?
A recent client described that each week they discuss the potential business everyone is pursuing.  However, each sequential week everyone was chasing the flavor of the week.  She had no idea what happened to the previous week’s pursuits and if anyone was even following up until she received a proposal request.  To avoid chasing the flavor and ensure your firm is following-up on all opportunities, consider these steps:

1. Document All Stages with Action Items: You don’t need a proposal to document the opportunities you are pursuing.  Even if business is in a discovery or assessment phase, documenting these efforts with actions items can remind you to follow-up. 
2. Identify Trends and Outstanding Items: Using an integrated system allows marketing and executives to track the progress of the entire company through reports to identify if there are trends or items that are outstanding.
3. Administrator and Automation: Identifying someone to administer and review your pursuits is critical to ensuring progress. Also look at ways to automate alerts to remind you when you should follow-up.
4. Win/Loss Report: It’s important to know how successful you are. Knowing the history of past pursuits can help future go/no-go decisions and improve your win rate. By developing a win/loss report and evaluating how successful you are by department, opportunity champion, and the type of project can help you make better decisions in the future.

Are You the Nurturing Type?

Many of us attend events, are a part of an organization, and are involved in business development efforts in hopes to nurture business.  However, most individuals and firms don’t know the effectiveness of their efforts.  To ensure your firm is making good use of your time, consider these steps: 

1. Network vs. Attend: Not every event you attend will result in business.  There are many reasons to network.  However, showing up to an event doesn’t equate to networking. After attending an event log who you talked with. What did you discover about the individual and what was important to them?  Think about how you might follow-up with that individual. Maybe there is a subject they are interested in, someone they want to meet, a project they are working on, or you found out something about their personal life. How can you use your knowledge or connections to follow-up?  Social media is making it easier to connect with people and stay up-to-date with their changes. Be sure to personalize your request.
2. Get Involved: If you are a member of an organization, take the plunge and be active.  Think about your audience when you chose an organization and then get involved in a committee, the board, or become a speaker. Volunteering can help you gain exposure, connect you with decision makers, and allow you to demonstrate your expertise. Joining SMPS was one of the best decisions I could have made for my company and career.
3. Return on Investment: We all tend to hear the phrase, measuring Return on Investment related to effectiveness of business efforts.  Another way to look at ROI is ask yourself, if you had to pay for the marketing or business effort out of your own money, do you think it would be worth the effort?  A great way of looking at the marketing effectiveness is to track the time you spend toward business development efforts and compare it to the business you obtained from those efforts.  When you compare the expense vs. the business you received, was it worth the effort? Sometimes efforts take months or even years to pay off. So to determine trade show ROI or events that happen on a yearly basis, allow two years to determine the effectiveness. 
4. Building Business: Most people look at clients as Existing or New.  I would challenge you to look at them as one of three categories: Prospective, Nurturing, and Maintenance. Prospective clients are those you want to do business with, maintenance clients are those you continue to do business with, while nurturing clients are those you’ve done business with or have recently received business from.  Your message and how your firm will gain business from all categories will vary. Keeping in mind that it is seven times easier to maintain an existing client than is to go out and get a new client; moving clients to the maintenance category is the goal.  So where should you spend your time and how do you know when you are effective?  First you need to define what justifies a maintenance client.  Is it the number of projects or dollar amount over a period of time?  With an integrated database system, your data can trigger when the criteria is met and send out an automated report.  This information informs “Client Champions” and executives when client business increases or decreases and provides marketing with insight for nurture campaigns.

I hope my inspiration from Adele will help your firm build business and avoid chasing pavements. Let us know what inspires you and what your firm does to ensure growth. View our webinar: Get the Most from Your Conference.