1. Performance enhancements on reports, up to 200% increase in speed
2. Create distribution groups when sending surveys
3. New on-page “Alerts” let you know when new/unread results have come in, and when low scores need attention
4. Track when results have been viewed
5. CC a co-worker that a survey has been sent, and/or when results are collected
6. Create a username, allowing for faster login
7. Alert new survey recipients automatically via Outlook, to minimize surveys going to junk folder
8. Upload project information from an external source
9. New report – “Last Survey Sent” – View the most recent survey sent to a recipient, client, project, or by sender
10. Over 50 other tweaks, improvements, and fixes

For training on these new features, contact support@designfacilitator.com.

However, none of these reports show the critical element of the client’s perception of a project’s success.  What may be highly successful for you (in terms of profits, etc) may have been a disaster for the client.  Without metrics showing the clients’ measure of project success, you have little ability to identify the truly successful projects, those that are “half way”, and those that are complete failures (or, at the very least, quite challenged).

The missing axis of data is feedback.  Feedback provides metrics, from your clients’ perspective, about the success of a project.

If we map feedback performance on a vertical axis, and financial performance on a horizontal axis, four quadrants of information are created.

In the upper-right quadrant, the data points indicate a win-win scenario.  The outcomes of these projects indicate success for both you (high profit) and the client (high feedback).  You can profitably produce a project that meets and exceeds the expectations of the person paying for that project.  Clients in this quadrant should be nurtured and efforts invested to keep this healthy exchange going forward.

In the upper-left quadrant, the data points still indicate success for the client (high feedback), but the process used to deliver the service hasn’t adequately obtained financial success for you or the firm.  Inefficiency, under-billing, or other business problems may exist.  Most likely, these clients whose expectations were exceeded are very interested in keeping you as a vendor, and will likely be open to future projects being priced and/or scoped more beneficially for you.  Test this carefully, but with confidence.

The lower-right quadrant provides a bigger challenge.  Here, you have succeeded (high profits), but your client indicates a less successful outcome for them (low feedback).  These clients and projects are critical to keep (they’re very profitable!) but need attention invested into the client relationship.  You may use additional feedback collection (either via the Client Feedback Tool or personal interactions) to uncover underlying problems and negotiate winning solutions.  Increase service consistency and quality, and you can more easily maintain these enjoyable profits.

Finally, the lower-left quadrant leaves a group of mis-fits.  Here, neither you (low profits) nor the client (poor feedback) won.  You have a lot of options, from firing the client, to strategically working on these clients to first increase their feedback scores.  Only after first building client loyalty and improving service can you then recoup that investment by increasing fees and profitability.  The “keepers” in this quadrant should be diligently moved “up” before moving them to the “right.”

The Client Feedback Tool offers a unique feature enabling you to map your client feedback against your financial metrics.  Navigate to “Review Feedback > Advanced Reporting Tools” then click on the “View” tab.  Finally, click the “Quadrants” icon on the View ribbon.  You will be able to download a smart, macro-enabled Excel worksheet containing your selected feedback data (select this in the Filters and Options tabs).  Provided in the workbook is a place you copy/paste or manually key-in your financial data (profitability, revenue, etc).  From here, the workbook will generate tables for each quadrant as well as a graphic display of the results to see where your projects, clients, etc are clustered.

Dear Firm Member,

As you know, we value our client relationships very highly.  The root of our firm’s prosperity comes from clients who trust us to do their work.  It is important to continuously improve our ability to meet their specific needs.

Every client is different, so we need to identify what processes work best for each of them.  While our firm standards create a good baseline for successful project delivery, we may need to adjust on a case by case basis for each client, and often for each unique project.

Shortly, you will receive an email invitation from The Client Feedback Tool, to join our firm as a participant in this online feedback management system.  We will also soon be scheduling training to teach you how to use this simple system to collect feedback quickly, easily, and consistently from your clients and others.  The Client Feedback Tool is easy to use, and takes only two minutes to solicit feedback using the built-in templates.

We are excited at this opportunity for each of us to grow personally;  and as a firm, corporately improve our client relationships to create real, lasting value.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

You may also be interested in introducing your clients to The Client Feedback Tool.  Please see this post for suggestions.

After being asked this several times, we are pleased to offer you this template email.  Use this (or something similar) to let your clients know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how.  You can send this email immediately before sending a client a survey for the first time.

For additional suggestions on improving your response rate, check out our previous posts.

Dear Client,

Thank you for trusting us with your business.  It is a pleasure and privilege to help you with your [service type] needs.

You hire us to perform this work for you, expecting us to provide great service.  That is our goal,  but we know we can always do better.  We will begin seeking your feedback more often, in a more systematic manner.

We would like to collect feedback from you in very short, 1-2 minute doses.  If it’s okay with you, we would like to do so on a more regular basis.  Please look for an email or emails coming from us soon.  Each will come from the person you have been working with directly, and will identify which project, phase, and service is being evaluated.  Should you click on the link to respond, you will be brought to a survey that typically has fewer than 10 questions, and usually takes only a few minutes to complete.

Each time you respond, the appropriate people in our company will be notified, so we can immediately attend to your comments.  This is not a once-yearly marketing survey – but rather a personal request for feedback so we can customize our approach specifically for you.  Your participation is critical for our improvement to occur.
Thank you for your consideration, and we are eager to become your expert at [service type].

You may also want to introduce The Client Feedback Tool to members of your firm.  If so, please see this post.

In our travels and workshops, we have seen that many professions share common difficulties. One widespread limitation many firms experience is that their members simply do not request feedback frequently enough. When we ask the firm members why they don’t send more surveys, the responses range from “I forget to send them.” to “I don’t have time— can’t my administrative assistant or accounting people do this for me, perhaps when they send invoices?”

The Client Feedback Tool Solution

Fortunately, DesignFacilitator’s Client Feedback Tool solves these problems with its ‘Send-on-behalf-of’ feature.  With this feature, a firm manager can designate one or more firm members to send surveys on behalf of other firm members. For example, let’s say your firm manager has designated Al, an administrative assistant, to send surveys for you and other firm members. Acting as a proxy sender, Al creates a survey invitation in your name. All emails, responses and reports associated with this survey invitation will identify you as the sender. In fact, once Al sends the survey invitation, he cannot even see the answer report or modify the survey– but you can.

How it works

To begin, the firm manager designates proxy sender(s):

1. Log in to www.DesignFacilitator.com
2. Click My Firm in the left navigation pane, and then click Manage Firm Members in the right pane.
3. In the 4th column, “Send On Behalf”, select the firm member(s) who will send surveys on behalf of other firm members.

In order to send a feedback request, a proxy sender must know which survey template to send, when to send it, to whom, what project it regards, and so on. The Client Feedback Tool provides a convenient PDF form for this purpose. In the example above, you would probably fill in the form and give it to Al, because Al is sending the survey on your behalf . To obtain the form, log in to www.DesignFacilitator.com, click Other Resources in the left navigation pane, and then click Feedback Collection Information Request Form. Simply print the form and write in the data.

Proxy senders follow the normal procedure for requesting feedback:

1. Log in to www.DesignFacilitator.com
2. Click My Feedback in the left navigation pane, then click ASK on the cycle graphic. Select Send a feedback survey
3. Proxy senders (only) see a Send Survey on Behalf of: selection box at the top of the screen. There, they select which firm member to designate as the sender; that is, whose name will show in the invitation emails, the survey, the reports, and so on.

Note:    The Client Feedback Tool identifies the proxy sender in only two places: the Answer Report and the Modify Survey Edit screen.

You probably want to know if someone sends a survey using your name. So if your firm will designate proxy senders, we recommend that you visit your Set Preferences page in www.DesignFacilitator.com and make sure the first checkbox, “Survey sent on my behalf” is selected.

With the Client Feedback Tool’s ‘Send-on-behalf-of’ feature, even the busiest professional in your organization can enjoy the many benefits of client feedback by delegating the survey-send task to an administrative or accounting assistant.