This Week: ZweigWhite Webinar & Metrocon in Dallas

Mike Phillips will present a live webinar for ZweigWhite entitled ”Improve Your Firm’s Prosperity Using a Client Feedback System” from 2:00-3:30 Eastern on August 10th.

Learn about a simple but powerful process to enhance the success of design firms by collecting and utilizing client feedback in order to increase project profitability, reduce mistakes and project liability, increase staff satisfaction and accountability, and improve staff training and project assignments.
Earn 1.5 CEUs for AIA.  Click here for more details or to register.

And if you’re in Dallas on Thursday, August 12, you can hear Mike speak about Client Feedback in person at MetroCon10 during his session ” Improving the Outcome for Designer and Their Clients.”

MetroCon is a regional expo and conference organized through an innovative volunteer alliance between the Texas/Oklahoma Chapter of IIDA and the Texas Chapter of ASID.

Feedback On Purpose

Get more feedback! Who thinks that’s a great idea (obviously, we do)?  Feedback connects you to your clients and helps you increase your value to them.  Feedback is one of many ways to increase your prosperity and the health of your business.  Let’s look at a list of ways to be better businesses:

• Get More Feedback
• Work Harder
• Work Faster
• Charge More
• Make Fewer Mistakes
• Etc

At some point we’ve all talked about ways to make our businesses better, and most ideas end up as a list like that.  No one would argue that they’re good things to have on a list, but how often do we actually have any idea of how do anything on that list?

Let’s look at “working harder” as an example.  You’re helping build a house, and the foreman yells for you to work harder.  It’s your job to carry lumber.  You could just pick up the boards and start walking around the house.  You’re working harder.  Or, you could figure out who needs what boards, where, and when, and deliver them before they are needed.  You’re still working harder – but you’ve got a plan and a purpose for what you’re doing.

Similarly, “Getting More Feedback” requires a purpose and a plan in order to provide the maximum benefit to your business.  Without knowing why you’re collecting feedback, you won’t know what feedback to gather.  When feedback comes in, you don’t know what to do with it.   The feedback just sits there, cold and lonely and wondering why someone even bothered to ask.  (So does your client, by the way).

Feedback helps firms do some amazing things.  We’ve identified nine key benefits, though certainly others apply.  From this list (or yours) pick ONE or TWO that you really want to focus on:

• Build Client Loyalty
• Market to Clients Effectively
• Increase Profitability
• Improve Firm Management
• Reduce Firm Liability
• Identify Patterns for Desired Outcomes
• Strengthen Staff Performance
• Promote Staff Satisfaction
• Increase Staff Retention

Once you have a purpose in mind, focus on a plan for how to obtain the desired benefits.  Our Client Feedback Tool has built in processes to help (and even automate) feedback collection in a standardized, methodical manner.

Consider the following example:

Your firm has been hit with reduced profits since the recession began.  You may have laid off staff, reduced hours, or cut benefits in response.  Your staff are scared, your reserves dwindling, and what you really need most right now is a boost in profits to help ride out the storm.  You identify your primary purpose for collecting feedback is to increase profitability.

Knowing what you want to accomplish, you can now put together a plan.  You determine that winning more proposals – without having to undercut your competitors – would quickly boost billable time.  Likewise, your firm has a history of being unable to bill for change orders late in the project – costing you time that can’t be billed.

First, you decide to collect feedback with a standard survey immediately after submitting each proposal.  The questions are focused on how well the proposal responded to the client’s stated requirements.  As the client engages in giving you feedback (before he’s awarded the project), he’s really training you on how to do his work better.  In addition, he now knows you know what he needs better than anyone else (because no one else asked).  You respond with a revised proposal, more fitting to his needs.

What you’ve just done is built value with your client.  You’ve proven you really understand him better than anyone else.  Your price may not be the lowest (and it shouldn’t be!) but you’ve given him confidence that you’ll more likely solve the problems he needs help with.  That’s worth something, and you start to win more projects.

Second, you decide to collect feedback at each project milestone.   When the project gets off track, change orders are harder to collect payment on.  By gathering feedback specific to each phase, and being alerted promptly if anything is off track, the frequency of change orders is reduced.  When changes and scope creep do come up, you can address them quickly, and with positive feedback from your clients, communicate changes to the fee with confidence.  Feedback helps you identify which changes are worth the added price to the client, and puts him in control of the decision process for which scope changes to make.  Overall, this eliminates wasted effort, and maximizes the project’s profitability.

There are hundreds of ways you can apply a feedback program to your business operations in order to improve outcomes and overall success.  The important thing is to identify a specific goal, develop a measurable plan, and apply the resources you need to execute the plan.  Once in place, measure the results as you go, and adjust your plan accordingly.

Not sure how to get started?  When we help our clients implement The Client Feedback Tool, we walk them through a consultative process to discover goals, plans, and desired outcomes.  Contact our team of experts, and we can help jump start the process.

Mike Phillips will present at The Principals Academy June 8th.

Mike Phillips will present a breakout session about Client Feedback at
ZweigWhite’s Principals Academy in Coral Gables, FL on June 8th at 5pm.

The Principals Academy is
“A total management course for architecture, engineering and environmental firm leaders.”

To learn more about The Principals Academy and ZweigWhite, visit: http://www.zweigwhite.com/seminars/tpa/index.asp

Mike Phillips presents at Deltek Insight in DC May 19th

Mike Phillips will present “Using Client Feedback to Improve Prosperity for Firms at 4:30 on May 19th at Deltek Insight in Washington, DC.   For more information on the Deltek Insight event, please visit: http://www.deltekinsight.com/

Deltek provides software solutions specifically designed to meet the needs of project-driven businesses. Their software applications help more than 12,000 organizations worldwide. Deltek’s solutions help  improve business performance management, streamline operations, optimize compliance processes and win new business.

Learn More about Deltek

Feedback Quadrant – The Missing Axis of Information

If you manage a professional services firm, or any projects for a firm, you have most likely seen numerous reports, charts, and other data measuring the financial performance of your project, team, client, or firm.  You have surely seen metrics of profitability, revenue, aged accounts, and more, usually mapped across an axis of time (monthly revenue, for example).

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.

Premier Award for Client Satisfaction Award Winners, PSMJ Resources, Inc.

PSMJ Resources, Inc., recently announced the winners of its 1st Annual Premier Award for Client Satisfaction. The Premier Award was presented in partnership with DesignFacilitator and honors A/E/C firms that provide their clients with top quality service.  Architectural and engineering firms from the US, Canada, and Australia, with staff sizes ranging from 25- 3,000 competed based on the quality and quantity of client feedback received using DesignFacilitator’s Client Feedback Tool.  The survey consisted of questions about the firms’ helpfulness, responsiveness, quality, accuracy, schedule, and budget, and was formattted in a simple online survey that was emailed to the firm’s clients.

The top six firms were:
• Burns & McDonnell
• Eramosa Engineering, Inc.
• Hart & Hickman, PC
• Sunrise Engineering, Inc.
• Tanimura & Associates, Inc.
• WATG

Honorable Mentions:
• Thalden Boyd Emery Architects
• Tighe & Bond, Inc.

PSMJ Resources will recognize these winners at the Circle of Excellence Conference in San Diego, September 22 & 23, 2010.

Poll: How do you improve your value to your clients?

As the experts for feedback surveying for the professional design industry, we are gathering confidential statistics on what strategies design firms across the US & Canada are utilizing to combat the negative effects of the current recession.  By taking the following poll you will have immediate access to the data gathered to help your firm understand the approaches that other firms are currently using.

Which of the following strategies have you recently used to improve your value to your clients?
(Select all that apply)

• More frequent meetings (50%)
• Lowering fees (50%)
• Collecting client feedback (25%)
• Offering free work (13%)
• Other (13%)

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How often do you specifically request feedback from your clients?

• Rarely (50%)
• Annually (19%)
• Other (19%)
• Quarterly (13%)
• Monthly (-1%)

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From whom do you collect feedback? (Select all that apply)

• Clients (88%)
• Co-workers/Staff (25%)
• Managers/Admin (25%)
• Vendors (25%)
• N/A, we do not collect feedback at this time (13%)

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What do you do with the feedback information you collect? (Select all that apply)

• Use it to identify problems early & reduce liability (80%)
• Use it to improve staff performance (73%)
• Use it to enhance marketing (60%)
• Use it to improve staff assignments & training (40%)
• Use it for salary and bonus calculations (20%)
• N/A, we do not collect feedback at this time (7%)

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Other, Polls

Won’t I Annoy My Clients…

…if I ask for too much feedback?

This question is, almost without exception, the first one asked when we talk to firms about client feedback.  The short answer is NO!  Not if you ask for feedback when they want to give you feedback.

We are so conditioned to the idea of “feedback” as being a long survey sent to hundreds or thousands of people.  These surveys are generic, and don’t offer anything to the person responding.   They also usually come after the product or service has been offered, when it’s too late to do anything about it.  They are separated from the project, and don’t seem relevant at the time they are sent.

But you already ask for feedback all the time!  When you deliver something to a client, don’t you ask “is this what you were looking for?”  When you wrap up a meeting, don’t you ask if everything was covered? That’s asking for feedback!  It’s not very structured, and it doesn’t always get asked, but no client will ever be bothered if you check with them to make sure you covered your (and their) bases.

Our Client Feedback Tool blends the best from both approaches.  While we use email and the internet to deliver surveys, they are not typically designed to be sent broadly (though, they can be).  Instead, we’ve built hundreds of templates and supporting processes to send surveys, systematically, in a much more focused manner.

When should you ask for feedback (i.e., send a survey)?  Send one every time your client may want to give you feedback.  No client waits around to answer a mass survey.  If you send that out monthly, it’s too much.   On the other hand, if you give your client a key deliverable every week, don’t you want to make sure, each time, that you’ve given him what he needed/expected?  You could call or email asking “did you get what you need?”   Or, you could send a short feedback request that digs a little deeper and gives you more data, while not really taking any more time.

Odds are, you’ll only annoy your clients if you ask them for feedback two months AFTER a project is over as part of a quarterly survey.  It’s too late to fix, so why ask now?

Instead, show clients you care.   Ask for feedback when it makes sense.  Deliver something?  Ask for feedback.  That easy.  Since asking via The Client Feedback Tool is a simple email, clients can always ignore/delete it.  Even that gives you feedback!  NOT responding, in essence, let’s you know that things are most likely going well enough they don’t feel a need to correct anything.  However, for every few times they ignore your request because things are going okay, there will be one time when they have feedback, and will be glad you asked.  And they’ll respond.   Until you ask, you don’t know.  So, you have to ask.  And ask again.

If you’re still concerned, ask your clients!  Find out from them when they’d like to be asked for feedback.  Odds are, it’s more often than you think.

Client Feedback Tool Version 3.5 Released!

DesignFacilitator is excited to announce the release of version 3.5 of our Client Feedback Tool, the only feedback solution designed specifically for architects, engineers, and professional service providers.

If you already subscribe to the Client Feedback Tool, you don’t need to do anything to obtain the great new features.  Simply log in, and see what’s new.

Version 3.5 includes:

• Completely updated process for sending a survey.  The steps are the same, but performance is increased 25-570%
• Added ability to include individual survey responses (answers reports) in batch and scheduled reports.
• Enhanced reporting filters to make viewing/customizing reports more flexible
• Sending survey  reminders made easier and faster
• Over 100 additional enhancements and improvements to make the feedback experience smoother and more intuitive than before

If you have any questions or desire any update training, please contact support@designfacilitator.com to sign up for our New Features webinar scheduled for Thursday, February 18th, at 2:00pm EST.

Teaching a Feedback Mentality

I had a date night with my two daughters (ages 6 and 4) last night.  Upon request, I took them to their favorite restaurant.  After dinner, my eldest asked me if she could fill out a comment card.

About six month prior, I had taken her out to the same place, and received unusually exceptional service.  As a feedback guru, I took the time to find the comment card box and leave some detailed praise of who did what, and why it was so great.  My daughter asked what I was doing, so I explained a basic theory of feedback and why it’s important.

Six months later, at the tender of age of six, she remembered the lesson.  After another good night of service, she wanted to leave a note of appreciation that was specifically about what she liked.  She gets it.

Firm leaders have a similar opportunity.  Most firms employ at least some very young, very fresh professionals.  For many, you are their first “real job” out of school.  And just like my six year old, they are looking to you and your firm leaders for the behaviors that create an effective and successful professional career.

If you are fortunate enough to employ these eager and easily influenced minds, what behaviors and patterns are you teaching them about client relationships?  Interns are often quickly trained up on technical skills and rushed into a production role.  But these are the same people that will grow up and begin taking care of your clients.  Introduce them right away to effective client management skills.  Give them feedback regularly.  Give clients feedback in front of them.   More importantly, ask for feedback in front of them.  Let them see you engaging clients to better understand their preferences.  Let them see the results that open feedback brings.

As they grow professionally, give your young professionals opportunities to interact with clients, and solicit feedback about those interactions.  Empower them with the tools they need to manage clients and respond to their expectations.

The results?  Clients that are more engaged and loyal.  Beyond that, you have technicians learning to become business people.  You have interns focused on the client’s problem, rather than production.  Their awareness of what they are working on and why will increase, leading to better product going out the door.  You will also end up with young professionals who feel a part of the system, building their sense of self worth and increasing their job satisfaction.

You will also be raising the next generation of experts to help your firm continue and thrive for years to come.