If You Already Know the Answer, Don’t Ask the Question

I’ve already written once about the survey methods of the car dealerships/manufacturers (see Blog Entry “What Did You Expect?“) but I have to bring it up again. To keep from distracting you with my particular choice in a car, let’s just call it a Yugo.

This time, the manufacturer sent me an email with a subject line “Please share your thoughts on your new Yugo GV.” This subject shows that the sender knows exactly who I am and what I have purchased. Yet, they proceeded to ask which features I have on the vehicle, what type of vehicle it is, the cost of the vehicle, and how I financed it. They also asked me for the total number of men, women and children in the household. After I selected “1″ the survey still asked me to indicate the number of: children under 6, children 6-12, and children 13-17. Didn’t I just answer that?

My point is not just to rant (though I do enjoy ranting), but to point out that people collecting feedback sometimes ask questions that they already know the answer to. This comes across to clients as though you do not value their time and you don’t care enough to consider the information you already have before asking more questions. Let your clients know that their time and feedback is important to you by asking only relevant, specific questions.  Ideally, their answers will provide valuable new information you can use to improve your service to that very client.  Isn’t that why we ask for feedback in the first place?

Axium Webinar featuring Mike Phillips – Client Feedback

On April 9, 2009 Mike Phillips presented industry best practices webinar for Axium entitled Client Feedback: Learn Simple Ways to Enhance Your Firm.  This program illustrated how a design firm can create a simple system to collect and incorporate client feedback. View a preview clip of the presentation below:

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To view the webinar in its entirety, visit Axium’s Resource Center http://www.axiumae.com/resources/webinars/industry-webinar.aspx?id=61127

Client Feedback Tool – New Features

On June 28th, 2009 over 50 new features, enhancements, and fixes were released to our Client Feedback Tool.  All subscribers have immediate access to the following features, and more:

• You can now schedule batches of reports to be generated and delivered to you via email, automatically.  Look for this in the “Set Preferences” page.
• Survey recipients can now reply on a mobile device, including iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and more.
• The Bar Graph report was enhanced, offering a variety of new charting options.  You can now create a bar graph by Project, Project Type, Project Team, Phase, Category, Question, Sender, Sender Team, Respondent, Company, Client, or Company Type.
• When sending a survey, you can select a project from a project list, rather than perform a search.
• You can now leave a follow-up comment to any feedback request, even if no one has responded to the survey.  This allows you to log why a survey remains unanswered, or to summarize an off-line conversation that replaced the survey.
• The answers report can now be printed “anonymously” – so you can print results and share them with others without revealing who gave the feedback.
• Downloadable batch reports have a new, enhanced date selector simplifying use.

For questions or help with any of these features, please contact us at support@designfacilitator.com or 866-4-DES-FAC.

Likewise, if you have any features YOU want added, please let us know!

Improving Your Response Rate – Part I

Introduction

DesignFacilitator subscribers often ask what they can do to get people to respond to feedback requests. Many factors affect the likelihood of a recipient responding to your feedback requests. The factors include, but are not limited to, the recipient’s

• Quantity of email in the inboxes
• Email service and manager’s spam settings
• Reaction to the email’s subject line
• Perception of the time and effort required to reply
• Discomfort answering questions they may think are about you personally
• Perceived benefits of answering your request (Will it really make a difference?)
• Ability to remember to complete the survey later if it cannot be finished now

In this article, I will offer some tips you can use to improve your response rate. First, I will address what you can do before you send the feedback request. In Part II, I will discuss principles you can apply while creating and following up on the survey.

Prepare the Recipient

Your client comes in Monday morning and the phone is already ringing. She answers the phone and pulls up her emails. Twelve new emails and another 23 in the junk mail (possible spam). She quickly scans the spam and almost instinctively asks: Does it appear safe? Did I expect it? Does it have a believable benefit? Do I want to see this? If the answer to any question is “No”, she deletes the message.

What if one of those discarded emails was your feedback request? To prevent your survey from winding up in the Trash folder, talk to your recipient before sending the request!

• Regardless whether you talk face-to-face, by telephone or via email; preparation or ‘pre-notification’ is critical. Use whichever format you desire, but be sure to let them know the survey is coming. That way, even if it was misdirected to their junk mail box, they will recognize it as valid business mail.

• People are often just as uncomfortable giving personal feedback as they are asking for it. That is why DesignFacilitator’s surveys are about your process, not about you. Explain this to your recipient ahead of time to help ease any apprehension he may have about telling you about you.

• Your recipient may have experienced surveys that branched to more questions, or said they contained five questions and in actuality, each question contained multiple questions. DesignFacilitator’s surveys typically take 2 – 3 minutes to answer. They do not ‘branch’ to additional questions. A question is one question, period. Your recipient will always know the number of questions up-front.

• You might explain that this is NOT a sampling survey sent to thousands of people. It is a specific request to evaluate the services you provided to that person so that you can fine-tune your process to best satisfy his needs. Although you cannot pay for his response or offer a chance to win $5,000, the incentive you offer is even more valuable: a designer or consultant whose process is tailored to the client’s needs.

In Part II, we will discuss concepts and actions you can apply while sending and following up on the feedback request.

Client Feedback Tool – New Features Added

We are pleased to announce that over 80 new features, enhancements, and fixes have been released to our online Client Feedback Tool. Some key new features include:

• Reports now include your branding / logo when printing
• New report that highlights high scores to more easily identify your successes
• New report that gathers all written feedback comments, to collect testamonials for marketing
• Optimized report printing process to make 50% faster
• Added an address book feature, to more easily select survey recipients
• Added a “contact import” feature to quickly import a list of survey recipients
• Added a new “Bar Graph” report, offering a visually rich display of your feedback

PSMJ’s Premier Award for Client Satisfaction

DesignFacilitator is pleased to announce a partnership with PSMJ for their Premier Award for Client Satisfaction!

PSMJ has partnered with DesignFacilitator, creators of the only feedback tool designed specifically for the architecture and engineering community, to operate feedback collection for PSMJ’s Premier Award for Client Satisfaction.  The program uses feedback from design firms’ clients to identify some of the best A/E/C firms across the nation.  You can enroll to participate ($495) here.   For a limited time, participants can receive the entire cost of their entry fee back if they subscribe to our Client Feedback Tool.

Upon joining the program, PSMJ will send participants a link to the participation form at DesignFacilitator’s website.

Participants will enter their contact details and the names/emails of the clients they would like surveyed.

The DesignFacilitator team will contact participants with further details and instructions including guidance on how to introduce the survey to your clients, with strategies to maximize your return rate.

A week later, the survey will be sent using DesignFacilitator’s Client Feedback Tool.  Those who would like to receive a sample of the survey may request one by emailing PSMJ@designfacilitator.com.

The results will be collected over 30 days.  Within two weeks of completion, participants will receive a copy of the results, both a summary and detailed responses.   Participants’ results will only be collated and delivered to PSMJ for purpose of the award rankings, and will not be published in any way to anyone else.

When the results from all participants are in and the program is over, awards will be determined based on the quantity and quality of feedback received, using DesignFacilitator’s “Feedback Quotient” formula.  The 2009 award winners will be announced in February 2010 and featured at PSMJ’s Circle of Excellence Conference in March 2010.

All participants will also be entitled to a $495 discount on subscriptions to DesignFacilitator’s Client Feedback Tool purchased within 60 days of program completion.  For more details contact us at 866-4-DES-FAC or answers@designfacilitator.com.

The Best Questions to Ask – Deliverables and Relationships

The Feedback Cycle

Everyone has heard the idea of a “feedback loop” or cycle.  In fact, “Feedback Cycle” is rather redundant, as the original definition of feedback (according to Marriam Webster) is “ the return to the input of a part of the output of a process.”  In effect, the very word feedback means to take the results of a process, and feed them into the start of the next process iteration.

Our Client Feedback Tool helps you utilze feedback from clients (internal or external) in a complete cycle:

• Ask for Feedback
• Review your Feedback
• Follow-up to your Feedback

When managing client relationships, each component is critical.  Asking for feedback shows that you care.  Asking creates an open atmosphere of communication, setting a precident that you welcome correction and enhancements any time – not just when you ask for them.

Reviewing feedback – immediately when it is received – allows you to identify where refinement is required.  You know who has pain, and the context is there to help you solve any problems.  You also know when you’ve become someone’s “expert” – when you’ve reached that level of service and process refinement that will keep you glued to your client for years to come.

Most importantly, track your follow-up. When you ask for, receive, and review feedback – it is now your obligation to incorporate that feedback into your work going forward.  Especially if you received corrective feedback from a client, it is critical to follow-up, and discuss what adjustments are being made.   The adjustments may be to your process, or they may be to bring unreasonable expectations into line with the project constraints.   Either way, once feedback has been given to you, it’s your role to provide a response, or feedback, of your own.   If you do get corrective feedback from a client, and don’t follow-up, you not only have missed a huge opportunity to shine, but may incur more damage to the relationship by indicating you don’t care enough to respond.  Feedback is a two-way street.

Our Client Feedback Tool gives you the resources you need to collect and track feedback, and share/publish the follow-up to others in your firm who may work with that client.  You create a client history of decisions, adjustments, and celebrations helping cement the loyalty of your best clients.

What is measured tends to improve

In the late 1920’s, at the Hawthorne Works factory near Chicago, management began experimental changes to the worker environment and measured the impact on productivity.  Initially, the lighting level was increased for the workers, and productivity improved.  When the lighting level was reduced, productivity increased.  Additional experiments led to similarly inconclusive results.

Later, in the 1950’s, psychologists summarized the findings as the “Hawthorne Effect” stating that, quite simply, just being measured improved productivity.

The same principals apply to design firms today.  As a leader of a firm, team, or project, you want to ensure that all project participants are taking care of the client with the best possible care.  Until now, there has been no way to measure the client relationship objectively.

Using a feedback system like ours, and putting it in the hands of anyone who interacts with clients, you now have the tools to measure and track the health of client relationships.  Knowing they are being measured, your designers, engineers, and architects will naturally tend to improve the service they provide – regardless of what the actual feedback results are.  Combining this Hawthorne Effect improvement with the insights you receive through regular feedback checkups will give you and your staff unprecidented ablity to exceed your clients’ expectations.

In this market, there can be no better way to thrive than to take better care of your clients than anyone else.