If 90% of your feedback comes with top ratings, you may have some great marketing statistics.   But, you really haven’t collected data that lets you improve.  If almost all your scores are at the top of the scale, you have no way to differentiate which clients are most loyal, and place the highest value on your services.  You have no means to capture when something worked especially well, compared to your typical (and still effective) process.

With our Client Feedback Tool, we invested years of research into our patent-pending answering system, based on a self-centering “Met Expectations” sliding scale.  While our system provides the same percentage of “low” scores (~4%), only 16% of results fall in the top score category.  It’s this downward shift that gives you 400% more information with which to make decisions and improvements.  In the cases where you receive “Exceptional” feedback, you can now identify clients that valued your services much more than normal.  You can begin to see trends about what sets these situations apart.  Once you identify the contributors to these high scores, you can work them into your “typical” processes, enhancing value for all clients.

Suddenly, your high scores give you an opportunity to improve, just as much as your low scores do.

90% thumbs up feels good, but dramatically reduces the useful information you have.  

To learn more about our answer scale and how it works, contact us to schedule a demonstration.

Adding this all up, a $10 million firm may see over $210,000 in value added or money saved from effectively leveraging client feedback.  Regardless of revenue, the typical firm will increase profits 13% applying these simple tools and strategies.

Feedback is easy with a simple and powerful system like The Client Feedback Tool.  Two minutes of use brings immediate and measurable results.

I had a great conversation about client feedback with Lee Frederiksen, Managing Partner at Hinge Marketing.  Lee is a behavioral psychologist by education, and has helped many architects, engineers, and other professional services firms engage their clients to build their brand and markets.  During our conversation, he was reminded of a story where one group within an organization was accused of “cheating” because they kept winning performance awards.   You can read the whole story on Hinge’s Blog.  I’ve excerpted below:

As it turns out, [the winning group] had simply adopted the practice of handing out a rating form each time they performed a service and encouraging the recipient to fill it out. This simple practice had an amazing effect. It turned an intermittent system of feedback into one that provided almost continuous feedback to the professional providing the support. In short, they knew that each interaction counted. They suddenly became more “helpful” and it showed in their evaluation ratings.

What happened is a typical result of what we’ve seen with our clients who deploy our Client Feedback Tool within their organization.  By engaging everyone in the process of collecting feedback, everyone becomes more aware of their performance – knowing it will be measured.  By collecting feedback from clients during projects (not just after they’re done), those doing the work naturally begin to perform better for clients.

Feedback works to change performance. Decades of well-controlled behavioral research clearly shows that it does so under the right conditions. For example, feedback has to be frequent, timely, and objective.

So, how do you “cheat” and become better than your competitors in an unfair way?  It’s really pretty easy.  Collect feedback when you can do something about it (i.e., before the project is over).  Get feedback as soon as you’ve just performed some work, while memory of it is fresh.  Ask questions that are specific and focused on what was just delivered.  Most importantly, have the people doing the work ask for the feedback!  This is the quickest way to assure each person working for your clients is focused on the clients’ needs, and aware of his performance.

When you have an entire firm of client-focused professionals, working to meet each client’s specific needs, there will be no contest between you and the competition.

The architect never said anything or made a show of what he did.  Just very subtly “cleaned up” when he saw something needing attention.  At the time, I didn’t really think anything of it.

Later, he gathered feedback from the client using our Client Feedback Tool, and one of the comments said this:

Thanks for taking care of my building.  You even stopped to pick up trash.  That’s not what I am hiring you to do, but it showed me you really care.  Thanks for going the extra mile, and looking for ways to make the project better.

When I talked to the architect later about this feedback, he shared:  ”That’s why I do these things.  I always look for ways to improve what my clients hire me to work on.  Even things that aren’t in my scope of work – if I can identify an area where I can help, it creates more value.  It helps me become my client’s expert.”

You may be doing a dozen little extra things for your clients that you aren’t even aware of how much value they bring.  How do you identify which pack the most punch?  As you think of new ways to help and add value, are you measuring the results to confirm the extra efforts are creating additional success?

Start looking for ways to help – even little ones – then ask for feedback.  You may be amazed at the results, and the added value you create with your clients.

Is this what your feedback program looks like?

How does this make you feel as a client?

More importantly, is this the message you give to your clients when they provide feedback?  Research indicates the overwhelming majority of professional services firms (architects, engineers, lawyers, etc) do not solicit feedback from their clients.   And yet, feedback is critical to your ability to serve, keep, and profit from your clients.

Some clients are bold enough to provide feedback, at least once, even if you don’t ask for it.  Your response, though, will dictate exactly how much more feedback you will get from them.  When you get feedback, are you the grenade?  Do you get defensive and start spreading blame like shrapnel in all directions?  If lodging a complaint (or even giving constructive criticism)  feels like pulling the pin on this example to the right, how many clients are going to keep on complaining?

While we all want our clients to stop complaining or criticizing, making them afraid to do so will only further the speed at which they take their projects (and corresponding fees) somewhere else.  Rather, we want more feedback – in the form of praise!  Now you can turn clients into allies – loyal consumers of your services, and champions of yours when referrals are requested.

Here are three fairly basic approaches to help you become adept at avoiding shrapnel, and encourage your clients to give you more feedback.

1. Respond without reacting.  When criticism comes in, realize it’s not personal, but really just information.  Your client is training you to help him better.  I know it sometimes feels like an attack on you, your character, and your self-worth.  It’s not.  Feedback is always more about who’s giving the feedback than who it’s about.  Understand what your client is trying to accomplish with this information.   He’s got a problem, he hired you to help him with it, and now there’s another problem to deal with.  Instead of trying to explain how it’s not your fault, be very interested in his problem, and how you can fix it.  ”Oh, wow.  That does sound like a problem.  How can I help you fix that?  Is there anything else we can do to avoid going down this road again?”  If there are other people involved, and you are the one that takes this approach, you’ve just risen above the crowd and earned a huge dose of respect from the client (and probably your peers too).
2. Focus on the process not the people. People don’t intend to screw up.  When stuff goes awry, look at the process used.  If you focus on the people involved, the conversation turns to blame.  The best that can happen here is someone else gets to “pay” for the problem.   This builds conflict between you, your team, and your client.  Conflict is not healthy when trying to build effective processes.  If instead, talk about the process that resulted in the undesirable outcome, and cement your role as the leader steering the team (regardless of what your business card title says).  By pointing fingers at a process – which is emotionless and easy to adjust, you don’t have to try to change people.  A process can be documented, explained, understood, and modified on the fly to produce different results.  Draw the process on a white board with everyone involved.  Act as the recorder, asking which processes work best for each person, and build consensus on a client-focused plan.  If the client designs the process, he will take more ownership of the results.  More importantly, you’ve again been trained as his expert – worth a premium price so he doesn’t have to deal with this again with someone else.
3. Ask for feedback often!  When your clients see you as a grenade, ready to explode, they are less likely to train you to expert status.  But, asking for feedback in a soft, friendly, comfortable manner will diffuse challenging situations before they get big.  You will create a feedback habit with your clients, and they will be much more engaged in helping you help them.  It’s their process now too, so they want it to succeed.  Follow up to check on how changes to your service are working, measure the results, and adjust your course when needed.

Over time, you will build a level of trust, loyalty, and expertise with your clients that no other professional will be able to match.  Now you can be “the guy” he goes to.  You can charge a fee that’s great for you, for a service that’s great for him.  Even better, no one has to pick shrapnel out of their hides.

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?

April 9, 2009
10:00 am Pacific Time

Axium’s Best Practices Webinar Series, presents Mike Phillips

Client Feedback: Learn Simple Ways to Enhance your Firm