This episode runs 28 min.
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Mentioned in This Episode 146: Client Feedback
Two Forms of Feedback
Survey – pros/cons
Interview – pros/cons
When to Get Feedback
Most people do it after projects are complete, problems
Most people do it as a stand alone event, problems
Better to start at beginning of project (establish what the client values, baggage)
Better to do a check-in mid-project (course correction)
Build feedback into your client agreements (both accountable)
Common proposal question: describe your client satisfaction process
What Not to Ask
Vague questions – how are we doing on this project?
Vision questions – What should we be doing for you in the future?
It’s not your clients job to do your visionary thinking
What to Ask
Net Promoter Score, developed by Bain & Co.
How likely is it that you would recommend our firm to a friend or colleague? 1-10
9-10 are promoters
0-6 are detractors
7-8 are passives
NPS = % of promoter – (minus) % of detractors
Follow up with an open ended question for elaboration. Why?
What service do you wish we offered to help you today?
Instead of “How did we do on delivering X?”
Rate on a scale from 1–5 how we did on delivering X. Then follow up with why?
Best Practices
Use a non-biased third party for interviews (hire a consultant).
Sample Size: 5–10 interviewees gets you a surprisingly lot of information
Ask same questions to all interviewees, but allow for interviewer to go off script
First ssk clients by email or phone if they would be willing to participate
Ask for a 20 minute interview. This will be about 8–10 questions
Make the interviewee introduction to the interviewer. Let the interviewer schedule the interviews.
Tell clients the information will be presented as a group, no individual attribution.
Thank participants…
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Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing podcast. It’s insight applied.
Josh Miles: Hey, David, I hear you want some feedback today.
David Lecours: Well, actually, Josh, I was thinking our audience should get some feedback from their clients. So, today’s topic is client feedback.
Josh Miles: Well, while we’re at it, PSM Show is underwritten by SMPS, whose vision is business transformed through marketing leadership. Visit SMPS.org to learn more.
Announcer: This is PSM, it’s insight applied.
David Lecours: So I was at a presentation last week, Josh, and somebody put up this slide about client experience, and I don’t have a source for this, but let’s just assume it’s true.
Josh Miles: I hear that 87% of statistics are made up on the spot.
David Lecours: That’s right. I like the quote, “If you torture statistics long enough, you can get them to confess to just about anything.” But this one said 80% of firms believe they provide a great client experience. Yet, only eight percent of those clients believe the experience is great.
Josh Miles: Something is amiss.
David Lecours: Something is amiss and we need to close this gap and I think that some form of client feedback is a way to help us close this gap to know where we really stand. So I think this tool for our audience could be very beneficial.
Josh Miles: So, isn’t this like the most uncomfortable thing possible is to look somebody in the eye or look someone in their inbox and ask them what they think about you?
David Lecours: Yeah, it is and it’s hard and I have to say I’m a little bit biased on that question because as a third-party consultant, I always recommend to clients to work with a third-party because of the reason you just described. It’s really hard to ask and it’s really hard for the client to look you in the eye and tell you what they really think and what they believe. I think it’s nice to have some form of intermediary to soften the blow and ask the questions in a way that will elicit a real candid response.
Josh Miles: What would you recommend, like what’s the practical way or the method in which they could go get this feedback?
David Lecours: Yeah. So I’m thinking of there’s kind of two main ones but maybe something else will come to mind. I think a survey is one of those and I think client interviews is the second way to do it. Each kind of has some pros and cons. If we think about survey first, I think one of the pros about survey is that you can get a much larger sample size. Once you spend the time, and I don’t want to underestimate the time and thinking it takes to come up with a great survey, deploying that across a lot of clients is not going to cause you a lot of extra time. The downside of that is that because it’s so easy, we get a little bit inundated with surveys. Every time I go and have my car worked on, I get a survey. Every time I almost do anything and-
Josh Miles: Hotel stays.
David Lecours: Right. So unless I have a very personal connection to the person asking for the survey, I rarely do them. And I think that that’s probably true. So I think there’s a little bit of, not a little bit, there’s a resistance to doing these surveys. There’s things that people do to try to incent you, a chance to win an Amazon gift card. No, thanks. Ten or twenty dollars, no thanks. So I almost think it’s a bit of an insult when they try to bribe you with that. I don’t know. Any other sort of pros and cons that you can think of related to the survey approach?
Josh Miles: Do you feel like the bribery method, as you put it, do you feel like that feels as negative when it’s someone you already have a relationship with? Or does it feel worse if you already have a relationship?
David Lecours: Yeah, I think it almost feels worse and it’s sort of awkward. You’re offering to pay a client, not pay, but give some sort of gift or spiff or something, to somebody who is also paying you for your services. It just gets a little murky and messy. Yeah, it feels awkward to me. Yeah, I think it’s too big of an ask.
Josh Miles: Yeah, I feel like those, the ones I’m most likely to want to fill out are the brands that I already have a really good opinion of.
David Lecours: Yes.
Josh Miles: I suppose if I had a really lousy, like a zero or one experience, then that would be fine. That would drive me to fill it out but anything in the middle I’m kind of indifferent.
David Lecours: Right. And so what surveys are really good at is gathering information to answer the what type of questions. What do you think about this? But they’re not real great about the sort of why. So if somebody rates you a 5 out of 10, okay. But the follow on question of why is so critical and that’s where I think something like an interview really shines because in a personal interview you have this ability to sort of listen for nuance, to ask follow on questions, to drill down, to sort of go off script that you don’t have in a survey. And so that’s one of the reasons I’m more of a fan of interviews.
Josh Miles: I think even part of that could be asking the tell me about your experience question first before you rate it. So what happened and how was it? And describe the good or bad thing that happened and then in the end say, “Overall, how would you rate it?” And then to me that kind of warms up the question a little better.
David Lecours: I like that a lot. Yeah, so it’s key to make sure you have some open-ended questions if you are doing a survey to just let the person flow and not restrict them to sort of very prescribed answers.
Josh Miles: So, what do you think about like timing? When should our clients be reaching out? Is this start of the project, middle of the project, after the project’s been dead for three months?
David Lecours: Right. So usually what happens is someone in marketing gets excited to do this. They go to a presentation like I did recently and it’s like, “We got to do client feedback.” All right. We’re going to do this and we’re going to survey all the clients that we’ve worked with for the last three to five years. And the problem with that is, I don’t know about you, but as I get older it’s really difficult to remember what I did last week versus a project that I worked on two and a half years ago. So, even if you were to get feedback from somebody at the end of a project, the problem is that that project’s already done and if you’ve screwed it up, in a lot of cases it’s damage that can’t be fixed. So I think waiting until the project’s done or waiting ’til a year or two later is a standalone event is problematic.
David Lecours: I would much rather see firms and recommend that they, at the beginning of a project, obviously you can’t ask them how you did. But what you could do is sort of establish these ground rules to determine what the values that you both share on a successful project and project management are because in your mind, as the service provider, you may think you know what’s important to deliver on but … One of the things I always do with clients is ask them about their past baggage. And I say, “The last time you hired a creative consultant, what was that like for you?” Because they may have had an experience where the person, I don’t know, showed up for meetings five minutes late and that just drove the client crazy. “What was it like working with those? And what are some things that the consultant you worked with in the past did well? And what are some things that could be improved upon?” So I think establishing kind of what you’re going to measure in the beginning is a really great way to work with the client.
David Lecours: And then if possible, I think it’s more beneficial to get client feedback in the middle of a project because then it gives you the opportunity, as you could probably imagine, to course correct if something’s not going well and hopefully get you an opportunity to save the project or save the relationship if things aren’t going well. And if things are going well, great, keep doing those. I’m a big fan of positive psychology, not just focus on what’s going wrong, but try to identify the things that are going right and build on those.
Josh Miles: Yeah. And maybe if there are findings from that particular project, most firms would have multiple clients, multiple projects going on in parallel. You don’t wait until one project finishes to take on a new client. So there may be things that you identify from this client’s feedback to go, “Oh, if they think that then I wonder if these other guys are thinking that too.” And something that you can really use to improve the entire client experience.
David Lecours: For sure. That extrapolating, what’s working for one client is a very high chance it’s going to work for others as well. I love that. And I think it’s probably worthwhile to build some sort of client feedback expectation into your client agreement. So in addition to the deliverables and whatever is in your contract, I think you should include something about client feedback. I think it sends a message that you care about it and it then makes both parties accountable. It makes you accountable to deliver on that and then it sets the expectation with the client that you’re going to follow up on that. And so I think it would be great to actually include that from the beginning because what I’m hearing a lot right now is that NRFPs or when perspective clients are looking at different professional service firms, one of the questions is often describe your client satisfaction process. And so if you have a process in place that you can incorporate into your agreement in the beginning, then I think it’s going to make your proposal and you as a potential service provider much more effective.
Josh Miles: Have you seen any sort of client directed processes? Or I’ve seen clients direct just about every other-
David Lecours: Aspect.
Josh Miles: Stage of the process but I haven’t heard of this yet so I’m just curious if you’ve come across this with any of your consulting clients.
David Lecours: I haven’t but it seems like it’s on the future and on the horizon. Like the one real sort of common tool that a lot of people use is Net Promoter Score, which is a little different in that it’s more about would you recommend the firm to a friend or colleague less so much about like project satisfaction or performance. But I imagine on the horizon there’s going to be something that clients ask to be used especially in these long projects that our AEC firm audience is involved in because there’s so many different phases and keeping the project on track is so essential.
Josh Miles: I was always a sort of my … What do you call that? The cringey secret show that I always like to watch back in the day was the What Not to Wear. So I’m curious the parallel to this is what not to ask. What should we avoid when we’re talking to our client about our performance?
David Lecours: So, whether it’s a survey or an interview, I think sort of super vague questions. I think open-ended questions are okay but something as like vague as how are we doing on this project, the answer’s probably going to be fine, okay, good. That just isn’t super effective.
Josh Miles: How’s it going?
David Lecours: Right, yeah. Exactly, right. When somebody says that to you when they come up, it’s like, “I don’t know. Do you want the truth?”
Josh Miles: I’m pretty sure you don’t.
David Lecours: The other type of question that I found not very effective are questions where you’re asking the client to look, or the interviewee to sort of look out into the future and almost like do your work for you. A question like, “What should we be doing for you in the future?” And that one reminds me of this sort of often quoted Henry Ford quote, which was if … Before Henry Ford invented the automobile, if he had done like a focus group and asked everybody, “What do you want in the future?” And keep in mind this was the time when horse-drawn buggies was what Ford was producing. If he had done this focus group, people would’ve said they want faster horses. So the idea is that true innovation requires visionary thinking and it’s not really the client’s job to tell you what to do out into the future. I think you can ask things about what could we do better going forward but in terms of like asking clients for sort of visionary answers is a little bit outside the realm and not appropriate.
Josh Miles: Yeah. That makes sense. What else would they not want to ask?
David Lecours: I don’t know.
Josh Miles: We have exhausted the list-
David Lecours: Exhausted the list of things not to ask. I just think being intentional and meaningful about developing your questions. Don’t ask a standard set of questions for every client. I think definitely customize them to find out the things that you really want to know about that particular engagement.
Josh Miles: Yeah, or maybe one other that I was thinking of is maybe not asking leading questions so that you’re implying the answer that you’re trying to get to. Don’t you think we’re doing a great job?
David Lecours: Right, right. For sure. So maybe it makes sense to sort of think about what we should ask next and I think, I had mentioned the Net Promoter Score as an effective tool. And those of our audience that aren’t familiar with that, it’s one question developed by a guy at Bain & Company, and the question is, “How likely are you to recommend our firm to a friend or client?” And you ask on a scale from 1 to 10. And when people answer either 9 or 10, they’re considered promoters. If they answer anywhere from zero to six, they’re considered detractors. And anywhere seven or eight are passives. And you develop the Net Promoter Score by taking the percentage of those who identified you as a promoter and subtract those who identified you as a detractor and you end up with a score that ends up being on a scale from, I think it’d be from like negative 100 to 100. So, anyway something like that is good. I do think-
Josh Miles: And you know these when you get that email that says please answer this one question about your experience and it’s how likely are you to recommend 1 through 10 that’s the dead give away that they are tracking their Net Promoter Score.
David Lecours: So anytime you can follow up the question, let’s say you ask somebody for a rating like, “How did we do? Judge us from one to five on our ability to communicate be it, well, just communicate about the project or how’s our communication. And then have the ability to ask a follow up so why did you give us a four because that’s when you start to get the really juicy information about what the things that can be improved or not improved. I always love the question of like what service do you wish we offered that could help you with some issue that you’re working on today. So not so much like what should we be doing in the future but more about like today you’ve got a set of challenges, maybe there’s something that we could be doing or do you wished we offered, maybe it’s something you’re getting from somebody else and they’re not doing a great job, what could we do?
Josh Miles: That also reminds me one of the podcasts that I used to listen to frequently that I haven’t checked on in a long time, one of their co-hosts would say he would get the most insights by reading through the iTunes comments of people who had given them a two or three star rating. So the one star ratings were like this is horrible, not worth my time. If you’re feeling sad and you want to cry a little, that might check that box. The ones that give you five star ratings that say this is the most amazing thing ever, it’s those two and three star reviews that give you insights of things that maybe you want to improve or maybe you don’t but at least you know what that middle of the road person who’s like a little bit on the detractor side, you might learn something from that.
David Lecours: Yeah, because you can never sway that sort of one or five person. They’ve already sort of made up their mind, they’re kind of very definitive. But you’re right, the sort of sweet spot is those twos and threes where you can, yeah, potentially sway them or find out how you can be doing a better job.
Josh Miles: Yeah. I like this one I used to ask a variation of this from our clients. We’d do this interview thing which was, “What else do you wish that X, Y, Z firm would do? So if you like them, you appreciate them, is there another step or a parallel or kind of related thing that you’d love to see them offer as well?” Because I think that gives you some interesting insights as well.
David Lecours: Yeah. I have sort of a traditional last question that I often ask when I’m doing the interviewing and that is, “What didn’t I ask you that you’ve been really dying to answer?” Because, typically, people have things that they want to say and when you sort of put them in a box of only being able to answer the questions that you have, you’re kind of restricting them. So I really do like to have that opportunity at the end to really open-end it and some people say, “No, no, that’s it. You’ve captured it,” or some people do say, “Yeah. I’ve been wanting to tell you about this.”
Josh Miles: Yeah, it’s that classic like once your primary care physician puts their hand on the door, you’re like, “Hey, I just wondered-
David Lecours: Yeah, exactly.
Josh Miles: Like, “No, I’m good, I’m good. Oh wait, just one more thing. But no, I don’t have anymore questions but okay just this one question.”
David Lecours: One more thing like the famous Steve Jobs presentations he used to do for Apple.
Josh Miles: Right. One more thing. We miss Steve.
David Lecours: Yeah. Well, so I have some best practices I’d like to share that mostly these relate to more kind of the interview side because, as you’ve probably gathered, I tend to favor the personal interview aspect. One is that you don’t need as big a sample size as you probably think you do like, Josh, you had mentioned earlier typically something that applies to one client will apply to almost all of your clients. And while all your clients think they’re really unique, I think you can get away with interviewing 5 to 10 people and that may sound surprising but it takes a good amount of time to schedule, to interview, to analyze the responses. And so to help, I guess, keep costs down for hiring an outside third-party, I think a smaller sample size will get you what you need without having to do too many more than that. And clients usually find that a little bit surprising but then when they start to see the responses they say, “Yeah, you know there’s some definite patterns that we started to see over and over again here.”
Josh Miles: Yeah, we saw that a lot just from a brand interview standpoint when you’re trying to get a vibe for what that client relationship was. After you did about 10 of those interviews, you could almost complete their sentences for them.
David Lecours: Yeah, exactly. And so I do think having a set of common questions that the interviewer would use, but please allow that interviewer to go off script if something really juicy starts to come up because that’s where you’re going to get really valuable information. Nice to have common sets so you can compare one to the next to the next, but again, don’t be so strict with them that you don’t allow them to vary it a bit.
Josh Miles: So, when you do these do you go out in person and hang out in the office and interview the client? Or what’s that look like?
David Lecours: Yeah, so typically because our clients have clients all over the country it’s just not practical. I certainly love to do interviews in person because you get the nonverbal communication. And you just form a better connection with them but rarely is that an option just from logistics, to sort of fly in a bunch of clients to the same place is going to send the budget way beyond what it should be. So, yeah, usually in terms of like sequencing, let’s say I’m doing the interviewing on behalf of a client, I’ll have the client either email or phone the interviewee to ask them are they willing to be interviewed. And I give them a script, I give them words that they can use and customize, but something to the effect of, “You’re one of our best clients. We really value your opinion. Would you be willing to talk to David for 20 minutes? He’ll follow up with you if you’re willing.” And then if the person says yes, like I said I’ll follow up to schedule the interview and complete it.
David Lecours: But there’s no way that I, as the interviewer, could just reach out to these people cold because they don’t know who I am and they’d be like, “Yeah, whatever.” And so the introduction … And ask for permission has to come from my client.
Josh Miles: Yeah, that’s especially nice to have that warm introduction as the consultant so you’re not, feel like you’re annoying their client without permission.
David Lecours: Exactly, yeah. And so I typically tell them to ask for a 20 minute interview because I feel like that is not too big of an ask, often they’ll go longer but I found that if people agree to a 20 minute, and I do when I’m interviewing keep a real good tabs on the clock and at 20 minutes, I’ll say, “Hey, I promised to get this done in 20 minutes. We can wrap up now. Or I do have a couple other questions.” And I leave it very open-ended. I don’t sort of try to persuade them because yeah, some people just have things to do and I get it. But often, they’ll say, “No, this is very interesting. I’m enjoying talking to you,” and will let me go for another 5 or 10 minutes. I definitely don’t push beyond 30, I think that starts to get uncomfortable.
David Lecours: And so within a 20 minute interview, I can get in about eight good questions typically. If it’s 30, we can probably get in maybe 10 to 12. And so yeah, you really got to think through what these questions are going to be and again I’ll allow for the opportunity to improvise. And the other kind of key thing is to sort of tell the person that you’re interviewing that you’re not quoting them directly. So you may present, I’ll say, “I’m going to be presenting what we talk about as a group with all the other people that I’m interviewing but I’m not asking you to individually attribute what you say.” In other words, I’m not looking for a testimonial. I’m not going to say, “Josh Miles said this and this about you,” because then I think you don’t get as candid of answers as possible. Now sometimes the person I’m interviewing will describe some story or give some like detail that allows the client to pretty quickly figure out who it is but that’s up to them. If they want to be so descriptive that it’s obvious, then that’s up to them.
Josh Miles: And then anything else that you’d include in your best practices list?
David Lecours: Yeah, I think you should be nice and if you’re the client and you’ve worked with a third-party, you should be the one that follows up to thank the participant for allowing themself to be interviewed. And that might be an area where you might send them a small gift or maybe offer to take them to lunch, it might just be another opportunity to sort of gain a touch point, a connection, with that client because hopefully they’ll have a project going forward in the future.
Josh Miles: Yeah, I think at least my perspective is even if a client is not having the best experience, just the fact that they have been asked at this point sometimes the flattery or the thought of that makes them develop a little more affinity towards the firm just by virtue of having been identified as someone that their feedback matters.
David Lecours: Yeah. We all like to be valued. If you’re asking somebody for their feedback, it says we value your opinion.
Josh Miles: Just don’t offer David a free Amazon gift card.
David Lecours: That’s right. That’s right. All right, Josh, I think we’ve exhausted this one. My feedback is we should wrap this up. What do you think?
Josh Miles: I agree. Can I have an Amazon gift card?
David Lecours: Yeah. I’ll send you a survey. All right. Our audience, hey, if you guys have any questions or comments, we’d love to hear it. If you have suggestions for future guests or topics that you want Josh and I to talk about, write to us at PSM Show. We have a really cool little website that’s got all our past episodes and if you want to share this podcast with a friend or a colleague that’s probably the best place to send them. And you can find our episodes on most of the popular audio podcast deliverers, like iTunes and the like. And so that’s it for this episode of PSM Show. Of course, we again want to thank our underwriting sponsor, SMPS. And that’s it for Josh Miles and myself. I’m David Lecours, we’ll see you next time.