Commentary -- Why Measure Client Satisfaction?

Most senior people in consulting firms know generally what their clients want — a good technical solution, delivered on schedule and within budget. Clients also want their consultants to be "responsive". That's about it. If a consulting firm meets these basic client needs, then the client should be completely satisfied.

Firms know when clients are not satisfied because clients call the firm's project managers or even a principal to complain whenever something is wrong. No complaints, no dissatisfied clients. Simple.

Most project managers, fortunately, are born with knowledge of what it takes to satisfy clients. They can be dropped into project and client manager roles as soon as their technical skills and experience allow. What they don't know can be learned by doing. Those who can't soon move on to other things.

So, why would any firm want to ask its clients about their level of satisfaction with the firm's performance, let alone measure it? Also, think about:

L What if the client responds negatively, telling you that your firm has some glaring deficiencies, which you would then be obliged to face and address?

L What if the client doesn't respond to questionnaires, perhaps because he or she is too busy or too high up for such a mundane chore?

How many of your clients would agree with this senior executive in a large organization who said —

"...when it comes to evaluating different consulting firms that have worked with me in the past, there's one quality more than others that sets apart the firms that win my business — responsiveness."

Most, probably. You may feel that this is so obvious that you don't even need to ask whether responsiveness is important to them. But here's why you really do need to ask:

þ How do we compare with other consulting firms under this and other client definitions of responsiveness?

What you understand by responsive and what each of your clients mean by it may be quite different in some cases. As you try to improve responsiveness by training project managers and project teams or revising your practices, you may miss the mark if you don't first have a clear understanding of how your clients define responsiveness.

We all know that clients want us to be responsive among other requirements but we may not know in many cases just what this means for a specific client. Our response to this lack of detailed knowledge is to be responsive in as many ways as possible in the hope that we are covering the real need somewhere. The result can be a lot of wasted effort, time and money.

We may also have only a vague idea about how each client values the various factors contributing to overall performance. Responsiveness may be at the top of the list for some clients, or for some projects, but in other cases, clients will make schedule, budget or technical solution their top priorities.

Knowledge of what matters to each client is vital to serving them well. If your firm does a great job of everything, then you probably don't have to bother with measurement. But, based on many interviews with clients of consulting firms, most firms do not perform consistently well on many important client needs.

þ Can you identify today the areas in which your firm performs well and which areas are weak from your clients' perspective?

þ Do you know exactly what your firm's main strengths are from your clients' perspective?

þ Do you know specifically how your firm rates in comparison to your main competitors from your clients' perspective?

If you can answer yes, confidently, to these questions, then you probably don't have any need to measure client satisfaction. But if you cannot, the only way you will find out is to ask and measure.

Client satisfaction is driven by many factors. Among the most important in general are:

You may have a number of other factors to add to this basic list. To truly understand your firm's client satisfaction performance, you need client feedback on each of these performance elements.

Even though the majority of your clients may agree on the set of factors that contribute most to overall satisfaction, each person is likely to define the factors differently and to give them different priorities. What you know about one client may have little value for guiding your actions with other clients.

This means that even if you get clients to rate your firm on each of the above performance factors, you still won't have enough information to act. Action in this case includes steps to preserve and build on strengths as well as to correct any weak areas.

You need to understand what a client means by each performance factor. One client may define responsiveness as quick return of calls. Another may see it as frequent meetings and contacts initiated by your project managers. Yet another may have no specific definition of responsiveness but relies instead upon a problem instance as the basis for the rating.

Asking clients about project specifics is the only way to get at this level of knowledge. Consulting firms generally are reluctant to ask clients about the firm's performance and those who do ask tend to shift into a sales mode whenever a client expresses a negative view. What is needed is a neutral means of probing clients for performance specifics — a job that nearly always requires a number of iterations over several projects or milestones.

Measurement involves both asking for feedback and interpreting the feedback relative to some type of reference or standard. Asking is not enough. To understand what the response means, you need to have a basis for comparing that response either to responses from others or to some external standard. Here is how we go about measuring client satisfaction:

The first step is to ask clients what they mean by a performance factor such as "responsiveness" and how they rank it relative to other factors such as technical quality, budget and schedule. The set of questions probing an issue like this is a measurement process since it yields not just a better understanding of each client individual but allows the client's satisfaction metrics to be compared to other firms.

Comparison is vital. Your client may give you a "4" rating for responsiveness on a 0-10 (low-high) scale. This seems low and you may want to respond with some practice changes or project manager training. But suppose that you also learned that a "4" rating is at the top of ratings given by this client, and other clients generally. The real message in this case is that no firm is as responsive as clients want but your firm is as good as the best firms. Your action decision with this knowledge may well be to make responsiveness a strategic priority as a way to improve your firm's competitiveness. Getting the rating up to a "5", an average rating in other situations, may give your firm a much stronger position with clients.

We can now turn to the two fundamental requirements for a firm that is thinking about measuring client satisfaction in the detailed manner just described.

Even if you agree on the importance of measuring client satisfaction, your firm's culture may not be caring enough to make the measurement sincere. Many clients express frustration that their consultants do not seem to care about anything beyond the technical quality of their work. One client even thought that some of the best firms view clients simply as a source of interesting work but as otherwise peripheral to their main interests. Does this describe your firm?

If so, you should not bother measuring client satisfaction. Asking about client priorities, concerns and interests is likely to be regarded as a meaningless gesture by many clients, reflecting adversely on the firm.

Your first step in considering whether to measure client satisfaction is to assess your firm's culture in terms of the priority it places on client needs. If your firm places top priority on internal factors, then you should not measure client satisfaction.

Many consulting firms today are deeply committed to their clients and have developed caring cultures with clients and employees at the center. If your firm is one of these, then the next decision step is willingness to act. If a client responds to your request for feedback and that feedback points clearly to a need for change, are you committed to acting on client feedback?

There is nothing worse than responding to a client's open feedback with inaction. Lack of action after you have asked for feedback is likely to be viewed by clients as indifference or insincerity. The message here is:

If you have read this far, chances are pretty good that your firm is among the growing number of firms that have both a strong commitment to clients and a willingness to act on client feedback. Asking your clients to provide feedback sends a message that your firm does care what clients have to say about the firm's performance. Your firm's actions based to client feedback, however, are the key to making this care real to your clients. Acting promptly and visibly will send an even stronger message to your clients that they are important to your firm. Even if your action in some cases is simply to meet with the client to review his or her concerns and explain why your firm acts as it does, the client will gain confidence that you are willing to listen and respond to a concern.

Client satisfaction is the result of many interactions by your firm. It is based on what you do, not what you say.

Even if you see the potential value of measuring client satisfaction, you may still wonder whether your firm should ask clients for detailed feedback on your firm's project performance. That is —

Will our clients respond favorably to our request for such feedback? Will asking for feedback produce a negative response from some?

We have addressed these questions in a separate commentary (please contact us for a copy of "How Will Clients Respond To Your Feedback Requests?").

For additional information on our Client Satisfaction Scorecard service, please contact us for a copy of "Client Satisfaction Scorecard Overview".

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