Client feedback doesn’t work

by | Feb 1, 2017

In a recent survey, more than half of Client Service Directors said they didn’t get full value out of the client reviews they had carried out.

Why should this be?

It’s partly to do with the way the information is collected, and partly with what happens to it after it’s collected.

The great majority of information is collected through client surveys. Often these are purely numerical (“rate our responsiveness on a scale of 1 to 10”) and provide only data, no qualitative responses at all. If surveys do have qualitative questions, they are often cursory (“If you rated us under 4, please explain why”) and rarely dig under the surface for the client’s real views.

Once the data is in, what happens to it is rarely designed to make a difference. Client owners are often interested to read the stories and see the data, but they don’t see it as a call to action and most surveys end up on the shelf. There’s little focus on learning and it’s rare (barring the occasional witch hunt) for client owners to be take responsibility for making improvements.

The result? Sceptical, over-surveyed clients, un-enthralled client owners, and no improvement to client service.