“We all need feedback, that’s how we improve.”
Client loyalty is critical to ensuring the long-term success of your business. But how do you know your clients value the benefits you promised them? You could assume they do, but just because your clients have stayed with you doesn’t mean they value your service. Could you achieve an even deeper relationship with your clients? Do your clients value you enough to recommend you to others?
There is only one way to be truly sure: ask them.
In this article, we will talk you, step by step, through the process of gaining feedback from your clients: the different ways to go about this, how to ask the right questions and what to do with the information you receive.
But first, let’s look at the benefits of obtaining feedback from your clients.
Gaining client feedback can be a powerful tool in helping you to improve business processes, which in turn may lead to better client relationships. Feedback helps provide direction for the business and information on how to obtain a competitive advantage. It can:
Help you understand what your clients value and want from your services.
Tell you the expected level of service that will keep your clients happy but is within your operational budgets.
Give you a way to test new service offerings to your clients or new client segments.
Illustrate whether improvements to your service have improved client loyalty.
There are six steps to gathering and using client feedback:
Understand why you are seeking feedback.
Decide which approach you will take.
Gather the feedback.
Analyse the results.
Use the results to improve your service.
Measure improvements.
In this article, we will give suggestions of ways to tackle each step but note that any client feedback structure you operate should be tailored to your own service offering to your specific client segments. Adopting a generic approach will most likely not deliver the specific results which will provide the most value to your business.
It is important to ask yourself “why” before undertaking a feedback process. The more time you take to understand your research objectives, the more this will pay dividends later.
It is also worth mentioning to prepare yourself as feedback can hurt! Sometimes the hardest feedback can be the most beneficial but, most importantly, your business needs to be open to honest feedback. If your clients take the trouble to give you feedback it will improve your service and relationship with them. Make sure you are ready to listen before you ask.
You can check through the list of considerations below to see if you’re ready for the next step. Score yourself on the following: yes, no or maybe.
How did you score? If it was mainly ‘yes’, then you are in the right place to continue the process. If you scored highly in the ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ sections, then you may wish to pause and consider your approach to this exercise. Obtaining feedback is something you may only have one chance to carry out effectively, so you need to ensure you are prepared and ready.
Focus on your promise
The key to understanding client satisfaction and degree of loyalty is to focus your search for feedback on whether or not you are meeting your clients' expectations. An initial point of focus for your feedback, therefore, should be regarding the promises you make to your clients.
The impact of feedback on stakeholders
Gathering feedback gives you a chance to demonstrate to your various stakeholders, such as your clients, staff and suppliers, that you care about your business and deliver on your promises. However, some of your stakeholders may see your intentions differently. For example, will your staff see the feedback as a potential threat?
Is there a particular issue within your business you would like to address? Perhaps you want to increase client retention rates, or maybe you want to better understand your clients. It is worth engaging with all your staff to discuss what information would be valuable within this research. Write down some specific objectives you could use when assessing the feedback.
You could consider the following questions:
Are there specific client segments we wish to research and, if so, why?
Do we know where we add value and where we don’t?
Do we know what our clients value and what they don’t?
Are there opportunities we would like to understand better?
Documenting this purpose will help you to decide on your approach to seeking feedback.
Section two: choose an approach
There are various methods of seeking client feedback, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The quality of the feedback may depend on the method chosen, so it’s worth thinking about the approach that best suits your firm’s circumstances.
Consider the following:
Here are some different methods you could consider, together with their pros and cons:
Using a combination
You can use a combination of techniques with different client types. For example with your high-value clients you may wish to spend more time and effort on one-to-one interactions whilst using lower-cost approaches with less valuable clients. The method that you use should be determined by the importance you place on the outcome.
Each approach to gaining feedback requires different preparation.
Designing a questionnaire
There are three options when it comes to questionnaires:
1. Structured questionnaires
2. Semi-structured questionnaires
3. Unstructured interviews
Structured questionnaires
Taking a structured approach allows you to gather quantitative data across a range of topics and respondents with little need for direct interviews. Typically, respondents will need to choose from a set of pre-determined responses. For example:
Q. How often has your Relationship Manager conducted a review with you over the past year?
A. Weekly
B. Monthly
C. Quarterly
D. Annually
E. Never
The benefit of this sort of questionnaire is that results can be easily tabulated and analysed. They are also low-cost and can be carried out online, by email or by post. However, the tick-the-box answers negate any ability to probe into responses, so they can be fairly limiting.
Semi-structured questionnaires
These allow a mix of open and closed questions, providing a greater opportunity to probe certain responses. They can also be carried out online or by post and can uncover more behavioural information. On the negative side, the qualitative answers to open questions may make the information harder to analyse.
Unstructured interviews
These are best undertaken by a trained interviewer who will stimulate an in-depth discussion on a given topic. They can uncover a range of factual and emotional responses and can give an in-depth insight into your business in a way that a structured questionnaire could not. However, due to the broad range of responses, the results can prove difficult to analyse and carrying out the interviews requires skill and experience.
Whichever structure you choose, your questions must complement your approach and, most importantly, must provide useful information. Remember that the type of questionnaire you use will significantly influence how you analyse your data.
Do’s and don’ts:
In general, don’t:
Use complicated or misleading language
Lead your respondents with loaded or biased questions
Use a confusing or illogical layout that could dissuade people from completing your survey
For telephone surveys:
Keep questions simple
Keep the interview length short
Develop an introduction outlining the purpose
Simplify the wording: keep it clear, concise and jargon-free
For face-to-face surveys:
Make the interview interesting to keep everyone’s attention
Develop an introduction outlining the purpose of your research
Combine open-ended and closed-ended questions
Continually probe using ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions
Make your survey flexible – use it as a guide
For self-completion surveys (online, post or email):
Make it straightforward
Simplify questions to be unambiguous
Keep questions ‘closed’ so that they will work within tick-boxes
Explain the purpose of the survey to respondents
Top tips for different research approaches
In this section we will consider the different approaches in more detail, looking specifically at:
Focus groups
Client councils
Face-to-face interviews
Online surveys
Telephone surveys
These need to be well managed and require a skilled interviewer who can ensure that feelings, as well as facts, emerge from the discussion. A focus group has a beginning, a middle and an end, and each stage needs to be planned.
This is the time to explain the purpose of the session including any ground rules for discussion and to inform the group that their responses will be kept confidential. Inform them as to why they were invited, explain why you are taking notes, and then consider an icebreaker to ensure that everyone in the group is involved and motivated to join the discussion.
Ensure that the questions you want to ask are open-ended and well-conceived before you begin. Use this opportunity to ask probing questions. You will also need to make sure that points are captured clearly so you can refer back to them later. Try to ensure everyone in the discussion is able to express their thoughts.
To conclude the group session ask everyone to briefly state their most important point or issue and then sum these up to ensure you have accurately represented their views. Don’t forget to thank the group for their valued participation and explain how you will use the data.
These can serve a similar function to focus groups but, with this approach, the same group meets more frequently to discuss selected topics. To set up a client council you will need to work out whom to invite from your client segments, or perhaps run different councils.
Take care that the opinions of a few don’t override the whole group and think about mixing your loyal clients with those whom you might find more challenging. This mix may make for a more useful discussion. Ensure there is structure to the meeting and detail the agenda in advance to attendees so they can have an opportunity to prepare discussion points.
Make sure you follow up each meeting with a thank you and a note of the key points to emerge. Members will want to know that the conversation was worthwhile and useful.
Make sure you are fully prepared before the interview and can clearly explain the purpose of the session if asked. Plan your time wisely, confirm the research is confidential (or ask their permission to quote their feedback) and remember to probe into attitudes and feelings, as these add depth to your research findings. Don’t forget to thank the interviewee at the end and summarise the key points.
These can be a cost-effective way of gathering feedback from many respondents with the process managed by an administrator. See our article Customer surveys for a full insight into how to carry these out with your clients.
These require the same degree of thought and preparation as online surveys but it is always good practice to pre-book a convenient time for the survey; don’t phone clients without warning.
Once you have carried out the surveys you can reap the benefits by collating your results into a format that will allow you to consider the impact on those areas important to you. The best outcome will be that you will be able to answer the questions you formed at the start of the exercise.
If you used structured questions, you will find it relatively easy to collate the answers. Tabulate the number of responses to each question along with the scores. In this way, you can see the percentage of respondents for each question. Use graphs or graphics to bring the data alive when sharing it with others.
This poses a greater challenge as it needs a considered eye to look at the results and spot themes or trends.
When you embarked on your feedback programme you probably had some very specific points on which you wanted to focus. If so, the results should reflect the more specific nature of the questions you would have asked and conclusions should be fairly apparent. If your research was broader – for example, you wanted to discover your clients’ general level of engagement – you will need to draw out the key messages and themes and understand what they mean for your business.
You could plot the key themes against a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). See the example below for an idea of how to do this:
To use the feedback effectively you need to prioritise it and develop an action plan. You might find it useful to use a simple priority grid comparing impact against quality, such as the one below. Plotting each feedback theme onto a grid like this can help you deduce which pieces of feedback to celebrate or tackle.
Communicate the results
Think about how you’ll communicate the results of your feedback to your key stakeholders. Thank clients who participated and give them details of the findings and what you intend to do about them. This reinforces the importance of their contribution and encourages them to provide valuable feedback in future.
You will also need to discuss feedback with your staff. Never use feedback as a weapon but use it as an opportunity to engage with your staff to improve processes. Involving your people in the decision-making process will improve staff engagement. Collaborating with them on how to improve the situation means you stand a better chance of getting the ideas implemented. When you have settled on your required improvements, give each improvement an owner and incentivise them to deliver on it.
You will need to monitor the changes you’ve made to see if they produce the desired outcome. You may have a very specific outcome in mind, perhaps improving part of your client programme, and if so it may be easy to notice the impact the changes are making. If the changes are broader, you may need to put several monitors in place to check progress. A random sampling of clients may help provide some interim feedback.
Continuous improvement
As you improve your business your competitors will respond by improving theirs. As a result, client expectations will continue to rise, so to remain successful you will need to improve your client experience by constantly monitoring delivery.
While client feedback can be used ad hoc, using it continually will ensure that you can measure and implement improvements over time. Clients like to see a firm that is striving to improve. Researching the same themes over time will give you in-depth insights into the impact the changes have made. Be aware that you may not always see the impact in the short term; it may take a significant number of your clients to complete a whole business cycle (for example, a complete year of reviews) or enough clients to experience a new service for you to see a statistically significant result.
Demonstrating a genuine desire to optimise your business services for your clients through engaging with them for feedback is a tangible way to illustrate their importance to you. The hope is that this, in turn, will encourage a loyal long-term relationship, fulfilling (or exceeding) their expected level of service and providing advice with true value. The importance of building and retaining loyal clients cannot be overstated and it will be your ability to meet your client’s expectations ‘as promised’ that will determine their loyalty to you. By leveraging customer feedback effectively, you can position yourself for long-term success in an increasingly competitive market.
Undertaking a feedback process is lengthy but beneficial. However, you need to establish the main purpose of your feedback before setting the wheels in motion. Start thinking about which questions your business would benefit from most by being answered.
Consider setting up a simple automated feedback system on your website. Your website technician could set this up and it is a straightforward way to see your clients’ satisfaction, along with any other clients and visitors using your website. Search online for “feedback management tools” to see available options.
Consult with your staff to find out what feedback from your clients they would find most useful. Engaging with staff from the outset is a great way to make the process positive and not fearful for them.
If you have not already read Effective segmentation consult this before starting your feedback process. Segmenting your client base can ensure that your questions are tailored to specific client groups and therefore ensure that the information gained can be of most value.
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