Mission Critical: Client Perception & Loyalty
You can have the very best products and services on the planet but if clients don't think you care or your service sucks - you fast become irrelevant.
Reasons clients stop buying from you.
"Those who own the voice of their customer own the market"
"Data wins arguments"
We find that too often companies fail to seek regular feedback from their clients about their products and services. Those that do survey clients, often don't feed that back widely across their staff and analyse the good the bad and the ugly to assist their continuous improvement.
Bain & Co research of 362 Companies
Your clients can and will offer so much information and valuable insights if you create the feedback mechanisms to regularly engage with them. Going a step further and also enabling a company culture internally that will prioritise & analyse the feedback & then use it to enable constant improvement (training, service levels, process, products, channel to market, pricing - the list goes on) is truely a game changer.
It takes courage to do this.
In reality most businesses;
Don't seek real client feedback.
Those that do, don't use the feedback internally to improve.
Don't share with their clients a summary of feedback nor communicate what they are working on the improve in the future.
Don't make it as a KPI for senior leaders in the business.
Don't realise there is a big gap between how they perceive their products and services in the market & how their clients really perceive them.
Often explain negative feedback away as "unrealistic clients" rather than seek to identify broader overall patterns.
Sometimes want to actively work at "improving client service" before even conducting an initial survey as they are fearful of feedback.
Don't think to ask their clients what they might want or need in the future.
Don't seek business intelligence insights about what clients are expecting over the coming 12-24 months in terms of change, challenges, opportunities.
The good news is that this does not cost a lot in terms of time and money and certainly has a very high return on investment. Given that so few make this a priority it is possible to create momentum & some real competitive advantage by simply starting to seek regular feedback.
One of the surveys we deploy across our client businesses annually is the Net promoter Score survey. It is a tool that offers benchmarking, is easy to deploy and adds dollars to the bottom line by reducing client churn and validating value and likelihood of referrals.
It is but one survey that can & should be used to support regular client reviews, feedback sessions & improvements to business processes.
Highly engaged teams care deeply for clients, go the extra mile to deliver outcomes which in turn leads to ongoing loyalty and active referrals.
Contributed by Kendall Langston, Partner.