Feedback is a source of insight which enables a firm to differentiate its brand in ways that matter to clients. Marketing and BD teams have an essential role to play.

1. 18 pm | October 2018
how to…
A
few days after a recent flight, a
feedback survey arrived in my
inbox. The airline told me they
would really value my views
because they continually strive to be
better. As my trip had been delayed, I
offered a few suggestions.
I might have hoped for a reply to
acknowledge the concerns. But, as with
many surveys, there was no follow-up.
It’s a problem we’re not immune to in
professional services. Many firms have
programmes described as client listening.
In practice, clients often feel their voice
isn’t genuinely heard.
Surveys should be the start of a
process to shape a stand-out client expe-
rience rather than an end in themselves.
This cycle is described by Bain and others
as ‘closing the loop’ – responding on a
client-by-client basis (the inner loop) and
then at a more strategic level (the outer
loop). The benefits go far beyond satisfac-
tion scores. Applying the insights intelli-
gently will help to differentiate the brand
and grow the firm (see diagram right).
It’s rare in professional services to
find a chief customer officer role with
authority over the end-to-end experience.
Feedback is often managed by the
Marketing and BD team and may not be
reflected in the strategies which practice
areas are setting.
There’s an opportunity to bring
people together to develop common goals
informed by the client’s perspective. The
client experience becomes the anchor
around which you engage practices and
functional teams. This is no small task
but positions Marketing and BD as
creating commercial value for the firm.
The inner loop: responding
tactically
If a client responds, they’ve given up time
to make their views known. Whatever the
feedback, positive or negative, it’s critical
Close the loop on
Feedback is a source of insight which enables a firm to differentiate
its brand in ways that matter to clients. Ben Sutton sets out the
essential role that marketing and BD teams have to play.
to follow up:
Make it easy for your firm to
respond – A simple one-page summary
with colour-coded scores can help the
relationship team to spot the most urgent
areas for action. They can then explore
the client’s comments further.
Particularly for key account relation-
ships, it’s worth consolidating the views
of multiple client contacts. Is the service
that different parts of the business
receive from your firm consistent? You
may spot patterns, such as your partner
group connecting well at executive level
while there are client concerns about day-
to-day delivery.
Managers and junior team members
can also be an untapped source of feed-
back. They generally have the most
ongoing client contact and will often
understand the barriers which prevent a
great client experience. Equally, they’re
well placed to hold colleagues account-
able for follow-up actions.
Prioritise ‘at risk’ clients – When
a client’s scores are particularly low, or if
they have an unresolved problem, it’s
important to act quickly. In some firms, a
member of the feedback team calls the
client to recognise the concerns and
probes to understand the underlying
issues. This signals that client comments
are being taken seriously and helps to
uncover the root causes.
For instance, if the client is concerned
about responsiveness, is this because the
team didn’t agree expectations up-front?
Or are they missing important deadlines?
The more you understand the issues, the
easier it is to tackle them.
The relationship leader should agree a
specific plan with the client. The practice
head can also offer advice and ensure that
actions are in place.
Capitalise on advocates – It can
be tempting to treat high-scoring clients
as a ‘box ticked’ in feedback terms. But
this overlooks the potential to actively
manage these advocates to help drive
business development. Opportunities
include:
• Unlocking potential to win more work:
By opening up a discussion about the
client’s broader needs and future prior-
ities, you’re likely to find opportunities
to introduce a wider range of services.
Often advocates are willing to connect
you with colleagues elsewhere in the
business.
Taking an accountancy example, a
highly engaged finance director could
introduce you to the HR director or
This article originally
appeared in PM
magazine. For
further details go to
www.pmforum.co.uk

2. pm | October 2018 19
how to…
client feedback
head of M&A to discuss advisory needs.
Cross-serving advocates is sometimes
overlooked in favour of pursuing
prospects, even though studies suggest
it costs four to ten times more to
acquire a new client.
• Helping you build relationships with
prospects: A client advocate could
provide a case study, testimonial or
referral. They can also help to promote
you to prospects and other clients at
events, particularly if they’re carefully
paired with specific targets.
Ambitious clients are often willing to
get involved because it raises their
profile in their own organisation and
with professional communities.
Follow up with indifferent clients –
Between the advocates and ‘at risk’
clients are those with neutral scores.
While they’re on the fence today, they
could become future advocates if actively
managed. If not, they might switch
advisers. To understand if there’s poten-
tial to win over a client, you can ask them
questions like:
• What’s the most important thing we
could change to make your score closer
to a 10?
• How could we have performed differ-
ently?
Reinforce the commitment – An
action charter is a tangible way to demon-
strate the firm’s commitment to act.
Working on the basis of ‘you talked, we
listened’, this one-page summary allows
the relationship team to discuss with the
client the key actions they’re taking.
When retendering, pitching for addi-
tional work or producing a year-end value
report, it’s also worth emphasising how
the team has enhanced the service by
taking the client’s feedback seriously.
The outer loop: responding
strategically
As you gather more feedback, common
themes will emerge. The insights help to
highlight firm-wide issues and opportuni-
ties to improve the client experience.
Some of these won’t just be about good
practice but, if fixed, could help the firm
with our firm? What are our strengths
and weaknesses?
• What are the most frequent remedial
actions we’re taking after surveys?
• Which parts of the firm are delivering
an excellent experience? How can we
learn from them?
• Which aspects of our service do clients
value most? Where are they willing to
pay a premium?
Colleagues on the front line will have
useful views to add. Most firms have a
few ‘client service stars’ known for their
client-centricity. Functional specialists
should be part of the discussion too – for
instance, there may be underlying tech-
nology, training or operational issues.
Involving people in the problem solving
engages them personally in focusing on
the client experience.
A workshop format can help teams to
prioritise changes which will make the
biggest impact for clients and provide a
positive return for the firm. The feedback
programme team has a valuable role in
co-ordinating the working groups. They
should also keep the number of major
initiatives manageable – it’s better to
select one or two projects at a time and
execute them well.
Prove the commercial link – If
the objective is to encourage the business
to change processes and invest in the
Net Promoter Score
Used across many sectors, Net Promoter Score (NPS) involves using a single
question as a measure of client loyalty: How likely is it that you would recommend
us to a colleague (or, in B2C markets, a friend)?
Based on the scores it splits clients into three clear groups, each requiring a
distinct follow-up strategy. There’s a focus on increasing the number of clients
willing to promote you while also reducing detractors. NPS has its pros and cons
when applied in professional services and it’s generally used alongside other
metrics.
to retain more clients, deepen relation-
ships and increase profitability. There are
also word-of-mouth benefits from having
more brand advocates.
The themes will range from discrete
client ‘pain points’ to broader areas where
there’s potential to offer more value. For
instance, are billing problems frustrating
clients at the end of each engagement? Or
are they happy with core service delivery
but not getting wider ideas to help them
develop their businesses?
Outer loop issues are more structural
in nature, cut across multiple teams and
are therefore on a less immediate
timescale than the inner loop.
Identify trends – While it’s rela-
tively easy to report on the numbers, it’s
more impactful to understand the
reasons behind the scores. Knowing that
a particular team scores 7 out of 10 for
value or another is consistently highly
rated for project management doesn’t in
itself explain why. If positive and negative
points are already tagged in each survey,
it’s easier to spot clusters of similar
responses. Clients’ verbatim comments,
particularly from in-depth executive
interviews, help to give more context.
Collaborate and focus – To build a
deeper understanding of what clients are
telling you, it’s worth reflecting on ques-
tions like:
• How do clients view their experience

3. 20 pm | October 2018
how to…
areas clients see as important, the busi-
ness case must be clear. The leadership
team needs to recognise the commercial
benefits of taking action and the risks if
they don’t. Historically in professional
services, feedback programmes have
sometimes been perceived as a ‘nice to
have’.
A starting point is to analyse feedback
alongside billings and other financial
data. A few measures of financial impact
are:
• Revenue at risk: This involves showing
the revenues linked to each group of
clients. If you’re using the Net
Promoter Score, you may focus on
detractors (with scores between 0-6 out
of 10) and show that £x million of the
firm’s revenues depend on clients who
may defect to another provider. (It can
also be insightful to show revenues
linked to clients who haven’t been
surveyed at all.)
• Incremental value of engaged clients:
Based on existing data, you can quan-
tify the increase in recovery rate or
realisation from more satisfied clients.
It may be that if a client moves from an
8 to a 9 out of 10 for satisfaction, their
profitability increases by (for example)
10% and average revenue by 15%. By
extension you can estimate the total
financial impact – if all the ‘8’ clients
became ‘9’s, it could potentially add £x
million to the firm’s revenues.
• Relationship breadth: Advocates are
likely to buy more services from you
and spend more on average. For
instance, you may be able to demon-
strate that they typically buy 2.5 serv-
ices and spend £100,000, compared to
firm-wide averages of 1.5 and £50,000.
Cross-serving more clients is part of
many firms’ strategies.
For each improvement project, it’s also
important to illustrate the potential bene-
fits in terms of client engagement,
employee engagement and brand differ-
entiation.
Use the client’s voice –
Storytelling can help to create an
emotional connection with leaders. If,
say, the CEO of a major client is consid-
ering moving work because of quality
concerns – and you can share their
comments – this will probably hit home
more than a decrease in the average satis-
faction score from 8.7 to 8.4.
Communicating the change
Communication is the final part of fully
closing the loop. People across your firm
will be interested in the feedback themes
and the support available to help them
improve the experience. For clients it’s
about demonstrating that their views
have been acted on. Research by
Customer Champions suggests that just
5% of organisations believe they’re doing
this well.
Engage the whole firm – It’s
important to make the feedback relevant
to teams across the organisation. Firm
and practice leaders should understand
and champion the action themes. Those
on the front line will want to know how
their part of the business is performing.
Involving people at all levels, not just
partners, gets junior team members into
good client service habits early.
Some ideas include:
• Build discussions on feedback insights
into team meetings, ‘lunch and learn’
sessions, etc
• Encourage everyone to identify one
thing they’ll do differently to improve
the client experience
• Share great client relationship stories
and recognise the people involved,
potentially offering incentives or
awards
• Promote tips and resources that will
help teams to address the feedback
themes.
Show clients that you’re listening –
A few ways to demonstrate that actions
are underway are:
• Send surveyed clients a regular update
on the changes you’ve made in
response to recent feedback
• Include your client experience commit-
ments in pitches, BD conversations,
client review meetings and annual
reports
• Feature client success stories on your
website.
In many firms, there’s potential to learn
more from feedback. It’s a source of
insight which ultimately enables you to
differentiate your brand in ways that
matter to clients. Marketing and BD
teams have an essential role in
galvanising the firm into action.
Net Promoter Score and NPS are registered
trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred
Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.
Ben Sutton leads the global
client experience team at
Grant Thornton International
Ltd.
Running a closed-loop
workshop
The objective of each session is to
review the feedback insights, identify
root causes and propose ideas which
will enhance the client experience.
A group of around eight to ten
people from a mix of client-facing and
functional roles works well. Each
session may last two to three hours.
Step one: Clarify the issues
• Review the feedback messages
and associated client comments
• Understand areas which clients
have said are most important to them.
Where are the biggest performance
gaps?
• Identify where competitors are
outperforming you
• Explore which improvements are
aligned to the firm’s strategic priorities
• Agree one to three areas to
discuss further.
Step two: Explore priority issues
• Discuss the underlying reasons
why the firm isn’t meeting client
expectations in each area
• Clarify the challenge. Is it a ques-
tion of resources, skills, knowl-
edge…?
• Identify what would help you to
resolve the issue
• Consider if there are positive feed-
back themes you can capitalise on.
Could they inform new propositions?
Step three: Design potential solu-
tions
• Break into sub-groups to generate
ideas, drawing on good practice inter-
nally and in the market
• Expand on the most promising
ideas. How would you put them into
practice?
Step four: Prioritise ideas and
agree actions
• Discuss the potential solutions and
reach a consensus on which one(s) to
take forward
• Agree responsibilities and next
actions. Who needs to be involved?
Can you pilot the idea in one part of
the business or with a small group of
clients? How could you involve advo-
cates?
To take this concept further, you can
run similar sessions with selected
clients. They’ll appreciate that the end
goal is to improve their experience.