Take off with a client listening pilot
A client listening pilot gives you an opportunity to test both questions and processes, to gain an insight into client sentiment and to garner internal support for a wider programme. But once you’ve sold the benefits internally, how do you go about making it happen?
Take off with a client listening pilot
A client listening pilot gives you an opportunity to test both questions and processes, to gain an insight into client sentiment and to garner internal support for a wider programme. But once you’ve sold the benefits internally, how do you go about making it happen?
Embarking on a client listening programme can appear like a daunting task, especially if it’s a new activity for your firm. There are so many questions to answer. Who should we ask? How should we ask? What should we ask? What are we going to do with all the data we gather? How do I get reluctant partners on board? To name but a few!
A client listening pilot is a great way to get started. It gives you an opportunity to test the questions and your processes, to begin to gain an insight into client sentiment and to garner internal support for a wider programme. It may be that you already ask for feedback via an online survey and want to evolve your programme to include interviews and a pilot approach helps here too.
Once you’ve sold the benefits of a client listening pilot internally, how do you go about making it happen?
Start small, but be brave
We would suggest your pilot features 10 clients (larger firms might want to include more), and these can all be from a certain office, or sit within a certain sector or service line; or you could ask clients who have a broader experience of your firm.
What you mustn’t do though, is ask 10 clients you know are going to give you glowing feedback. Be brave and include a few tricky ones too - it might seem uncomfortable but it’s from their feedback that you’re likely to get the most valuable insight.
Identify a sponsor
Strong internal sponsorship will help your pilot no end. The sponsor should be fully behind the adoption of client listening and their role is to champion the pilot internally. If you are focusing your pilot on a particular geography or business area, the sponsor could sit within that part of the business, or it could be a board-level individual such as your head of marketing or even your managing partner.
The sponsor will play a role in promoting the benefits of the exercise to gain buy-in to (hopefully) expand the programme across your firm. Appoint an engaging and influential sponsor who can corral and persuade those aforementioned reluctant partners to get on board with client listening.
A word of advice here - you’re never going to get absolutely everyone behind client listening so work with the ones who are enthusiastic, and the others may be swayed later - or they may not - their loss!
“Client listening brings many benefits. It demonstrates integrity, stops you falling into a complacency trap where you think everything’s okay just because you haven’t heard otherwise, and provides you with some fantastic insight and marketing content.”
“Client listening brings many benefits. It demonstrates integrity, stops you falling into a complacency trap where you think everything’s okay just because you haven’t heard otherwise, and provides you with some fantastic insight and marketing content.”
Begin with the end in mind
When it comes to the questions, think about your overall objectives. What do you really want to find out from your clients? Also think about the type of questions you ask - interviews aren’t really suited to quantitative questions - reeling off a question then a load of options isn’t a great experience for your clients. Focus on open, qualitative questions and ask one quantitative question (net promoter score or client satisfaction) to give you a benchmark from which to improve.
Testing your questions in a pilot will give you an opportunity to make sure they’re giving you the insight you want and allows you to refine and adapt them before you speak to a wider audience.
Think about resourcing
Although a pilot is a small part of a larger programme of work, it is still resource intensive. If you want to run your pilot internally, think about who will conduct the interviews. If the person is client facing, you run the risk of client listening being quickly deprioritised in favour of fee earning work. Also, if they’re involved in delivering for the client they’re speaking to - will the client be completely open and honest?
If your marketing team are going to do the interviews, do they have the time to arrange and conduct the interviews, undertake the analysis and report on the findings? If so, that’s great, but if not, you might look to bring in external resource.
Rickard Luckin client listening pilot
Rickard Luckin worked with Anna Lake Consulting to launch a client listening pilot to sit alongside an annual client satisfaction survey. Matthew Rowe, head of marketing at Rickard Luckin, explains:
“As we all know, professional services firms thrive on the success of client relationships but in recent years it has become increasingly apparent that clients expect more than expertise. Levels of service satisfaction are now arguably more important than price.”
“We contacted Anna to conduct a pilot as we recognise gaining a greater understanding of what our clients think and value is crucial to our future success.
“Although we carry out annual NPS surveys they don’t offer the granular detail of one-to-one listening. Collecting client listening feedback will enable us to make more informed decisions, to focus our time and resources on what strengthens client relationships and delivers the best commercial outcomes, for us and our clients.”
Client listening brings many benefits to a firm. It demonstrates integrity, stops you falling into a complacency trap where you think everything’s okay just because you haven’t heard otherwise, and provides you with some fantastic insight and marketing content. Although it might seem like a daunting task, start with a pilot and your programme will take off from there.