Making the move to always-on client listening

Client listening is how professional services firms measure the strength of their client relationships, by gathering feedback from their current and prospective clients.

Firms do this in a number of ways. A traditional approach has been to periodically research a selected group of clients, using surveys or interviews. Alternatively, they might gather informal feedback by talking to individual clients. Or they might focus on unsolicited feedback like emails, complaints, reviews.

Rarely are two client listening programmes the same. Research by The Wicker Group in the US highlighted partner resistance as the number 1 reason client listening struggles to get going. Instead partners rely on their individual relationships to surface day-to-day opportunities and issues.

This “I know my clients” approach may work at an individual level. But it deprives the firm of the centralised insights it needs to differentiate its brand, win new work and strengthen all client relationships.

That means that firms investing in robust client listening programmes are still ahead of the curve. Read on to discover how your firm can create that competitive advantage.

Traditionally, client listening has been a manual and project-based process, focused on researching clients. Partners would 'opt-in' their clients to an annual research project, like a survey or key account interviews.

Once the research was complete, the results would be analysed by hand and then reported back to the individual partners. A summary would also be shared with the wider firm.

With the research sample biassed towards happy clients, and the results constrained within static PowerPoint slides, it was hard to use results to inform day-to-day actions. Without this link between insights and actions, it was hard to demonstrate the RoIe of traditional client listening.

Many firms became trapped between believing that they should listen to clients, but not being able to justify the cost of doing it

Have you ever complained that “we don’t have enough data, but neither do we do enough with the data we’ve got”?

It’s a common problem with a narrow research-led approach to client listening, caused by:

It’s not uncommon for each feedback project to have its own data source and reports, often managed by different teams. Our ‘Future of Client Listening’ Research discovered that feedback data is most commonly stored in ‘Individual files’. Firms have separate spreadsheets for each survey, separate word docs for each transcript, plus several summary reports in PowerPoint or pdf.

With different people doing their own thing, just tracking down and combining the data is hard work. Then you have to “get out the highlighters” to trawl through the open text comments. This data is a goldmine of insights, but having to manually ‘tag’ the comments is a slow and subjective process.

Traditionally feedback results have been shared in static PowerPoint or pdf reports. While these can make the insights easy to digest, they quickly become 'old news' as fee-earners hear new comments that support old assumptions. As a result, the insights fail to inform individual behaviours and future decision-making.

The net result of these challenges is that traditional client listening has often failed to impact on client experiences. Firms struggled to close the loop and show their client base how they have responded to what they’ve heard from them.

Partners knew client listening was important. But without a clear ROI, it was hard to make the case for a more robust client listening programme.

It didn’t make sense to limit client listening to formal research. A client-centric approach would be to unify all the signals that clients are sharing.

Insights can be found in public reviews and testimonials, informal feedback and complaints. Even operational data like billing trends and if/when they pay their bills can be an indicator of client satisfaction.

In a competitive market momentum can be the difference between success and stagnation. This momentum comes from being able to discover and respond to client needs faster than your competitors.

MyCustomerLens helps you achieve that by creating a Feedback Flywheel. This flywheel is at the heart of the always-on client listening approach.

Rather than treating client listening as a series of isolated projects, the Feedback Flywheel links activities together to generate continuous momentum. It creates a virtuous cycle of growth, where insights lead to actions and action generate new insights.

Always-on client listening isn’t for everybody. It’s for forward-looking firms that want to make agile and evidence based decisions that help them compete on client experience.

Yes? Then always-on client listening is what you’ve been waiting for.

Always-on client listening is about actionable insights, not tools. So we’ll start with a conversation about the insights your firm needs to make more agile and evidence-based decisions. We’ll help you clarify your vision for your client listening programme, and the impact it can have on your firm.

Then we’ll work backwards to look at the feedback and signals you collect now, and any gaps you feel need filling straight away.

The beauty of the MyCustomerLens platform is its flexibility. You start where you are now, and evolve it if and when you need to. You don’t have to scope - or pay for - features you don’t need yet.

We recommend starting small. Implement quickly, generate early impact, and then grow your client listening programme as engagement expands.

If your firm isn’t ready to move to always-on client listening, we’ll say so. We’ll also share any advice or resources we have to help you make the case for more client listening.

We love to chat about client listening, actionable insights and how firms can deliver great client experiences.

Click the link below to organise an initial conversation with Paul.