I think we all get the importance of trying to maintain positive client relationships. It’s a key part of this concept called Delivery Excellence. Especially in a consulting relationship, there’s really a difference between work product check-ins and statuses vs. “how is the relationship?” and “is value being delivered?”
Thinking about client satisfaction means considering (and keeping a pulse on) how your clients feel about working with you and your organization; not just after the project is over, but starting where we first pick up the ball and periodically throughout.
Teams are usually pretty good at understanding if we’re on track with the work itself that we’re tasked with doing, but often we’re not as good at picking up on how the collaboration toward those technical outcomes is working well or if we’re falling short of expectations (and not communicating enough along the way.) So, trying to keep these goals in mind can really help to avoid issues and cultivate some positive capital in case something does start to go awry… so we can better address it together.
Client Satisfaction Approach
So let’s talk about what this looks like generally. Of course, every project and client is different, but you'll need a plan for trying to get that feedback and another for how to do something with the feedback.
In line with the idea that we don’t want to wait until the end to become aware of these concerns, think about the ways you could bake in the feedback opportunities across your engagement. That could involve being very deliberate about creating those opportunities. Sometimes we need to try and elicit both the good as well as the not-so-good feedback when it’s not-so-obvious. I’d really like to emphasize: if you’re asking for this information, you have to be prepared for whatever answers come back; not only for what you want to hear.
You’ll then need to be able to talk about what you’re going to do with the feedback. It’s not going to be enough to just nod and be appreciative for your client’s candor. As project teams and delivery organizations, we need to:
- track it
- agree and assign ownership for it
- follow up on it (amongst yourselves and with the client)
Following up will involve reporting back on progress towards change, improvements, or any other actions. These may be internally managed only, but in a lot of cases, there are going to be things you’re working on with client visibly.