Three top tips for acting on feedback from Client Listening

Client Talk
6 days ago
4 min read

“What gets measured gets managed.” We’ve all heard this phrase, haven’t we? For those of us in marketing and business development, success is something we think about constantly. Demonstrating ROI is a recurring theme in professional services firms, yet measuring success for individual activities is notoriously difficult. Growth rarely comes from one isolated initiative, it’s the result of many moving parts, making it hard to pinpoint what had the biggest impact. In this article, we think about ROI in the context of one very specific activity: client listening.

How we measure the success of client listening programmes

Many client listening programmes measure success based on input. That could be how many clients have been reached through the programme. For programmes which include quantitative research, percentages can be generated, and numbers like the NPS score can help show year-on-year progress. For programmes which focus on interviews, numbers can also be generated: percentages of key accounts reached, or the number of clients responding positively to being asked to take part.

There are then the positive comments received from clients, that they were pleased to be asked and that they value the approach. Those can be captured and provide an additional nuance of success. These narratives are often used to get internal buy-in to client listening.

However, do any of these metrics really measure the success of client listening programmes? The advantage of client listening is that, if measurement is done well, it is possible to measure ROI. The investment is clear: be that the amount spent per interview with an external interviewer, or the amount of time spent by the internal listener on the interview (with perhaps a pro rata for the amount spent on training them added in).

The return? Well, if a shift is made from input to output, this can also be measured.

Turning feedback into action

Qualitative interviews often attract the greatest resource investment (as they are 1:1 rather than 1:many). They also offer the biggest opportunity for impact, if firms act on what they hear. And that’s where many programmes stumble: turning feedback into action.

All client listening interviews should generate actions. At one end of the spectrum are specific remedial actions, and at the other are the actions needed to amplify a positive. All along the spectrum are things that can be done that benefit both the client and the firm, and ultimately that relationship. However, when we speak to our clients, we often hear that it is acting on the feedback where firms fall down.

Here are three top tips to help you act on your feedback

1. Record and Track Actions

It sounds simple, but too often the focus on input means outputs get forgotten. Firms that embrace a “You said, we did” approach have an advantage. Reporting changes at a firm level is good; reporting at an individual level is even better.

If you use internal listeners, especially fee-earners, tracking actions also helps monitor listening effectiveness. Where actions are lacking, targeted training or coaching can close the gap.

2. Celebrate Actions and Measure Output, Not Input

What headlines do you share internally? Is it the number of respondents, or the number of opportunities created as a result of listening? Success stories tied to tangible outcomes resonate far more than raw participation stats. These success stories need to focus not only on the praise that has been lavished on the firm, but also on the constructive criticism, with praise being turned instead on the opportunity to learn internally.

3. Use Actions to Build Psychological Safety

Psychological safety often gets confused for other things. Amy Edmonson herself has shared how firms often use the concept to describe the ability to bring ones whole self to work. This is not what the concept is about. Instead, it is about how safe is it to fail. Client listening tests this in its purest form:

How openly is negative feedback shared?
How willing are professionals to change based on what they hear?

Without a culture that embraces iteration and learning from mistakes, actions stall. Building psychological safety ensures feedback leads to meaningful change. Being honest about how possible that is within the culture of the firm is critical to the success of client listening.

Take a moment to reflect on how your firm closes the feedback loop.

In our last Insight Community Call we shared an exercise which you can use to start to get a sense of how successful your programmes are. We would invite you to give this a go in your firm.

Choose three pieces of client feedback your firm has received and trace what happened next: