How to Pass Clients the Mic for Feedback

In 2016, Ensono’s Client Advisory Board (CAB) was created to incorporate our clients in our evaluation of the state of our business as well as the IT market as a whole. We have strong partnerships with clients, and the level of trust involved in our day-to-day relationships gives us a perfect opportunity to tap into them as our best resource.

Our CAB is comprised of IT leaders from 13 key clients, who provide insights needed to keep us constantly evolving. As a matter of fact, the client involvement of our board has led us to innovate and build new products so that clients succeed and do what they do best.

Opportunities to course correct

CAB is an opportunity for us to share the details of our strategy, where we plan to invest time, energy and financial resources, and have our clients give us feedback.  We want our time together to be very interactive, listening more than we speak, and the CAB members let us know where they believe we are on track with our strategy and where we need to adjust.  Additionally, it is great to have validation that we are doing the right things or course correct when needed. We are proud to be one of the few service partners who clients can rely on to listen and take action.

The survey matters

When we finished presenting all our ideas last year, we asked the clients to take some time to regroup on all we had discussed.  They liked all the ideas for new capability, but they felt like we trying to accomplish way too much, way too fast and wondered how we could ever get the resources done to meet the aggressive timelines.  We very soon found they were right and had to adjust the priorities of various projects and capabilities.  We just couldn’t hire people fast enough to accomplish everything we want to, as quickly as we had hoped.

Since last year, one client told us the way we were administering our Client Satisfaction survey wasn’t allowing us to get the full story and all the data we need to really focus on improvement.  In the past, we would either have our account manager go to the client’s office and ask them the questions face to face, or conduct the survey in a phone conversation.  Because the client either liked the account manager too much or just wanted to be polite, they didn’t always share all of the things they were unhappy about. 

After receiving that feedback, we’ve invested in tools from Satmetrix that allow us to conduct our survey online.  Using their tool and format we have a lot more granularity in the feedback we’ve received and it lets our clients be more transparent without fear of hurting someone’s feelings.

Opening the gift of feedback

Clients get to explain to our entire executive team, all at once, what they really need from Ensono to be successful.  They have our undivided attention and we consider their feedback to be a gift.  Additionally, having the ability to influence our product features and timing of major initiatives is often seen as an incredible opportunity for our clients to get what they need most out of their business – and ours. We look forward to all the positive changes this year’s CAB will bring.