Delivering high-quality service and client care should be some of a company's greatest priorities. Still, many of them fail to set up systems that ensure achieving high client satisfaction. Unsatisfied clients cost a lot. Research shows 51% of them will never return to the company after a negative experience, and on the other hand, it costs companies 5 times more to acquire a new client than to keep an existing one. For companies like Deloitte Consulting and Ernst & Young, roughly 70% to 80% of work in any one year comes from their existing clients.
Great service and happy clients should be any business’ main objectives. Measuring your clients’ satisfaction to find out where your company stands, and adjusting your finance and accounting service to better suit their needs, are the first steps you should take to ensure your business is here to grow and flourish, not stagnate and perish.
How to Measure Client Satisfaction
To measure the satisfaction of your clients, and find out what they want and how they feel about your company and service, you will need to simply, straightforward, ask them. Finance consulting and accounting companies usually don’t have too many clients, or typically have very close relationships with their clients, so they can potentially talk to each and every one of them individually, and get a more “personal feel.” However, the feedback they’ll gather will be greatly affected by the conversation they’re having. Client surveys with standardized questions solve this problem, and provide you with the same relevant information from every client.
There are plenty different ways to gather input from your clients. The following are just few of them:
- Customer Satisfaction Surveys, ask clients directly about their experience.
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), asks clients to rate the business, product or service.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS), measures how likely it is for clients to refer you to someone.
- Customer Effort Score (CES), takes into account the effort clients make to solve their issue.
Asking the right questions in the right way is crucial to the quality of the collected data. Be specific and look for clear answers for what functions well in your company, which areas need to be improved, and how urgent are they. Don’t make the survey too long or too complicated, as many of your clients will ignore it. Keep your ratings scores low, 1-3 or 1-5 top. It’s also best to send these kind of surveys soon after the client has had a consultation, while their memory and satisfaction are still fresh.
The professional writers from Brillassignment.co.uk have experience in accounting and finance, and can help you identify survey key areas and communicate them with your clients in the best manner.
6 Best Survey Questions to Get Client Feedback
Overall, how satisfied are you with the quality of our service/company?
This is a great first question. It “opens” the conversation and gives you an initial overall measure of how well you meet clients’ expectations in terms of business, brand, service, communication, and so on. Look at the percentage of clients who are either somewhat or very satisfied, and compare it to previous years or with current industry benchmarks, to gain perspective on its value.
The downside is, on its own, the answer to this question isn’t very useful or actionable. It doesn’t reveal any additional information on why these clients feel the way they do and what you can do to change that. Still, its tendencies from quarter to quarter or year to year, prove very valuable for future client retention efforts.
How happy are you with feature x of our service/company?
This type of questions zoom in on more specific aspects of your services and overall business in order to obtain more actionable data. They pinpoint areas of client satisfaction and dissatisfaction, like quality of provided service, client support, value for price, etc., based on which new practices can be implemented to improve the results.
How likely are you to recommend our services?
Behavioral questions like these offer companies important insights into their clients’ future intentions and helps them identify their most loyal clients.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a great measurement method for these questions. It uses a scale from 0 to 10, giving you more detailed client opinion. Clients who answer with 9 or 10 are considered “promoters,” – your true loyal fans who’ll continue buying from you and refer your business to others. Those who answer with 7 or 8 are called “passives,” – they’re satisfied buyers but not as enthusiastic promoters. People who answer anything from 0 to 6 are unhappy “detractors” and can potentially damage your business and brand through negative word-of-mouth. NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.
Demographics – What is your gender, age, location, income, sales channel, previous experience with our service?
Segmenting your satisfaction results in this way provides greater understanding of your clients’ behavior and valuable insights you can act upon. Make sure to make answers optional for the more intrusive demographic questions, as not everyone is trusting enough to disclose such data.
What one thing would you change that would increase the quality of our service to you?
A question like this gives companies a chance to really see what they’re doing well and what can be improved in their service. It’s an open-ended question that lets clients say exactly what they feel needs to be done so they’ll be (more) satisfied.
Is there anything else you wish to add?
It’s another open-ended question that’s perfect for finishing the survey. Most of your clients won’t have much left to say, but in case they do have additional comments, questions or concerns they can express them here, and share with you bonus responses you may have not even considered.
Measuring client satisfaction is clearly very important, but it’s just the starting point. To actually improve your service and increase client loyalty it’s absolutely necessary to follow-up on their experience and use the gathered feedback to make the needed strategy adjustments. Only then will you be able to see an increase in your client satisfaction.
Scott Matthews
Author Bio: Scott Mathews is a professional content writer in topics such as business relationships, work productivity and customer service. Scott's biggest passion is blogging and traveling. He regularly takes part in different career growth conferences and contributes his posts to different websites. Contact him on Facebook and Twitter.