How To Get Recommendations – Find Out What Your Clients Don’t Like About Your Service!

The Appletree Client Survey – Part Two

In December I wrote about how we commissioned a client survey, to find out what our clients really think of our service. You can read Part One here. The second stage of the survey was to look at the results and the comments we received. After all, there’s no point in carrying out a survey if you don’t do anything with the information you collect.

First we looked at the overall scores we received. A question that all the participants were asked was “How likely are you to recommend Appletree?” On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 = ‘not a chance so don’t bother asking’ and 10 = ‘absolutely, definitely, of course!’) we scored an average of 8.7. That was a really nice number to see, but there’s no point in being complacent and ignoring the individual scores. I started by looking at the 6s we received, to see what needed to be done to increase those scores and give those clients a better service. They all have different needs. Many of our clients commented on how they appreciate our flexible, bespoke approach, so we’ve applied that to sorting out their specific issues. This is work in progress – something I will focus on for these clients over the coming months.

Then I looked at the comments made by the clients who scored us 8, 9 and 10. Again, we’re not allowing ourselves to become complacent. Just because a client is very keen to recommend us, does not mean that there’s nothing we can do to improve the service they receive from us. One particular client, who gave us a score of 10 made some specific comments about the mentoring service he receives from us. He said there was something he’d like me to do differently on our monthly calls. So the next time we had a call, after the survey had been completed, I did what he wanted me to do! I didn’t say “You said in our survey that you want me to do this so …” I just did it. What he wanted from me actually made a lot of sense and was simple to do. We ended the call and he thanked me for my time and support.

Two days later I received a really lovely recommendation from this client on LinkedIn. I didn’t ask him to write it for me. I didn’t make any suggestion that he might like to recommend me. He just did it. Why did he do this? I think it was as a result of a) giving him the help he expects and pays for on his mentoring calls and b) listening to his views and actually acting on them!

If you’d like to get more genuine recommendations from your clients, why not ask them what they don’t like about your service – and then do something about it?!