The Power of Asking

In the past month, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with company presidents, university architects, community planners, heads of major healthcare organizations, and the leaders of regional utilities. With each, I spent at least half an hour, and with many, substantially longer talking about their hopes and aspirations for projects and what it takes for design and construction professionals to be successful. These busy leaders took time out of their hectic schedules to tell me in great detail about their project experiences, what was positive and negative about their design or construction team’s performance, and what they are looking for in the future. Why did each of these individuals provide me with such rich and useful information? The simple answer is: because I asked.

Most clients very much want the design and construction professionals in their communities to be successful. They understand the value of profitable firms that have the capacity and interest in performing quality work. And, at a basic level, they buy in to the basic truth of ‘If you don’t ask for what you want, you don’t get it.’ As the project manager and lead researcher for three separate client perception studies, all finishing this month, I’m amazed at the level of detail and the rich body of examples and illustrations our subjects provided us in the interviews. And, I’m impressed that these busy people took time to communicate so clearly about their projects and their needs.

The first step in any successful client perception study is believing in the value of asking great questions of the right people to get your organization the information it needs to plan strategy, train employees, and build better client relationships.  Firm leaders who have no interest in knowing what their clients think probably aren’t as client-focused as they need to be in today’s competitive marketplace to create sustainable strategies for their firms’ futures.

Once a firm’s leadership understands the value of client research, the next step is to determine which of the clients to interview. This is a critical decision point for any firm’s leadership; the real question is “Do we want real data that will inform decisions and actions, or do we want to ‘game’ the research to get the answer we’re looking for?” Successful research programs follow rigorous protocols for the selection of clients that aren’t based on what a particular client might say, but instead are based on objective parameters like size, date of completion, project type, potential for repeat projects, etc. Firm leaders who value accurate data to drive decision-making are not afraid of what might be learned in a client perception study; rather, they take the positive – and the negative – and use that information to guide their firms toward continuous improvement.

The next step in an effective client research program is to develop a clear, consistently used interview guide.  An interview guide covers the range of topics that will be covered in each interview, making a set of interviews consistent enough to enable comparison across topics. Common topics for a client perception interview guide include general perceptions of the firm, performance of the project team, competitor and benchmark information, business development and marketing, and industry or market change. An interview guide should be viewed as just that—a guide, not a script.  A skilled interviewer listens to the answers and probes for additional detail. For example, if the client says, “Our team was fairly responsive to our needs, but they could have been better,” a skilled researcher asks, “What exactly could the team have done better?” and then likely follows up with, “Can you give me an example?”

Relative to who does the research, there are advantages and disadvantages to either using in-house staff or external resources. On one hand, internal resources know the work and the language of the organization; on the other hand, they may not be completely objective and they may not be able to deliver on a tight schedule. Researchers should be selected who understand the industry and client base, have excellent interview skills, and can document completely and clearly. One key selection criterion should also be that the researcher has the requisite time and resources to complete the study in a timely manner.  A client perception study should be completed in the shortest amount of time possible to minimize time impacts to the nature of the collected information.  Most studies of between 30 and 60 interviews take six to eight weeks from the delivery of a complete client list to the scheduling of the final interview.

Response rates are always challenging.  For a while, on-line surveys generated great response rates, but the huge volume of emails most of us receive every day make this method largely ineffective, generating negligible response rates. The method we’ve found both most effective, with the added benefit of being relationship-building, is to have the firm’s president or senior leader personally call each client and ask for participation.  When this happens, we get a response rate between 80 and 100 percent, much higher than for comparable studies in this industry.

The follow-up to any client perception study is an essential element to receiving full value from the research.  While some firms wish to conduct client research anonymously, a well-crafted client perception study provides the ability to follow up directly with clients to resolve issues and opens the door for further conversation. Plus, since clients often clearly articulate exactly what they want from future work, an open study enables a firm to use the information to tailor the marketing approach to a future project.  However, it’s vitally important how the data is managed and how the follow-up takes place.  Starting with a well-written thank-you note from the researcher, the follow up continues with a thank-you note from the company president or sponsoring division. Firms particularly effective at using client data convene firm leadership to develop a tailored follow-up plan for each responding client that might range from a simple phone call follow-up thanking the client for the time to a face-to-face meeting to resolve issues and/or discuss future work.  Key to the approach is that the underlying attitude needs to be one of gratitude versus “Why did you say that about us?”

A well-designed and professionally implemented client perception study has value even beyond the data itself.  One of the most frequent comments I get from the clients of my clients when I conduct an interview is, “Thank you; they must really care about their clients to bring in someone to ask me my thoughts on their performance.” A well-designed study can open doors, help firms resolve issues, and enable training and development of future team members. Knowledge is indeed power; client knowledge about projects and needs is readily available and most clients are craving the chance to give it to you. You just need to ask.