What are the purposes of Client Satisfaction Measurement and
Loyalty Assessment?
- To improve service delivery in ways that matter most to your clients causing them
to be delighted with your services so that they would seek more ways to do business
with your firm, instinctively resist your competitors’ advances, and willingly
act as advocates or promoters of your firm.
To assess and report the levels of relationship risk and loyalty of each respondent
so that appropriate actions can be planned and implemented to effect meaningful
improvements.
To objectively determine which aspects of service delivery have the greatest impact
on client loyalty.
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What is Client Satisfaction?
- A measure of the cumulative experiences your key client personnel have had with
your service delivery process, the outputs of that process, and the professionals
or personnel with whom they have been involved over time.
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What is Client Loyalty?
- Client actions that include: making repeat purchases; willingly or pro-actively
seeking ways to use more of your services; resisting competitors’ advances;
pro-actively recommending your firm to colleagues; and, willingly providing a reference
when asked -- essentially acting as an advocate or promoter of your firm.
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How can we get the most out of Satisfaction Measurement and
Loyalty Assessment?
- Taking action to improve what matters most in service delivery to your clients as
revealed in their responses and the reporting included in the process.
With client satisfaction measurement and loyalty assessment, your client information
will be as functional, credible and powerful as your financial and other key reporting
systems in your firm.
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Why should we survey our clients?
- To identify and improve the attributes of your service that have been proven to
have the greatest impact on measurably enhancing client loyalty as well as to act
quickly to reverse at-risk client relationships.
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How are Client Loyalty and Client Satisfaction Linked?
- All satisfied clients are not necessarily loyal but all loyal clients are very satisfied
to the point of being delighted. Clients’ loyalty behaviors (making repeat
purchases, willingly or pro-actively seeking ways to use more of your services,
pro-actively recommending your firm to colleagues, and, willingly providing a reference
when asked) are a result of high satisfaction with your service process, its outcomes,
and the people who provided the service. To increase loyalty, the focus must be
on improving your service in those areas that matter most to clients.
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Client satisfaction measurement reveals which aspects of your service have the greatest
impact on clients’ loyalty behavior. Each key person in your clients’
organizations should be surveyed annually with a questionnaire that includes those
items proven to be what your clients consider important, significant or critical
to quality about your service. With a properly designed questionnaire, you can be
sure you are measuring what matters most to clients.
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Which clients should we survey?
- All clients. Surveying all clients is not cost prohibitive with the use of email,
postal mail and Internet response capabilities. Recipients should include all client
individuals who judge your service or influence retention decisions.
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How often should we survey our clients?
When should surveys be sent?
- To coincide with major events or significant milestones in an engagement, matter
or project.
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What should be included in the questionnaire?
- Six major categories of questions should be included: questions about satisfaction
with the outcomes of the service; questions about satisfaction with major elements
of the service AND their relative importance; questions about satisfaction with
the observable actions or behaviors relevant to service delivery; questions about
problems experienced; questions about improvement recommendations; and, questions
soliciting comments or other observations.
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What is the ideal length of the questionnaire?
- As few items as possible to cover the six categories of what should be included.
One page in length with as much “open space” as possible. Type size
should be as large as possible.
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How long does it take to create a questionnaire?
- When TPIC has a validated instrument for your service, it can be tailored to your
company within hours. For example, TPIC has validated instruments for CPA firms
that have evolved from thousands of CFO, CEO and other key financial executive respondents
over the past 15 years.
Otherwise, the process usually takes a few weeks depending upon how quickly key
clients can be interviewed plus the time needed to analyze relevant existing research
concerning your clients’ criteria for evaluating service quality.
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What response rates should we anticipate?
- 40% to 60% or higher using a combination of email and postal delivery methods.
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What are the major steps in the process?
- Recipient Determination
Questionnaire Distribution (electronic and/or hard-copy)
Response Processing
Email notifications of responses to professionals
Real-time response reports & summary reports on-line 24/7
Analysis of results to determine drivers of client loyalty
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What do we do and what does TPIC do to implement this process?
- You create a list of recipients by either entering them securely on-line OR providing
a file to us. TPIC does the rest to collect data and transform it into actionable
information instantly available to your professionals and leaders.
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How do I determine who my recipients should be?
- Start with a list of all of your clients (from your accounting, marketing, or engagement
management software). Many firms want feedback from all of their clients while others
choose the clients they wish to include based on their own selection criteria (such
as clients above a certain annual fee level, or clients in certain industries, or
clients who represent great potential). For each client organization you choose
to include, list the names and titles of each key individual therein who either
evaluates your services or influences retention decisions.
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How do we know when responses have been received?
- When a response has been processed, each of your professionals associated with that
respondent will be sent an email that contains a summary of the ratings. They will
also receive a link to the complete response report on-line.
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How do you determine that a respondent is an “at-risk”
relationship?
- Using a proprietary algorithm, satisfaction ratings of a number of key questions
in each response are used to calculate an overall “relationship risk”
score for each response. When that score is at or below a certain threshold, the
response is flagged as an “at-risk” relationship.
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What percentages of responses are typically deemed “at-risk?”
- Approximately 6 to 12% of responses. Last year we identified more than 1,100 at-risk
relationships on behalf of our clients out of the tens of thousands of responses
processed.
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What is included in the on-line response reports?
- Everything that was entered by the respondent: every rating; the full text of the
responses to the open-end questions. If the response is labeled as at-risk, the
reasons for that designation are included.
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What summary reports are typically available?
- Summary reports show real-time results as averages of major rating factors in categories
selected by the user. For example, the user can generate reports by year, by geography,
by industry, by service, by client organization, by client size, by respondent title,
by questionnaire type, by business type, etc. Any cut of data meaningful to your
firm can be included.
All summary reports enable drill-down to the individual responses that comprise
them.
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What leadership reports are available on-line?
- Leadership reports show real-time results as averages of major rating factors for
each professional in the firm who has been listed with any recipient record as well
as client-by-client reports.
All leadership reports enable drill-down to the individual responses that comprise
them.
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What is included in the annual analytical reporting?
- The annual analysis includes both descriptive as well as predictive reports.
Descriptive reporting includes: summary results for each categorical area of importance
to our clients including geography, industry, service line, client size, respondent
title, etc.; significance testing in comparative results such as year-to-year performance
or group-to-group results as desired by our clients; full summary results for each
client with year-to-year change and at-risk assessment.
Predictive reporting includes: impact (multiple regression) analysis that specifies
the perceptions and behaviors proven to be the primary drivers of your clients’
satisfaction and loyalty; priority list of improvement actions nationally, geographically
and any other desired grouping; identification of criteria for determining at-risk
relationships for your firm; and, recommendations to improve the questionnaire content.
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How do we know how we’re doing versus competitive firms?
- Sources of peer comparative data include response databases that TPIC manages as
well as primary research done annually by TPIC. Peer comparative data will be provided
to our clients whenever possible.
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Who has access to reports?
- You decide who can see which reports as well as the level of detail (drill-down)
available to each of them.
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Is it possible to “drill-down” to the detail when
viewing summary reports?
- Yes. All summary reports enable drill-down to the individual responses that comprise
them.
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Can I print the reports that are available on-line?
- Yes. All reports are accompanied by a button to click for a printable version and
these printable versions are complete with proper page breaks.
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Can I export the on-line reports to a file?
- Yes. All reports can be exported at the click of a button to a file such as a spreadsheet
or word processor, etc.
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Do you provide Net Promoter Score or NPS information
and reporting?
- Yes. TPIC has always included the Net Promoter Score question in all of its surveys
and, for those clients using this approach, we provide the NPS or Net Promoter Score
in all of their summary reports.
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