By Callum Macrae, Marketing Director
Client Listening is the art of understanding how your clients really feel about their interactions with your business and the service you provide.
The more honest the feedback, the better chance you have of pivoting towards a more successful approach – though it may be daunting to receive such honesty in the first place.
Feedback forms and surveys can provide the illusion that you are listening to your client, but they are not the core of Client Listening.
True Client Listening comes when you pay attention to the moments that shape perception and see your business through the eyes of your client.
This will often be felt in your communications, with your responsiveness and clarity, as well as how easy you are to deal with more generally.
You may have the best intentions in the world and could be staffed by generational talents, but all of that is for nothing if you cannot connect with clients. They will only judge you on their experience and may look elsewhere if they do not feel heard.
What’s one practical thing a business could do right now to improve its Client Listening?
Client Listening comes down to one question: Do we have an effective feedback loop?
A feedback loop cannot consist of looking at NPS surveys and reviews, occasionally dispensing token apologies and promises to do better.
Instead, you need to develop an ongoing system where feedback is gathered, heard, addressed and then assessed again in the future.
You could also go a step further than just asking individuals for their experience and bring clients together in a more open setting. Client advisory boards work really well for this, particularly when they’re facilitated independently (which we do for many clients), with no one from the business in the room. That’s when you get the honest, unfiltered feedback most businesses never hear.
What’s one thing people often get wrong about Client Listening?
The biggest pitfall is passively listening to client feedback and then carrying on unchanged.
Client Listening is about making clients feel heard and this can only be done through long-term management of client feedback that integrates into your business practices.
You should keep an eye on your own behaviours and imagine how your response times or communication style would land with a client.
When feedback does come in, whether it is positive or negative, acknowledge it and use it to either reinforce something that is working or change something that is not.
We’ve been working closely with clients to uncover what’s really happening across their customer journey, from mystery shopping new enquiries through to structured Client Listening programmes like advisory boards and feedback loops.
If you’d like to get a clearer picture of how your business is really experienced by clients (and where opportunities might be slipping through the net), we’d be happy to help. Contact us here.
