Client Services – how are we doing?

We’re proud of the strong, trusting relationships we build and maintain with our clients. (Some of whom we've worked with for more than 10 years – woah!)

To make sure that our clients continue to enjoy working with us, we measure how we're doing. For the past 3 years we’ve done this by running an annual NPS survey with clients. Essentially these anonymous surveys give us a quick snapshot of customer satisfaction.

It's been interesting and semi-useful to have that generic overview. However, NPS isn't especially good at helping understand any minor irritations or repeating pain points clients might have; which could help us make meaningful improvements to our service.

So, earlier this year Miriam led a project to refine our annual client survey – with the aim of improving both the quantity and the usefulness of the data and feedback.

Where it started

The benefits of NPS surveys:

• They're quick and easy for us to set up and send
• They're quick and easy for clients to complete
• We quickly get an overview of how things are going at a specific moment
• We end up with a simple figure to use as a benchmark over time

Our NPS surveys have always included space for people to add comments, whether that be positive feedback or constructive criticism. But this section was quite often left blank. 

And when people did fill it in, the type of information provided was hugely wide-ranging in subject matter. And sometimes it was super-vague. But at other times incredibly specific/niche. Not the most helpful types of feedback for helping us decide on service improvements.

What we've changed

We had initially considered not running NPS at all. But as we have several years of benchmark data we decided to include it as part of the survey for the time being.

The biggest change is the addition of a Customer Effort Score (CES). CES is an anonymous score out of 5, which asks clients how easy it is to get the help they need from us. 

We also added a follow-up question, asking people to briefly explain why they gave us a particular score.

The NPS/CES combo instantly provided us with much more focused, consistent data. Great!

We also tweaked the wording of surveys and invitation emails – making them more personable and engaging. And, in another effort to increase response rates, the Client Services team followed-up individually with all clients, encouraging them to participate if they hadn't already.

This worked really well …

The results

Wow! These scores are … excellent!

And the fact we got such a big increase in responses is impressive – especially now the survey is longer than in previous years.

Those tweaks to wording look to have helped increase the number of comments too – both constructive and glowing. This gives us more juicy insights to work from, and some lovely testimonials to share with the wider team.

(Despite the surveys being anonymous, several clients added their name – because they want us to know how happy they are with us. Awww!)

Having more of this commented feedback on top of the NPS and CES ratings gives us so much more to work with, and will help us make the most meaningful improvements.

What's next?

We'll continue to run the combined NPS/CES survey next year, and share the overall results – with the wider Supercool team, with our clients, and publicly.

And we'll continue to act on feedback we get from clients – by making changes where necessary, and maintaining excellent standards where we’re already doing well.

Thank you to our ace clients for being so open, and for taking the time to share your thoughtful and considered feedback.

And thanks, well done, and keep up the excellent work, team Supercool! 👏💪🧡

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