Keeping client service consistent can be like keeping a family home neat and tidy.
Much like a family, the bigger your professional services firm grows, the harder it is to keep the house in order. Especially when life gets stressful, and the family members are busy. In firms with large numbers of staff, divisions and offices, there is a risk that groups within the firm begin to operate in fiefdoms – like “firms within the firm”.
But does it really matter if your house gets messy?
Why consistency matters
Beaton has conducted 20-plus years of research into this question. As a third-party observer, we ask clients directly for their feedback on firms and to rate them via a series of standard scores. This results in an overall client service (OCS) score.
We aggregate the scores from similar firms and benchmark them against competitors in the relevant sector for our annual Beaton Benchmarks research. The results?
Firms with highest overall client service ratings also display the greatest consistency of service.
The higher the satisfaction score, the lower the standard deviation in service consistency tends to be. Greater standard deviations are correlated with lower overall scores. That is – clients tend to report being less satisfied with firms that are less consistent.
Where a firm’s scores range widely from excellent to poor among different clients, there is potential for real damage to be done to the brand. This damage occurs because the clients who are dissatisfied with their experience tell others, thus detracting from the good work done by those in the firm rendering outstanding service. Grant Hollings, Beaton Research Lead explains it here
The challenge with consistency
Former PwC boss and CEO of MinterEllison Tony Harrington caught on to this correlation between service consistency and happy clients early in the 2000s. He explained consistency as: “every touch point with every client by every PwC person every day.”
To paraphrase David Maister, one of the world’s leading authorities on the management of professional services firms, a low consistency score suggests there are ‘firms within the firm’. High consistency means that clients can expect the same level of service across all attributes from all divisions and offices – and over long periods of time.
These definitions illustrate the challenge with maintaining consistency. Plenty of large firms tell us having many staff, divisions and offices makes consistency well-nigh impossible
However, it should be noted this is not just a challenge for large firms. In some smaller firms, we observe differences in service culture between departments, offices, and even between floors in the same building.
The good news for firms of all sizes is the road to happier clients becomes clear once inconsistencies are identified. Beaton regularly helps firms achieve consistency in the client experience (CX) through our strategic CX transformation.
Consistency is a function of culture – more than size
Research into the service profit chain has found culture has a significant impact on client satisfaction. Rather than focusing on size, firms should pay attention to ‘how things are done’ – setting standards and adhering to habits that might keep the house neat and tidy.
In our experience, these are the key success factors that consistent, high-achieving firms display:
- Clear values around clients and how they are served with statements of explicit behaviours that reflect the values, perhaps expressed in a published client service charter
- Unequivocal leaders who walk the talk
- Internal clients (staff) are served in the way everyone in the firm is expected to serve external clients (those ‘who pay the rent’)
- A complaint handling process that encourages clients to voice their concerns, as well as ensuring those concerns are heard and acted upon
- Regular, objective measurement and reporting of clients’ experience of the firm.