Very stupid questions

“I'm 100% convinced that consulting firms could win a lot more work if they just took the trouble to ask the right questions and find out more about our business. Some of them ask some very stupid questions.”  This was the strategy director of a major financial services company in the UK speaking, and it remains one of my favourite quotes from the round of client research we’ve just carried out.

When I first heard it, I assumed he was referring to uninformed questions about his business, but, since I’ve had the dubious pleasure of reviewing several firms’ client satisfaction surveys recently, I’ve started to wonder if that’s what he could have been referring to.

Client feedback has always been an interesting, if slightly thorny issue where consulting firms are concerned.  The old guard, now thankfully a minority, maintain that a formal process for doing this is unnecessary because they’re talking to their clients all the time.  The language betrays them: they may be talking to their clients, but they’re not listening (half of the clients we surveyed said they want their consultants to listen more).  Most firms now recognise this problem and have in place a process for gathering feedback on a systematic basis.  But there are two deep-seated flaws in what they typically do.

The first is that they use their own staff to do this.  Even where the feedback is being gathered by someone not directly involved in the project, this simply isn’t independent enough.  Most clients don’t really want to cause too much of a ruckus so will find constructive ways to cushion any criticism.  But a far more serious worry is that the people listening will only hear what they expect or want to hear.  That leads on to the second issue, that the questions are the ones the consulting firm wants to ask, not necessarily the ones the client wants to answer.  Most surveys reflect what remains important but is not necessarily a differentiating factor.  Quality of people is a good example here: most firms rightly pride themselves on this but most clients take it as given; clients value scarce expertise, but they’re not usually asked specifically about this. Our recent client research highlights substantial opportunities for consulting firms around changes in their behaviour and in the way they deliver their services, but which firms are actually asking their clients about this?  Client satisfaction surveys invariably deal with past hygiene factors not future or even current opportunities and threats.

Clients are complaining that consulting firms aren’t adapting their business models fast enough to the post-recession environment.  How could they?  They’ve not been asking the right questions.