Since high client satisfaction is vital to the health and prosperity of professional services firms, it is important to have a reliable means of gauging it. Some firms use lengthy surveys after each engagement while others rely on client relationship managers to evaluate and optimize client satisfaction. There are various mechanisms and the only dire mistake is to not evaluate it at all.

The most popular means of evaluating client satisfaction is through the use of surveys. There are numerous online survey products (such as SurveyMonkey) that make it simple to create a survey, collect responses, and analyze the data. Within an hour or two, you can have a survey out to each of your clients and start collecting responses.

One general rule of surveys is that the more questions you put on the survey, the lower your response rate will be. People are busy and don’t have a lot of spare time to fill out essay questions on your 16-page survey. If you want a high response rate, you have to create a concise survey. The challenge is to create a survey that is brief but that will still yield useful and actionable information.

In terms of brevity, the Net Promoter Score (or “NPS”) survey wins the day. With NPS, your survey is a single required question, which is “How likely is it that you would recommend our firm to a colleague?” The answer is on a scale of 0 to 10. Following this 0 to 10 selection, you can provide an optional commentary question, which is “What could we change to improve our quality of service?” By keeping the survey short and simple, you will see the response rate improve considerably.

NPS respondents who provide a 9 or 10 score are your “promoters”, 7 or 8 scores are your “passives”, and scores below 7 represent your “detractors”. Your promoters are very satisfied and are likely to do business with your firm in the future as well as provide client referrals. The passives are somewhat on the fence but aren’t likely to drive significant new business for the firm. The detractors aren’t happy and will possibly say negative things about your firm to colleagues.

The overall Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of customers who are detractors from the percentage who are promoters. This yields a score between -100 and 100. As an example, let’s say your firm has 80 clients who answered your NPS survey with 67% being promoters, 22% being passives, and 11% being detractors. This would yield an NPS of 56 (67-11 = 56). An excellent score!

So, what is a good NPS? It varies by industry but below are ranges that can be used for professional services firms:

• 0 or below – Poor: An NPS at or below 0 is a troubling sign. This means that the firm is less likely to have repeat business or referrals to new clients. Big changes need to be made or the firm will struggle.
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• 1 to 15 – Decent: This NPS range shows that the firm is doing some things well and can probably advance to the “good” range with some small improvements.
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• 16-50 – Good: The firm is performing at a high level. While there is still room for improvement, clients are happy and will drive future value (direct or indirect revenue).
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• 51-69 – Excellent: The firm is loved by its clients and is an industry-leader in terms of client satisfaction.
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• 70 and above – Outstanding: Rarefied air. Many firms will never get to this range.
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It is important to point out that smaller firms generally have higher NPS figures than larger firms. This is because the founders of smaller firms are still directly involved in most (if not all) of the engagements that the firm undertakes. Quality control is easier in small numbers. As the firm scales and the number of projects grows, it is naturally difficult to keep NPS at the same level. The job of the leadership team is to keep NPS as high as possible throughout the firm’s growth stages.

Regularly monitoring client satisfaction is a critical activity for professional services firms. While there are many ways to do this well, the Net Promoter Score is one of the easiest to implement and is quite effective. The firm should survey each client at least once annually and then engage in an internal review of the scores and associated comments. Making one or two improvements per year can have a dramatic impact on year-over-year NPS scores and the health of the business.