Introduction
It's a common misconception that customer projects are something only large corporations can afford. In fact, it's more likely that small businesses have fewer resources and less experience with them than larger firms do. Nevertheless, customer projects are an invaluable source of current intelligence about how you perform as a business for your clients. Once you've identified the most important criteria for project success at each firm—including which types of customers get these kinds of projects—you'll be able to create a strategy around improving your results on those fronts:
Ask yourself, "What are the most important customer criteria for project success?" and write them down.
As you consider the most critical customer criteria for project success, it's a good idea to write them down. When designing the scope of any new project, you can discuss with your customer & ask them what the5 key elements must work for them to make this project a success. List these down & share them with your team as well.
Now that you have an idea of what your customers want from their experience with the product or service, it's time to figure out how these features can be implemented into their project.
What are the most significant differences between your best and worst customers?
What do you notice when you look at the best and worst customers? Review the past 10 projects your agency did for your customers. Identify which of these were a great success & which one of these was moderately Okay.
List down the customer traits of the projects that went really well versus those that were just okay. Do you find a pattern?
The best customers are the ones who are willing to pay more for better service. They were proactive with their communication & prompt with answers to your questions & they probably also referred your services to other customers at the end of the project versus the worst clients that didn't care about answering your questions timely & were never happy with your efforts no matter what you did for them.
Identify who is in charge of customer projects at each firm and map out their profile.
When you know who this champion is, map out their profile. What are their strengths, weaknesses, skills, and abilities?
Once you have this information, it’s time to start analyzing them. What are their goals? How often do they meet with clients? Do they have any special requirements (e.g., written materials)? Which departments/people can help them achieve these goals regularly?
Use a customer project survey to ask for feedback.
Customer project surveys are a great way to gather feedback from your customers. You can ask them what they like, dislike, and want to be improved on in the project. This is especially helpful if you have a complex or challenging business problem or project. It will allow you to get a quick insight into how well your team is working together and which areas need improvement before moving forward with their next steps in the process (which could include more training).
You'll want to make sure that:
- You're asking specific questions about each aspect of your business; otherwise, it won't be useful information for improving things like communication between departments or improving processes within an area where there's already been some success being achieved but still room for improvement
- You're asking for specific feedback on what's working well and what isn't; otherwise, you won't be able to know which areas need more attention or improvement You’re not just asking questions about your project -- but also collecting information about the customer experience overall-
Gather and analyze your own data to identify trends in customer project success.
To get inside the mind of your customers, you need to understand how you perform on your customer projects. To do this, gather data from a variety of sources:
- Your internal systems (e.g., CRM)
- Your customers’ experiences with you and your team members
- The results of recent project reviews
If you have a good relationship, ask your customers directly what you can do better on projects.
If you have a good relationship with your customers, the first thing that you should do is to ask them what improvements they would like to see on projects.
Ask for feedback about how you can improve your service or products and offerings. Ask for suggestions about how to improve processes and procedures.
Conclusion
Customer projects are an invaluable source of current intelligence about how you perform as a business for your clients. They provide an opportunity to identify areas where you can improve your service and delivery, which ultimately means more satisfied customers.
With Anywhere our goal is to offer you a Project Management tool that helps you with all these aspects of your customer projects. Right from defining the scope to executing the project & proactively keeping your customers updated.
Give it a try today.
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