Whew — fear can be crippling, can’t it? I’m a leap and while in mid-air look to see if there’s water in the pool sort of guy, but I will admit that fear has shut me down more than once. But when I look back on my life, it was the moments that I stood at the end of the cliff, scared to death, but took the leap anyway that have provided me with some of my most satisfying moments. Pushing past fear into big, life-changing adventures (becoming a dad, buying the precursor to AMI and creating what AMI is today, etc.) are some of my most pivotal moments. But there were plenty of smaller moments too. I’ve always liked how tattoos looked on other people but the fear of the needle/pain combined with not having clarity about what would be meaningful enough to have permanently put on my body kept me from pursuing it. When I’m honest with myself — it was the fear of the needle that kept me from really contemplating the art part. Last year my daughter asked me to get a tattoo with her. The significance of that request and her idea for our shared tattoo was motivation enough to actually consider enduring the pain. When I actually got the tattoo — I discovered that the pain was far less than I imagined and the satisfaction of doing it was far greater. Why had I allowed fear to deprive me of that for so long? What is fear depriving you and your agency from experiencing? For much of 2023, agency owners have behaved out of fear. There are many sources of that state of fear — the economy, the challenges [...]

In last week’s newsletter we started the conversation about how important it is to understand how our current clients are feeling about our work, our people, and our value.  And yet, customer satisfaction surveys are rarely done well. We’ve all been on the receiving end of bad customer surveys.  They ask us too often.  They ask us the same questions every time.  And we never hear back or see any real reaction to what we shared. No wonder why the completion rate is so low, and the input is so tepid. But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Customer satisfaction surveys, when done well, will give you a competitive advantage in terms of both client retention and new client acquisition. So how do we conduct our research in a way that ultimately serves both our organization and our clients? Last week we covered: Invite your customers to participate and tell them what you’re going do with what you learn Strongly consider getting both qualitative and quantitative input This week we’ll cover: Determine the timing Be thoughtful about the questions Determine the timing: This is one of the aspects most agencies miscalculate.  Most don’t ask at all but if they do, they err on the other side and ask too often — risking fatiguing their clients.  This is especially true if you keep asking the same questions repeatedly or the survey is too long. There’s no one size fits all answer to the frequency question.  If you want to stay on the surface and ask simpler, shorter questions, you can risk asking more often.  But if you want to dig deeper and ask your clients for more information, you’ll need to rachet back your frequency. [...]

Client satisfaction surveys are nothing new and yet, they are often done poorly.  The saddest part of when they’re done badly is that most agencies are missing a huge marketing opportunity. Yes, it’s wonderful to get the data points that you’ll glean from the survey but there’s also an incredible amount of goodwill and soft marketing that can happen when the research is done well.  (This is true for your clients as well, if you help them with customer satisfaction work.) Your clients will appreciate that you care enough about their business to ask.  But only if you also help them see how you are going to genuinely listen and react to what they tell you.  We’ve all been on the receiving end of the same survey, over and over, from a business who asks the same questions after every interaction, but we never hear about the survey results or how they’re going to put their new insights into action. This week and next, I want to dissect what we’ve learned from doing countless client satisfaction surveys for agencies.  You can build a DIY model or share this with your favorite research partner as a guide. Invite your clients to participate and tell them what you’re going do with what you learn:  Without a doubt, this first step is one of the most critical.  And yet, there are elements of it that are often overlooked or purposefully skipped.  Don’t miss a single nugget of this step if you want to maximize the value of the research. Start by sending an email or letter to your client base, telling them that you’re going to be sending them a link for an online survey or that your [...]