During the Covid 19 crisis, Chris Lang, Client Services Director at Acuigen hosted well-attended webinar discussions on the use of client insight to assess business landscapes during the crisis.  What can we learn from his notes several years ago to assist today during current turbulent world events? 

What was happening at the time?

Consider the similarities between epidemiologists’ views of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what was being done when undertaking client insight, namely:

• The importance of background surveillance information to understand what’s normal – how many clients would normally recommend us/how satisfied are clients?  In the COVID world – baseline information was needed to assess change, similarly, when evaluating client feedback, a baseline is needed

• Be ready to focus on and celebrate successes and address problem areas – this allows leaders to reassign resources to provide backup, support and create more success    

• Keep people informed, both clients and staff

• Continually innovate to be successful

What happens during a recovery phase?

As we were looking towards the end of the COVID-19 emergency response period, and commence a period of business recovery, the focus started to change from being there for your clients, to needing to understand their new landscape and future priorities.  Then, over the next 6 – 12 months, recovery continued and for some sectors and markets new business models emerged.  During this period many professional service firms sought to be ready to respond to changing business landscapes and increased competition from competitor firms.

Accelerating through the recovery phase

It was important for firms to be ready to accelerate through this recovery phase by forecasting demand for services both by geography and sector.  Firms sought to develop flexible plans to capture the demand, aiming to build resilience into future service delivery models, and begin to acquire any new necessary capabilities that may be needed, and br ready to refocus to meet clients’ changing needs.  By evaluating key strategic priorities, firms were able to develop the services they offered to reflect the new needs and priorities of clients.

Plan ahead

Undertaking and gaining client feedback during Covid was difficult, with many client relationship owners and fee earners focussing upon informal contact with key clients.  When planning feedback during a crisis it is important to:

• Acknowledge that client insight is not a crisis tool - it is a resilience tool

• Be aware and sensitive to the cultural expectations of your firm  

• Be respectful of what is going on in your clients’ world, both professionally and personally

• Informal dialogue between the firm and clients during a crisis may limit the opportunity to undertake independent interviews

• Make sure your conversations with clients reflect the current situation