By Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk

Most professional service firms make every effort possible to acquire and maintain healthy client relationships. Are you giving the same sort of attention to your staff so they will be your ambassadors instead of detractors? Do you really know what your employees are saying about your firm amongst themselves and with your clients? It’s time to find out.

Your employees are a vital part of your service delivery. Since you don’t sell a tangible product, you and your staff are the face of your firm. Everyone on your staff interacts with people every day, and they all make an impression on the people they meet. This is doubly important for professional services firms since your people not only deliver your product, they are your product.

By engaging your staff in a meaningful dialogue about their role in your firm, how it’s managed, and how it could be improved, you will gain valuable knowledge that will help you continue to deliver the best client service possible.

But make sure you do this in a way that will make your employees feel safe about sharing honest feedback; otherwise it’s an exercise in futility. You can do this in a couple of different ways, and a combination of both is usually best.

Surveys

There are many different free or cheap online survey tools that can use. The advantage is they are easy to deliver and return, and can aggregate the answers for you in a way that can keep the names of the respondents confidential. However, make sure you inform your employees about how these surveys are administered and reviewed, otherwise they may suspect that their answers can be tied back to them. Everyone fears repercussions in this process, so allay their fears as much as you can.

Interviews

These can be done in person or on the phone, and will yield more in-depth results. Nearly all of the time, it’s important to have an outside, trusted vendor help with this process, otherwise, your staff will not feel comfortable being truly open with their comments. The advantage of this is not only more honest feedback, but a skilled interviewer can ask follow-up questions that will delve deeper into issues that need to be addressed. The downside is they tend to be a bit more expensive, but the information gleaned usually far outweighs the financial investment.

If you’ve never surveyed your employees, it’s best to start with a personal interview, so you have a baseline from which to judge improvement initiatives. Then you may want to send out surveys on an annual basis after that. I recommend you conduct live interviews every three years or so to make sure you are still getting frank feedback.

Make sure you ask a combination of open- and closed-ended questions, and don’t make it too long. Ultimately, you want to ask your staff a few key questions, so you can uncover valuable information that will help you create a work environment that is healthy and conducive to growth. It’s really an easy process, and one that always uncovers valuable, and sometimes unexpected, information.