Customer Ratings!
I did one of my favourite things last week. And for once that didn’t include a holiday! (That was the week before 🤣)
I hosted a half day workshop for one of my clients and their whole team. These are great days, that really build team spirit, help everyone to feel included and listened to, and also share all their brilliant ideas.
We do this once every 3 months, and this time our topic was about customer ratings. For almost a year this team have been rating each customer as they finalise their project and the results have been quite enlightening. We implemented the system for two reasons. Firstly, because there were regular differences of opinion about certain customers who the management thought were great but the team thought were a pain in the proverbial. Ratings took away the opinion element and gave a much more objective picture.
And second, because the business wanted to narrow down their definition of what a great customer looks like and also understand the red flags to look out for, so they didn’t take on any more total duffers!
Customer ratings allowed them to do both of those things.
This team have made ratings work brilliantly because they’ve pinned down 5 very specific things that every customer is scored again. I’ve gone into detail about those areas in this week’s video so you can steal all their brilliant ideas for yourself! 😉
I’d hazard a guess that you’ve gone through that awkward experience yourself of hanging on to a customer much longer than you really should have done. Because we’ve all done it! I bet you ummed and ahhed and wondered if YOU were just being a bit over-sensitive or up yourself! The customer probably wasn’t doing anything horrendous, but you knew they didn’t really appreciate you, they sapped your energy a bit, they probably underpaid and whined too much, and just generally made you feel underappreciated.
But letting go is much harder than it sounds. Really easy to see when somebody else should do it of course, but when it’s you it’s so much harder to be objective.
And that’s why client ratings are sooooo helpful.
Because you can see in black and white why a duff customer needs to go.
But you can also see much more clearly those clients that are a perfect fit. And that means you can be much more specific about the fabulous new clients you want to attract. And the PITAs you want to avoid!
People often tell me they don’t see the point in rating their customers, because they already know who’s great and who’s not. Or because they don’t see how it will make any difference to which customers want to work with them and which don’t.
But every single time a client does this (after we get past the initial kicking, screaming and protesting) the results are massively enlightening. The clarity that comes from this exercise is really powerful, so I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Honestly, do it, you’ll love it. And if you try it and you don’t love it, I’ll buy you a cream egg 🍫🥚(Mainly including that to see if you’ve actually bothered to read to the bottom!)
So please watch this video and let me know what you think. And of course, if you watch it and feel inspired but need some help to implement this in your own business, drop me a message so I can help.
