Follow-up Strategy Guides

This guide will help you develop a consistent approach to responding to a variety of feedback responses. Follow-up is a critical element of your feedback plan. Without follow-up, your clients will find little value to the feedback process. In general, you are the best person to respond and follow-up. Regardless of the scores, you were entrusted with the feedback, and the client expects you to respond. Follow-up should be timely (within a day or two of the response), concise, and focused on producing improved results for the client.

Documenting your improvement plan is a major step in creating lasting changes. Professionals who take time to document follow-up within the Client Feedback Tool enjoy an 83% reduction in future low scores from their clients.

Regardless of the scores (high or low), your follow-up should be focused on the processes used to deliver the service, and capture what processes will be changed to create better results. Don't ignore high scores; use those as opportunities to capture innovations so you and others can repeat the exceptional performance.

We have identified ten basic types of feedback within the Client Feedback Tool, as shown below. Each type is shown in detail in the following ten pages, each with a strategy, follow-up tasks, and a suggested script. You'll also see examples of actual client feedback replies, collected by professionals just like you.

While the general approaches described may be effective much of the time, ultimately you will need to judge how to best respond to each unique situation based on your individual relationship with the respondent.

Use the chart below to quickly identify what you may be dealing with. You may find a few close matches to review.

Ten tips to help you now:

1.       Respond according to the clients demonstrated style of communication

2.       Plan your response before responding

3.       Don't hide behind technology; talk or meet in person where possible

4.       Before confronting challenging feedback, notify the client by email you want to discuss it

5.       Feedback isn't personal it tells you more about the respondent than yourself

6.       Don't be defensive, instead focus on how to avoid similar situations in the future (the process!)

7.       Be direct and helpful, don't be afraid to solve their problems

8.       Manage expectations while also refining the process

9.       Always negotiate win-win solutions (compromise is often lose-lose, so negotiate mutual wins)

10.   Document your follow-up so you and others can learn from it in the future

Here's an in-depth review of effective conflict resolution strategies from Mindtools.com http://bit.ly/16SfY6.

You might review a 2-minute video about the answer scale used in the Client Feedback Tool: http://bit.ly/1tEDbE4.

Watch three 2-minute videos demonstrating effective follow-up techniques: http://bit.ly/1Ke804P. 

View Full Follow-up Strategies Guide here:MS2.600-Feedback-Follow-Up-Strategies-(Guide-Book)---2019.pdf