5 Steps To Improve The PM Process – Part 2 - Solicit Client Feedback
In Part 1 of this five part series on improving your PMO process, we looked at learning lessons. Understanding what we’ve done wrong and right and taking the good practices forward and avoiding repeating the bad behaviors and processes is critical for building a good project management practice.
In this Part 2, we’ll discuss reaching out to past clients for feedback on our own abilities to lead their projects. This works for large organizations with project managers or a project management office with established processes and methodologies as well as for individual consultants – we all want to know what our clients think of us. We may be afraid to ask sometimes, but just like using lessons learned sessions, the client’s opinion matters so much and can only help us to be better project managers and consultants on our future engagements.
Accumulate a list
How do we start? Well, it’s not a bad idea to go back to every single past client you can….whether the project experience was good or bad, and whether or not you’ve already conducted a lessons learned session with them. If you have conducted such a session, you may already have the info you need, but it doesn’t hurt to include them on the list. It’s also a chance to reconnect with them and you may land a future project in the process.
Make your contact list, come up with the elevator speech of why you’re reaching out to them, what you hope to accomplish and put together a set of questions that you’ll send out in advance of a contact phone call so they’ll be prepared when you schedule the discussion.
Conduct calls
The next step is to send out a questionnaire in advance of the schedule meeting or phone call and then to actually conduct the call. It’s up to you whether you ask that they send feedback to you prior to the call. I’d prefer to have their responses in advance of the call and in some cases that may be all they have time for or want to do for their participation. But a follow-up call to discuss and ask deeper questions can be extremely helpful for you. And keep in mind – this works both ways. Some are going to say very good things about you and those can be great customer testimonials for your website or marketing materials (ask for permission first, of course).
Send a summary document to participants
Finally, take what you’ve learned from your customer feedback sessions and create some action items or bullet points based on consistent feedback you’re getting – basically things you need to focus on and probably change. I would highly recommend sending that out as a discovery document internally in your organization and to your customer participants as well. Consider it a sort of continuous improvement effort. But by sending it to your client list that you’ve re-engaged it may also act as a tool to reconnect for new business. Don’t miss an opportunity to market in this process as well..
Summary
We’re all professionals and we all mess up – both individually and as a collective corporate group. The key is to admit mistakes and to not be afraid to reach out to those we’ve worked with in the past for feedback on our performances. You can do this as an individual or as a corporate initiative…both are extremely important. And what we learn from something like this can only make us better. We might also find that old clients come back to us for more work in the process…win-win. In our next installment, we’ll look at the process of reviewing and analyzing our current personnel to make sure we have the infrastructure in place to meet our project needs and project customers’ needs.
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Note: this project tip was provided by Brad Egeland. Brad is a Business Solution Designer and IT/PM consultant and author with over 25 years of software development, management, and project management experience leading initiatives in Manufacturing, Government Contracting, Gaming and Hospitality, Retail Operations, Aviation and Airline, Pharmaceutical, Start-ups, Healthcare, Higher Education, Non-profit, High-Tech, Engineering and general IT. Brad is married, a father of 9, and living in sunny Las Vegas, NV.
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