How not to ask for client feedback

Don’t ask questions that are too general

“Is everything okay?” or “Do you have any feedback for us?” doesn’t tell the client what you actually want to know.

The client may be working with several partners. When your request arrives, they may not immediately recall the details of your collaboration that you want them to assess. A quick “Everything’s fine” can leave important expectations unexplored.

Briefly remind them what you deliver and which aspects of the work you would like them to assess. These might include:

• reliable delivery and meeting agreed deadlines
• understanding the client’s business and needs
• technical expertise or creativity, depending on the work

Choose the areas based on what you actually deliver and what the client expects. A technical delivery partner and a creative agency will need different questions.

It is also useful to find out how the client perceives the value of the work: whether it adds value compared with what they could do themselves, and whether it is worth the price. These are angles to explore, not ready-made questions.

Don’t send the request as an impersonal mass survey

A generic sender, subject line and message can make a feedback request look like a mass survey with little connection to the client’s work.

Clients respond when doing so helps improve the collaboration. Raising your response rate or NPS is your goal, not the client’s.

Send the request from someone the client recognizes as responsible for the relationship, such as the account owner or a business leader. Explain what the feedback will help you understand and do.

For example:

• “I’d like to check whether our current way of working is meeting your expectations, so that we can address any gaps while the collaboration is under way.”

Requests can be automated, as long as the sender, purpose and responsibility remain clear and someone follows up on the responses.

Don’t wait until it’s too late to ask

Feedback collected after a project or contract period can help you learn. Feedback collected during the collaboration, by contrast, gives you the chance to improve the client’s experience right away.

In our research interviews, clients described projects and other engagements that were completed but required a lot of extra effort on their part. Even when the work itself was delivered successfully, clients did not always see the collaboration as something they would want to continue.

Ask while the collaboration is ongoing and there is still time to change how you work.

Choose a point when the client has enough experience to assess the collaboration and the team still has time to act on the response. Explain that you want to understand what is working and what needs adjusting before the next phase.

Don’t turn a simple check-in into a long questionnaire

Clients shouldn’t have to answer twenty questions to tell you whether the relationship is working.

Ask only what you need to assess the most important expectations. Keep the request focused and easy to answer.

The request might cover topics such as:

• the value of the work relative to expectations
• how well you work together
• anything that needs attention

The exact questions depend on your business and what you deliver to the client.

This is also a good moment to measure the relationship. You can include NPS, client satisfaction or another relevant metric in the request. Tracking the same metric over time helps you notice changes, and the accompanying answers help you understand them.

When an answer or a change in the numbers reveals a concern, follow up with a conversation. Ask for an example, check that you have understood correctly, and hear your own team’s view.

The assessments you collect show where to focus. If deeper investigation is needed, the account owner is responsible for making sure it happens. They can handle it themselves or delegate it to the relevant expert or team.

Don’t let feedback stop with one person

When clients give feedback, they expect their partner to understand it and act on it.

Suppose a client says they repeatedly have to ask for reports that should arrive automatically. If the feedback reaches the account owner but not the people responsible for reporting, the same problem can happen again.

Acknowledge the feedback, clarify the concern and share it with those who need to act. Make sure the team understands what the client expects.

Don’t leave the client guessing about what happened

The client can’t see your internal discussions. What they can see is whether their experience changes.

Let them know you have received the feedback and what the next step is. For example:

• “Thank you for raising this. We’ve agreed who will send the report before each meeting, and I’ll check with you after the next meeting that this is working.”

If the request needs clarifying or can’t be met as stated, discuss it openly.

After the change, check whether it helped. That closes the loop, and the client doesn’t need to raise the same concern again.

Make feedback useful for both sides

A good feedback request is short, well timed and comes from someone the client knows. But its value comes from what happens to the feedback next: it reaches the right people, leads to change, and the client can see that it did.