Customer Satisfaction: The Most Valuable and Overlooked Project Success Metric

In today’s business world, companies use a variety of metrics to evaluate “project success”.  These metrics include scope, cost, time, and quality- just to name a few. However, companies often omit the most valuable success metric of them all, one that WTG takes great pride in- customer satisfaction!

Customer satisfaction leads to a stronger brand reputation and is a vital component of every successful business. You’re probably wondering, “why is this metric overlooked?” Well, because even when a project is planned flawlessly, completed on time, and under budget, customer satisfaction STILL isn’t guaranteed. In fact, if a customer becomes dissatisfied with your efforts during the project lifecycle, everything should be flagged as red! Regardless of how groundbreaking or affordable a product might be, if customers aren’t fulfilled, don’t expect them to stick around.

With an extreme focus on customer satisfaction, it makes sense why Winslow Technology Group is currently managing over 100 active and ongoing projects within Professional Services. So how do we keep customers happy? Great question! As a Project Manager, our team tends to focus on the following techniques:

• Make customers feel “part of the team”

If you think of your customers as outsiders, then they will feel like outsiders! Treating customers like team members builds trust and confidence in the services we provide at WTG. Having this type of relationship also makes it easier to deliver the truth when an issue arises or if things don’t quite go as planned (which is common in project management). It is always better to be clear and honest. At WTG we treat all customers as team members!

• Provide progress updates

Keeping your customer informed and solidifying a cadence to share important project updates is critical. After project kick-off, team members (and customers) often want to go right into “execution mode”, making it easy to forget about stakeholders’ expectations. This means taking the time to pause your work and provide an update to the customer (meeting, written update, etc.) regarding work completed vs. work remaining. When everyone’s aligned, everyone wins!

• Ensure there are no communication gaps.

Ensuring everything is available to customers significantly reduces the chances of any communication gap occurring. This means creating a repository (SharePoint, OneDrive, etc.) where all project documentation can be viewed. This makes customer meetings run much smoother (if a document needs to be referred to) and makes a great paper trail of all your accomplishments!

As WTG continues to grow (internally and externally with clients) we continue to find new ways to acquire and retain customer satisfaction. If you haven’t partnered with WTG Professional Services yet- join us today! We offer IT solutions to ensure your business operates at peak performance!