Experience Management Resources

At ClearlyRated, we spend a lot of time talking about Detractors and Promoters—generally speaking, dissatisfied and satisfied clients as indicated by the Net Promoter^® Score (NPS^®) methodology. And with good reason: your staffing firm’s reputation hinges on how your clients experience working with you, and getting a clear measure of your service quality is good business, especially in an industry as competitive as ours.But there is a more pointed story that your firm’s Net Promoter Score tells—and it’s about revenue. Specifically, your NPS can tell you how likely your clients are to continue working with you...or to take their business elsewhere.In order to understand how hiring managers make decisions—and what staffing firms can do to impact those decisions—we analyzed the actual buying behavior of more than 4,500 clients of staffing firms over the course of four years and tracked them alongside their firm’s NPS scores during that same time period.What we found was dramatic.

Detractors are less likely to order from you in the following year

Detractors (clients who rated their staffing firm between a 0 and a 6 on the NPS scale) were 40% less likely to order from the firm in the following year than Promoters (those rating their firm a 9 or 10).

But that was really only part of the story. Detractors who did continue to work with their staffing firm decreased their spend by just over 17%, on average, the following year. It’s safe to assume that lost revenue represents budget that the client has taken elsewhere (i.e. to competing firms).What we’ve found is that Detractors typically “audition” other providers, diverting more and more of their spend from their initial organization, looking for a solution to their perceived service failures. As you might expect, once they find that solution, they often leave their original firm entirely.

Promoters, on average, increase spend the following year

On the other hand, Promoters are 40% more likely to re-order from firms they enjoyed working with the following year. What’s more, they increase their spend with those firms by an average of nearly 11%.

In other words, our research shows that the higher a staffing firm’s NPS, the more likely their clients are to increase their spend in the next calendar year—and the less satisfied clients are (i.e. the lower a firm’s NPS), the more likely they are to decrease spend or depart.

Identifying Detractors has never been more important

Especially in the current economic climate, this information can make a huge difference in how your firm weathers the next six months—or the next several years.We already know that one of the best ways to survive an economic downturn is to do everything we can to retain clients we already have. After all, the cost to retain a firm is a fraction of what is required to land a new account.Yet, we also know that the staffing industry historically struggles with client retention. The average firm churns 20 or more clients for every 100 in a typical economic year. During a recession, these numbers are likely to be even larger.Learn more about the Cost of Client Churn in Staffing >>Like you, your clients are responding to the current situation by examining their spend and vendor relationships with a microscope—and looking to determine which services are useful, which are not, and why.And for an industry with that averaged a -2% Net Promoter^® Score in 2019—meaning on average, clients are more likely to be Detractors than Promoters of their staffing agencies—hiring managers are likely to identify their staffing firm as a place that they could make a cut.

In average times, 39% of staffing clients who leave their primary firm for a new one do so because of service failures. And as we’ve said before, service failures are a matter of client perception—and even great firms have some unsatisfied clients—but what differentiates the good from the great is how firms respond to those perceived failures.Learn more about ClearlyRated’s Best Practices for Recovering from Service Failures >>And the first step to responding well to a Detractor is knowing that they’re dissatisfied in the first place. After all, you can’t fix service-related issues that you don’t know about.

Ultimately, by investing in, and measuring, your clients’ experience today, you can help make sure that you avoid revenue loss down the line—and we’re here to help.Interested in learning more about your firm’s NPS? Contact us here.

We’re headed into our second month of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the business services landscape looks very different than it did a matter of weeks ago. Conferences have been canceled, entire teams have transitioned to remote work, and we are now grappling with unprecedented economic uncertainty.Amidst all of this, there are 3 questions that I’ve been asked more than any other in the last month:

1. “When do you think this will be over?”
2. “What are you watching?” (Tiger King, of course)
3. “Should I be surveying my clients right now?”

Here at ClearlyRated, our focus lies in helping business service providers (staffing and recruiting firms, accounting firms, law firms, RPOs, PEOs, and others) stay in touch with the client experience through Net Promoter® surveys. Anyone who has made a good-faith effort to measure their firm’s NPS® knows the value this approach has in the best of times.This question is incredibly valid, and it deserves some extra attention given the current climate. As with most complex situations, I don’t have a simple answer that applies to every circumstance. But I have put together some considerations for you to weigh as you make that decision for your firm.

Consideration #1: Client churn is likely to increase—even as the economic news improves.

“Don’t waste a good recession” is a mindset many business owners and leaders adopt when facing times of economic hardship. Even if their current situation doesn't require it, many of your clients will view this recession as an opportunity to push back on your fees, to question how critical you are to their firm, and to generally reevaluate their relationship with you. This mindset can be one of the greatest impediments to your firm’s financial recovery as this pandemic lifts. If you’ve weathered the first wave of client churn or contraction of work, the last thing you need to deal with is the preventable churn that’s driven by service-related dissatisfaction. For every 100 clients, the average firm will churn 20 or more of them in normal times, and that rate only rises in times of economic uncertainty. The costs to retain a firm are a fraction of those required to land a new account, but you can’t fix service-related issues you don’t know about. Investing in (and measuring) client experience today will help you avoid revenue loss tomorrow.

If you've weathered the first wave of client churn or contraction of work, the last thing you need to deal with is the preventable churn that's driven by service-related dissatisfaction.

Consideration #2: Economic uncertainty leads to risk aversion, making social proof more important than ever.

A great deal of insightful research has been done on the impact of group size on B2B buying decisions. What the data shows is that larger numbers of people are involved in buying decisions than in the past, and as buying group size increases, so does risk aversion. Those trends are only further amplified in times of economic uncertainty. What this means is that it becomes your firm's responsibility to balance out that risk aversion to make it easier for your clients to continue to say yes to your services—or to give you the green light in the first place.For many service firms, the most effective way they've found to mitigate that risk is to differentiate by providing better service. And that’s smart strategically, because ClearlyRated research shows buyers view the satisfaction of your existing clients as the most persuasive evidence of your quality. As your team starts to look at how to attract and land new accounts, accurate and recent proof from your existing clients will be crucial to their success. That proof can take many forms, but we see testimonials, awards for service, and online ratings and reviews as consistently persuasive methods for proving service excellence.

Consideration #3: You and your team deserve some good news to celebrate.

Let’s think about morale and the overall health of your internal team. If you’re still in business, that’s likely because your employees have put aside their own anxiety and fears during this crisis to continue serving your clients. It’s likely they have worked harder than ever to do so. When you determine that it’s the right time to engage with your clients and ask them for feedback, be sure that your survey initiative supports and celebrates positive feedback as well as helping you to identify at-risk accounts. The ClearlyRated program accomplishes this in a few ways:

• Firms who meet basic response rate and NPS requirements when surveying their clients through ClearlyRated are recognized as top service providers in their industry.
• Promoters (clients who respond to the NPS question with a 9 or 10) are invited to leave a testimonial based on their feedback.
• Promoters are also invited to recognize team members from the firms they’re evaluating who have gone above and beyond for them—these “Shout Outs” provide amazing fuel for morale and service focus.
• Client feedback is translated to online ratings and reviews, so your team can be proud of how their service efforts are fueling brand reputation.

These are just a few ways to consider bringing a lens for “good news” to your client survey initiative. Let’s celebrate our service leaders within our organizations at a time when their service delivery has been truly heroic!

"The ClearlyRated survey process is so easy, and the results are well worth the price. While it is a nice differentiator for us, it is also a massive morale boost to our employees during our busiest time of year."

Jennifer Cantero, Director of Marketing & Sustainability, Sensiba San Filippo LLC

Consideration #4: Are your clients facing a major crisis? Now might not be the right time to survey.

In this unprecedented time, here’s the caveat that I want to give: Asking your clients for feedback to understand how you can improve your service is critical; but it will fall on deaf ears if your clients are fighting just to stay in business. If your clients are in industries such as retail or hospitality, industries that are currently in survival mode and struggling just to stay afloat, surveying right now could seem tone-deaf. That said, if you are servicing healthcare or logistics clients, it may be the perfect time to ask and reinforce your partnership. You know your client base better than anyone—make sure you take this consideration to heart as you plan your survey initiative.

Consideration #5: Start planning well ahead of your survey program launch date.

Surveying clients the right way requires a plan, and the process of planning for all the internal and external factors that are necessary to launch an effective survey won’t happen overnight. In an April survey of more than 250 business service firm leaders, more than 70 percent said that they expect the business outlook for their firm to be stronger in the next 6 months than it is now. Their assessment dovetails with many economists who cite improvement in Q3 and rapid expansion in Q4 of this year, bouncing off the lows of the current quarter.

Whether you plan to launch a client survey initiative in the coming months, or you plan to wait until the current uncertainty subsides, give yourself plenty of runway to develop your methodology, decide on your vendor, gather your client list, and field the survey. You’ll also want to be sure to spend enough time building a process for responding to and taking action on feedback as it comes in—as this is the critical strategy for securing an ROI on any survey investment.

Closing thoughts

The firms who were most successful at emerging from the last recession had a plan that included near-term “survival” of the downturn coupled with longer-term thinking about how to emerge stronger and more capable than before. Aligning your firm’s value proposition with the needs of your existing clients is critical to avoiding a misstep as peer firms accelerate later this year.

I can’t tell you if it is the right time to survey your clients, given the cloud of COVID-19 that hangs over our world and global economy. But I can tell you that if it isn’t the right time now, it will be soon.If executed correctly, the feedback you receive from surveying your existing clients will:

• Save you from losing key accounts;
• Reveal opportunities for expansion;
• Improve the morale of your internal staff;
• Provide you with compelling proof of your ability to differentiate on service quality;
• Help you alleviate the natural concerns that will inevitably arise as your clients and prospects navigate this unprecedented uncertainty.

These benefits are critical in the best of times, but especially now.

ClearlyRated can help

For a limited time, ClearlyRated is offering a free survey to business service providers interested in gathering feedback from their clients in this time of uncertainty. If you are a staffing or recruiting firm, accounting firm, law firm, RPO, PEO, or other business service provider - please contact us to learn more.

ClearlyRated® is thrilled to announce winners of the 2020 Best of Accounting award program!We’re incredibly excited to recognize the Best of Accounting winners for their commitment to service excellence and their efforts to foster a memorable and remarkable client experience.

What is Best of Accounting^TM?

Best of Accounting is an industry award recognizing accounting firms that have demonstrated exceptional service quality based exclusively on ratings provided by their clients. This annual award program helps service leaders differentiate in a crowded marketplace and provides prospective clients with a credible and transparent symbol of quality as they vet accounting service providers.

How do accounting firms win Best of Accounting?

• Using the ClearlyRated survey process, clients of participating firms are sent an online survey asking them to rate their satisfaction with their firm based on the Net Promoter® survey methodology.
• Participating firms’ client survey responses are calculated and validated by third party research firm and competition administrator, ClearlyRated.
• Based on industry benchmarks for 2019, ClearlyRated determined a minimum satisfaction score that accounting firms must earn to be awarded Best of Accounting - ensuring client satisfaction and service quality at these winning firms is significantly higher than the industry average.

Click here to see how it works >>

Best of Accounting winners set the pace for service excellence

The 2019 benchmark for NPS in the accounting industry is just 24%. Compare that to winners of the 2020 Best of Accounting competition (who earned a Net Promoter Score of 80% on average), and you’ll find that clients of Best of Accounting winners are 1.7 times as likely to be completely satisfied than the average accounting firm client.

Why Best of Accounting?

At ClearlyRated, we see a significant opportunity for accounting firms to differentiate (and grow) based on the client experience. Our 2019 Accounting Industry Benchmark Study finds that accounting buyers rank referrals, testimonials, and online reviews/ratings (all indicators of the client experience) as top resources for determining the quality of a service provider. And of course, it’s not just your buyers who care about the client experience. Nearly 2 out of 5 accounting clients who have left their provider in the past year did so due to service failures. Improving the client experience helps the bottom line from the inside out.We created the Best of Accounting program to help fuel transparency between your clients and buyers. Best of Accounting is the only client survey program that empowers accounting firms with:

• Real-time insights to help you grow client satisfaction and improve word-of-mouth reputation.
• Validated online ratings from clients to help build online reputation.
• A credible third-party award offering proof of superior service quality to clients and prospects.

Interested in participating in Best of Accounting?

There’s still time to compete for the 2020 award! Simply click here to register or contact us to request a demo with one of our consultants.

We are excited to be launching support for SMS (texting) of our survey invitations. This new feature requires us to make some changes to the ClearlyRated dashboard reports. With that, an additional data field called 'contact_sms' will be included in the existing reports that are available to be exported from our software. This change may impact you depending on how you use these reports.Below is a summary of the changes that will go into effect Wednesday January 29th at 8PM PST:

• All Sent report download:
  • Added a new column called 'contact_sms' to be added after 'contact_email' column. It will contain the SMS number of the contact if one exists.
  • Renamed the 'bounce' column to be 'bounce_email'. Content of the column will not change.
  • Added a new column called 'bounce_sms' after 'bounce_email' column. It will contain true/false indication of whether that contact had a bounced SMS.
  • Renamed the 'email_notifications' column to be 'detractor_notifications'. Content of the column will not change.
• All Bounced report download:
  • Added a new column called 'contact_sms' to be added after 'contact_email' column. It will contain the SMS number of the contact if one exists.
  • Renamed the 'bounce' column to be 'bounce_email'. Content of the column will not change.
  • Added timezone indication to the date/time value in the 'bounce_email' column.
  • Added a new column called 'bounce_sms' after 'bounce_email' column. It will contain the date/time with timezone that the contact had an SMS bounce.
  • Renamed the 'email_notifications' column to be 'detractor_notifications'. Content of the column will not change.
• All Unsubscribed report download:
  • Added a new column called 'contact_sms' to be added after 'contact_email' column. It will contain the SMS number of the contact if one exists.
  • Renamed the 'unsubscribe' column to be 'unsubscribe_email'. Content of the column will not change.
  • Added timezone indication to the date/time value in the 'unsubscribe_email' column.
  • Added a new column called 'unsubscribe_sms' after 'unsubscribe_email' column. It will contain the date/time with timezone that the contact unsubscribed via SMS.
  • Renamed the 'email_notifications' column to be 'detractor_notifications'. Content of the column will not change.
• All Contacts, All Non-Responses, All Responses, Detractor Responses, Testimonial Responses, Shout Outs Responses report downloads:
  • Added a new column called 'contact_sms' to be added after 'contact_email' column. It will contain the SMS number of the contact if one exists.
  • Renamed the 'email_notifications' column to be 'detractor_notifications'. Content of the column will not change.

We recognize this might cause problems with internal tools you or your team may have built. We apologize for that and we want you to know that we work very hard to limit our changes to these exports as much as possible. We hope by giving you this heads up that you will have some time to adapt to the new downloads.Please don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions or concerns!

At ClearlyRated, we obsess over client and candidate feedback. And we stand by the belief that the most successful survey programs are those that make their results visible across the entire organization.That’s why we’re thrilled to announce our first integration with Bullhorn - a leading applicant tracking system and CRM in the staffing and recruiting space!With ClearlyRated’s Bullhorn integration, feedback from your ClearlyRated survey program is accessible in a custom tab within the Bullhorn platform, allowing for all of a client contact and candidate’s information, including their satisfaction scores and feedback, to be easily accessible in one place.

Our integrated vision

Many of the staffing firms that partner with ClearlyRated to survey their clients and candidates run into the same problem: they have access to powerful feedback and satisfaction data down to the contact level, but must figure out how to get that information into the hands of all of their account managers and recruiters - those who are in the field nurturing these relationships day in and day out (and, frankly, the most likely to have a meaningful impact on that service experience).With our new Bullhorn integration, any historical satisfaction scores and feedback from a given contact is seamlessly visible within that contact’s Bullhorn record - creating a simple native solution for distributing survey responses to the people that need them most. No more creative hacks, no more Excel wizardry and import headaches - just a seamless experience for real-time access to client and candidate feedback data.

Survey feedback as a custom tab

The ClearlyRated tab is easily navigable for anyone within your team who has been granted access. The custom tab appears in the top navigation bar within a client contact and candidate record on the Bullhorn ATS platform.

Within the ClearlyRated tab, if the contact has participated in a ClearlyRated survey, all of their historical survey data as well as any new feedback will automatically populate real-time (the same way it appears in the ClearlyRated survey dashboard). This information will include:

• Net Promoter(R) score response
• Historical view of survey feedback (including responses to driver questions and open-ended response like testimonials and shout outs)
• Issue resolution tracking

How to get the integration

If you are currently utilizing Bullhorn and are subscribed to ClearlyRated at the premium package level or higher - the integration is available to you at no extra cost! To get started, head to your ClearlyRated dashboard for a step-by-step guide with built-in documentation for how-to set up your Bullhorn integration (note: must be an admin level user to set up integration).And, if you don’t already work with ClearlyRated, we’d love to chat more with you about how we can help measure the client and candidate experience at your firm. Please feel free to contact us for more information about our survey program. Or, you can read about ClearlyRated’s survey program for staffing firms here.

Looking ahead - what’s next

The team at ClearlyRated is currently hard at work building out “phase 2” of our integration with Bullhorn, which we will introduce in the late fall of 2019! In an effort to open the door to more simplified and frequent surveying, this iteration will allow for automated contact data pull from Bullhorn to ClearlyRated. More to come this November!We are incredibly proud to be partnering and integrating with our friends at Bullhorn, a leading solutions provider in the staffing industry. Our integration work is just beginning, and we look forward to partnering with other providers to build integrations that will help our clients place the client and talent experience at the heart of their growth strategy!

Net Promoter® Score (NPS®) - an increasingly popular measure of customer satisfaction - originally gained traction in a December 2003 Harvard Business Review article The One Number You Need to Grow, written by former Bain Consultant Fred Reichheld. Since then, NPS has consistently gained in popularity alongside Customer Experience (Cx) as more and more businesses adapt to competing in a world of service transparency, where product and service quality become the true differentiator in the minds of buyers. In fact, a little research on Google Trends yields very clear evidence that both Net Promoter and Customer Experience have risen significantly as topics over the past 15 years.

A recent article on the ‘cultlike following’ of Net Promoter Score (NPS) amongst corporate leaders from the Wall Street Journal, titled The Dubious Management Fad Sweeping Corporate America, brings the corporate adoption of this metric to the forefront. I highly suggest you read the full article (subscription required), as its authors Khadeeja Safdar and Inti Pacheco have clearly done their homework. And while the article is well researched and well written, here are 5 things they got wrong (and one they got right) about the Net Promoter system.

5 things the WSJ got wrong on NPS

1. NPS methodology is more than just the score. Most people debate the efficacy of the question (likelihood to recommend) and the scale (0-10 scale, translated to a score from -100 to +100) and miss the biggest impact NPS has had on customer feedback. Prior to NPS, satisfaction surveys were often 20-30 questions long, requiring customers to spend 10 minutes or more to provide their feedback. After weeks in the field, a team of researchers took additional time to distill the findings into a report. By reducing it to a single scaled response and less than 10 questions, the time lag between feedback and action drops dramatically, making what used to be a marketing-only tool a truly effective tool for client service teams, operations leaders and the front lines of business service firms.
2. Low response rates are helped, not hurt by NPS methodology. The article mentions response rates of 5% and while that may be a true benchmark in some industries, more typically satisfaction survey response rate benchmarks report a range from 10 to 20 percent. At ClearlyRated, one of our greatest services to our clients is helping them average a response rate of more than 30 percent, on average. You can read my colleague Kat Kocurek’s post on best practices to increase response rate here. In every instance where we have transitioned a client from a 20+ question survey to an NPS methodology, the response rate has improved, often more than doubling what their prior response was. In a B2B environment, when each dissatisfied client may be worth tens of thousands of dollars (or much more) to the firm, each response - good or bad - is a gift. A slight decline in precision for a significant increase in responses is a trade most firm leaders readily make.
3. NPS is a proven leading indicator of growth - at least in many industries. The article references an academic study that found NPS ‘doesn’t correlate with revenue or predict customer behavior any better than other survey-based metric’. There are two problems with this statement. First, given the simplicity and efficiency of employing the NPS methodology, the bar should be higher. An argument against a well-designed and executed survey program that employs NPS, should also include an alternative that better predicts customer behavior and firm growth, while still being easily communicated within and outside of the organization. Without an alternative metric to gauge customer satisfaction that is demonstrably better (at predicting behavior, driving change, and improving service delivery), it is hard to argue against NPS.  Second, in the space we operate (business and professional services), we have proven the correlation many times over the past decade. Our most recent study, including nearly 4,000 clients’ spend over 3 years with two large recruiting firms found that detractors were 56% less likely to order in the next 12 months, and even if they didn’t outright leave the firm, on average they decreased their spend by 14.1%. Promoters increased an average of 8.2% in the following year. In the accounting industry, corporate buyers are nearly 4x as likely to start their search for an accounting firm with a referral than any other source. ClearlyRated research in B2B service industries shows a similar pattern in other industries such as law, insurance and staffing. For industries, like these, where referrals drive growth, asking clients their likelihood to refer makes intuitive sense - and predicts buyer behavior.
4. Transparency around NPS scores is a good thing - for investors and buyers. The article’s analysis of more than 40,000 transcripts of conference calls discussing quarterly earnings underpins the argument that adoption has rapidly increased - and they are right. However, the tone of the article indicates this is a bad thing. While I agree that most leaders of publicly traded companies are using it when the scores indicate positive direction at the organization, we should all be demanding more transparency, not less. A study by the Pew Research Center found ‘82% of U.S. adults say they at least sometimes read online customer ratings or reviews before purchasing items for the first time, including 40% who say they always or almost always do so. While consumer goods and retail establishments understand how impactful reviews can be on their business, in B2B industries, where decisions aren’t measured in dollars but rather thousands of dollars, more firms measuring (and sharing) the satisfaction of their existing clients is a good thing. In the B2B space, this is changing too. Glassdoor has brought transparency and accountability to how companies treat their employees, while G2 is redefining the B2B software buying experience with their in-depth ratings and reviews. More information on actual service from actual customers is a good thing. Period.  And if you still don’t think it is a useful tool, check out the chart below comparing the growth of the five publicly traded companies who mention NPS the most (according to the WSJ article) compared to the S&P 500. Perhaps instead of lamenting their implied overuse of the metric, we should be applauding the shareholder returns they’ve created by building a culture around customer experience.

1. NPS can be a powerful motivator for employees - if used correctly. The WSJ article cites examples of manipulation of NPS scores by Best Buy employees, amongst other allegations of misuse centered around leveraging NPS for bonuses and performance reviews. These issues are more indicative of misalignment of incentives, and actually have little to do with NPS as a metric. The same issues would occur if the incentive was based on 5-star reviews or any other CSat metric. Our counsel has always been to focus on the service wins and improvement, much more than laboring on service failures or just NPS score.The ClearlyRated survey program provides clients a chance to recognize employees who have gone above and beyond, and shares that recognition throughout the firm. Many employees at our client organizations have come to both depend on and look forward to the survey feedback, as it provides them with validation that what they do matters. It helps them see the difference they are making in the lives of the people they serve for 40+ hours each week. My point is this; if your employees fear feedback from the customers they serve, you have undermined the most valuable aspect of your survey program. It should inform and inspire front-line staff, not demoralize them. That holds true of any methodology, including NPS.

While I’m quick to point out the areas where I disagree with the Wall Street Journal article, it’s also important to point out one area where I absolutely agree with them. The NPS scale is an imperfect statistical metric. Since its inception, academics and researchers alike have (correctly) pointed out that calculating a score from -100 to +100 from an 11 point scaled survey response introduces ‘noise’ to the score in the form of additional variance. What it doesn't say is that EVERY metric and scale has issues. Whole books and HBR articles have been written on the flaw of averages. What statisticians fail to capture with NPS and why operators tend to love it, is that this statistical flaw actually can, at times, be helpful operationally as it reinforces the lesson that EVERY interaction matters. Having a single number, and the right context and benchmarks for comparison, can inspire action on the front lines of customer service; a transformational impact few research methodologies can claim.In summary, what I think the original NPS design got right was trading simplicity for a slight decrease in precision. Is it perfect? Far from it. Is it effective? Within B2B service industries, where service is the primary differentiator, absolutely.Interested in implementing a Net Promoter® survey at your firm? Contact ClearlyRated today!

What if I told you that 32% of hiring managers (that’s right, nearly 1 in 3) have switched their primary staffing provider in the past year?

That’s what we found in the 2018 Staffing Buyer Study - a joint research project conducted in partnership with our friends at CareerBuilder and ASA. The truth is that unsatisfied clients are one of the greatest opportunities that staffing firms have to shore up revenue. In fact, if you look at Net Promoter Score® data for the staffing industry, you can easily spot the power (and more importantly, the massive financial impact) that client churn has in our business.

What is Client Churn?

Client churn (or client attrition) refers to the loss of customers or subscribers for any reason at all. Businesses measure and track churn as a percentage of lost customers compared to total number of customers over a given time period. This metric is usually tracked monthly and reported at the end of the month. It's important to note that churn rates vary by industry and knowing your market is key to reducing churn with more precision.

What Client Churn Costs Staffing Firms?

An analysis of 3,700 clients of staffing firms over 36 months revealed that Detractors — clients who report they are unlikely to recommend your firm to a friend of colleague by rating you 0 to 6 on the NPS® scale — are 56% more likely to churn than Promoters (i.e. your most loyal clients).

And the worst part? Even if Detractors do continue working with you, they are likely to spend significantly less on your services, taking an average of 14% of their business elsewhere.Here’s an example to help you put those stats into perspective:

As you can see, a firm projected to earn $20 million this year would lose north of $1.7 million of that — nearly 9% of earnings — assuming the client experience and willingness to spend aligns with industry averages. Put another way, staffing firms in this bracket are compromising nearly $2 million in annual revenue by failing to keep their existing clients happy.

What Causes Client Churn in the Staffing Industry?

So what drives these clients (and their spend) out the door? Our research shows that staffing firm clients usually become Detractors for one of the following reasons:

• The firm didn’t offer enough candidates to choose from or offered poorly matched candidates
• The services cost too much (i.e., they didn’t get value from the transaction)
• The firm was unresponsive to inquiries or questions
• The staff was not helpful or caring
• The overall customer experience was poor or lacking
• There was poor communication on the firm’s part

The majority of these churn factors are service-related — things you can control internally with a focus on responsiveness, communication and exemplary customer care. They also put you at risk for losing a client to your competitors. In fact, 39% of staffing clients who leave their primary firm for a new one do so because of service failures.

Fortunately, service failures represent as much opportunity as they do risk. Thanks to a documented phenomenon known as the ‘service recovery paradox,’ your firm has the chance to turn those unsatisfied clients into loyal advocates for your brand – assuming you have the practices in place to handle the issue quickly and effectively. Our industry NPS data backs this up, showing that scores are in fact higher from clients who have experienced a problem with their firm but saw that problem fixed to their satisfaction within 24 hours.

Transforming Detractors into Promoters

Growing your Net Promoter Score means finding opportunities to transform Detractors into loyal advocates – aka Promoters. As staffing firm clients, Promoters not only spend more with their primary staffing firms, but they are willing (and likely) to refer you to new accounts and help grow your business.Finding ways to keep Promoters happy, as well as constantly creating more of them, is the key to long-term success in any industry, but most definitely in staffing. What does that take, exactly? According to our survey, Promoters most often note their firm’s:

• Well-matched candidates
• Great customer service
• Responsiveness
• Professional, caring and helpful staff
• High level of communication
• Strong reputation
• Wide array of candidates
• Good value given the cost

The bulk of these, again, are service related and within your control — they’re not just the services you deliver, but how you deliver them and when you do it. In a nutshell, it’s the little things that make a big impact on your clients’ overall experience with you.

Invest in Your Success — And Your Promoters

I say it all the time – staffing firms will never see the maximum ROI from an NPS survey if they only spend time addressing Detractor responses (i.e. unhappy clients). It pays to invest time, resources and energy into your Promoters — quite literally. Promoters spend an average of 71% of their staffing budget with their primary firm. Detractors and those who are middle-of-the-road? They spend just 34% and 51%, respectively.

At its simplest, it means the better service you provide, the more you’ll stand to make — all by nurturing your existing clients.To start ramping up your efforts to better cultivate loyal clients and Promoters, encourage your team to:

• Set realistic expectations about open positions and the marketplace
• Submit candidates that are a good fit, and walk clients through the steps you took to find those candidates
• Be timely, both in responding to inquiries and providing potential candidates
• Resolve issues and concerns within 1 day if at all possible
• Be friendly, helpful and professional with your clients
• Provide data and resources that can add value to your clients’ hiring efforts and don’t assume they know everything you know about their market or candidate pool

Finally, utilize the right technology. Our research shows that 67% of hiring managers believe it’s either “very” or “extremely” important that their staffing firm use the latest technologies. It’s even more important with Millennials (82% say it's either "very" or "extremely" important!).

An NPS Survey Program Can Help

Want help identifying your Detractors, leveraging your Promoters or just improving your online reputation? An NPS survey program can help. Contact ClearlyRated today to learn more.

It can be easy to focus a majority of your energy on your Promoters and Detractors. After all, they’re the cohort of your clients who are most likely to spend time talking about you (the good and the ugly), reviewing you, and in the case of a Promoter – referring you.Not sure what we mean by Promoters, Passives, and Detractors? Click here to get a primer on the Net Promoter® Score.While your Passives are presumably “satisfied”, they shouldn’t be discounted altogether. They may not be outright referring your firm to others, but they’re also not exclusively loyal to your firm either. This becomes concerning when looking at the likeliness of a staffing firm client to find a new firm to work with if their needs aren’t being met – our 2018 Staffing Buyer Study (conducted in partnership with CareerBuilder and ASA) shows that 1 in 3 hiring managers who utilize staffing firms have switched their primary provider in the past year (nearly 40% did so due to receiving poor service).

This behavior alone should be enough to encourage serious effort toward identifying, communicating with, and improving your strategy for servicing Passives. A quick look to your financials can offer even more impetus.

The Financial Impact of Passives

You’ve likely experienced the financial drain of a Detractor. For starters, Promoters have a higher amount of loyalty to your firm and are therefore less likely to take their business elsewhere. On top of that, those (Promoters) who do continue to work with your firm are more likely to increase their spend while Passives tend to hold steady and Detractors actively look to divert spend to other firms.For example, the below analysis of two large staffing firms and four years of data revealed Detractors decrease their spend more than 17% annually¹; significantly taking away from their firm’s annual revenues.

While the financial impact of a Passive isn’t quite as significant, they do have a tendency to decrease their spend on an annual basis. But the real threat to your firm is just how easily a Passive can transition to a Detractor with a small slip in their service experience, which could potentially mean a further reduction of spend down the line.

Passives behave more similarly to Detractors

Here at ClearlyRated, we survey our clients on a monthly cadence. We were curious how our Passive clients compared to the rest of our client base (Promoters and Detractors) when it comes to how they speak about working with us. Are they neutral yet still generally content? Or, worse - are they more likely to say negative things about their experience?Through an analysis of 1,000 open-ended comments from ClearlyRated clients who participated in a client satisfaction survey, we found that Passives actually have significantly more similar sentiments to Detractors than Promoters. This means that despite providing us with a relatively high satisfaction score (7 or 8), they are far more likely to provide negative comments (think "issues", "concerns", "lack" etc.) vs. positive comments ("helpful", "excellent", "friendly") in their feedback about working with us - further confirming how one slip in their service experience could easily make them susceptible to transition to a Detractor.

Moving the Needle

Though it’s easy to assume Passives are altogether “insignificant,” a lot can be learned from these middle-of-the-road customers. Something in their experience is lacking, and you haven’t inspired loyalty in them (yet!).Take that as a challenge to build a strategy that aims to convert your Passives to the same loyalty tier as those clients who would be willing to refer you (your Promoters!). Consider reaching out to further understand how they feel about working with your firm and where your opportunities for improvement are. Find a place in your process where you could offer something unexpected. Go above and beyond to recover if you fail to deliver on something.And remember, Promoters tend to increase their spend about 10% a year, so moving that needle ever so slightly could have a noticeable impact on your bottom line (as well as your overall Net Promoter Score!).Want more help honing your NPS strategy?Contact ClearlyRated today.¹Data is based on analysis of four years of data from two large staffing firms whose clients have participated in a ClearlyRated Net Promoter survey form 2015-2018.

It’s hard to believe that an entire decade has passed since we first launched Best of Staffing®.

When we embarked on this journey back in 2010, the ClearlyRated® (formerly known as Inavero) team was on a mission to help staffing firms place the client and talent experience at the heart of their growth strategy. Our goal was to build a technology solution that transforms how people are treated by the companies they work for and do business with. We were armed with a strong conviction about the benefits of client and talent feedback, a healthy dose of ambition, and - most importantly - the support of partners and industry leaders who shared our vision for service transparency in staffing.

The past 10 years have left me inspired, humbled, and more than a little bit smarter than when I set foot at my first Staffing World event. As we take this moment to celebrate the 10th year of Best of Staffing, I would like to recognize those companies who have been with us from the beginning. I am incredibly grateful to (and in awe of) these rockstar businesses who have helped us breathe life into Best of Staffing by demonstrating just what is possible when service is at the heart of their growth strategy.

Introducing the first cohort of 10-year Best of Staffing winners!

Here is the list of staffing agencies who have won the Best of Staffing award for the first 10 consecutive years of the award program (2010 - 2019)! All companies feature their client/talent ratings and testimonials on clearlyrated.com.

• Advanced Resources10 year Best of Staffing winner for both Client and Talent satisfaction!
• Allegiance Staffing10 year Best of Staffing winner for Client satisfaction!
• Delta Healthcare Providers Staffing10 year Best of Staffing winner for Talent satisfaction!
• Delta Locum Tenens10 year Best of Staffing winner for Talent satisfaction!
• EdgeLink, LLC10 year Best of Staffing winner for Talent satisfaction!
• GDH10 year Best of Staffing winner for Client satisfaction!
• Helpmates Staffing Services10 year Best of Staffing winner for Client satisfaction!
• Hire Dynamics10 year Best of Staffing winner for both Client and Talent satisfaction!
• Infinity Consulting Solutions10 year Best of Staffing winner for Client satisfaction!
• JustinBradley10 year Best of Staffing winner for Client satisfaction!
• Kineticom, Inc.10 year Best of Staffing winner for Talent satisfaction!
• Labor Finders10 year Best of Staffing winner for Client satisfaction!
• PrideStaff10 year Best of Staffing winner for both Client and Talent satisfaction!
• PrideStaff Financial10 year Best of Staffing winner for Talent satisfaction!
• Professional Staffing Group10 year Best of Staffing winner for Client satisfaction!
• Rx relief10 year Best of Staffing winner for Client satisfaction!
• The BOSS Group10 year Best of Staffing winner for Talent satisfaction!
• The Plus Group, Inc.10 year Best of Staffing winner for both Client and Talent satisfaction!
• TRC Staffing Services, Inc.10 year Best of Staffing winner for Client satisfaction!

A heartfelt “thank you.”

To our friends, colleagues, clients, partners, and sponsors - thank you for believing in and helping to grow the Best of Staffing program. We owe a special debt of gratitude to our friends at CareerBuilder, who helped launch the program in 2009 and the American Staffing Association, who have entrusted us for a decade as their satisfaction survey partner, and to Indeed, Gold Sponsor for Best of Staffing since 2016. We are beyond excited about the future and look forward to another decade of continued service excellence in staffing!

As we kick off 2019, I want to let you in on some big, totally awesome new stuff we have coming your way in February. I would be remiss to pass up the opportunity to use the Golden Globe win of the great flick Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to create our web (see what I did there?) of origin stories and why we are making the biggest evolution in our company history.So here it goes...

An Origin Story

When I joined Inavero and our CEO Eric Gregg over a decade ago, we were on a mission to build a technology solution that transforms how people are treated by the companies they work for and do business with by increasing service transparency. Over the past 10 years, we have spent quite literally millions of dollars doing just that. We have built a technology solution that allows you to gather feedback and turn that feedback into a service-excellence megaphone for your team. We believe, and always will, that exceptional companies deserve a platform that showcases how awesome they are. As Uncle Ben reminds Spider-Man ‘with great power comes great responsibility’... and our clients have empowered us to be the voice for their industries. You have entrusted us to bring transparency to your most trusted relationships with clients (and, in staffing, your talent and employees). We carry that responsibility with pride and are more confident today than ever before that we must not waver from our commitment to bring transparency to the experience that clients have with the companies they work with and for.

The Big Evolution - Inavero becomes ClearlyRated

As previously announced, we are dropping Inavero and officially becoming ClearlyRated next month. This gives us a single, powerful platform through the ClearlyRated brand and the clearlyrated.com directory to connect prospects and buyers with exceptional companies like yours, which is very very exciting!This cutover will happen on February 7th. Which means the public announcement of our 2019 "Best of" award winners will be showcased on clearlyrated.com.

So what does this change really mean?

Like it or not... believe it or not... the research doesn’t lie and it is telling us that everyday more of your prospects are using online star ratings to make decisions about the companies they choose to work with and for. All of us youngsters that grew up with eBay seller ratings and Amazon product star ratings are now in the buyer’s seat. We depend on online ratings for every purchase we make.In service of our mission, we will NOT let our clients fall behind that buyer behavior trend. With the introduction of the clearlyrated.com directory, we put you in front of more prospects as they use search engines like Google to evaluate potential service providers.The clearlyrated.com platform is optimized for the following, each driving more awareness of your firm’s service excellence:

• Significantly more search engine optimized and targeted pages across clearlyrated.com.
• Buyers are often buying all sorts of services, so a multi-industry directory cross-sells leading to more exposure than a single-industry directory.
• Award winners are prominently promoted across more search optimized pages.
• For multi-location firms, you can now enable location-specific star ratings! Google loves them.

Location ratings are more important now than ever.

Google requires that all star ratings that are encoded to display in their search results for a specific office location must accurately represent the people that interacted with that physical location. A lesson we learned the hard way is that you must conform to what Google requires if you want to get the best placement in search results; which we want for you and you want for you. For those of you with more than a single office location, you were probably asked to provide location information for all survey contacts. This allows you to map your survey responses to the locations they represent, complying with Google’s requirement. If you are unable to do this, we have provided an option to turn off location ratings so we are still in compliance with Google. There is great benefit to having encoded location ratings so we strongly suggest utilizing this feature.

Thank you for your business!

I wish you a very awesome start to 2019!

With unemployment at a record low, today’s job candidates have options. Despite your best recruiting efforts, getting a candidate in the door doesn’t guarantee they’ll accept an offer. And more often than not, your client’s ideal candidate is also the top choice at another company. So in this race for top talent, how can staffing firms capture candidates’ attention and stand out from the competition?It all starts with an email. Your client’s ideal candidate can’t come in for an interview, or accept a job offer, if they don’t have a conversation with you first. On a daily basis, top candidates are inundated with opportunities and inquiries from recruiters. After assessing and scrolling through a long list of emails, a candidate may only choose to respond to one or two. Wouldn’t you love it if the email they read and responded to was yours?Engaging with your client’s ideal candidate means capturing their attention with your very first communication. Here are three ways to personalize your emails so they stand out from the crowd.

#1: Do your research

You’ve narrowed your search and found an ideal candidate for the role. But before you write your email, think about what you’re going to say. A standard, bulk email isn’t going to win them over. Using public information from Google and social media, you can learn more about a candidate than what’s on their resume. With these insights, you can see what you have in common and then strike up a conversation. For example, imagine you discovered Joe, a candidate who’d be a perfect fit for your open role. After digging around a bit you learn that Joe is a huge Houston Astros fan. You can leverage this information to craft a personalized email around his interest and the upcoming game next week.When researching candidates, it’s essential to use your best judgment. Keep it light and casual — don’t dive deeper than what’s on the surface. Put yourself in Joe’s shoes for a minute. You’d feel comfortable with chatting back and forth about the Astros, but if someone uncovered that your sister’s son recently graduated from their alma mater, that’s too personal and private.

#2: Craft and personalize your message

How much personalization is needed to capture your candidate’s attention? It’s obvious to candidates when they receive a bulk email. The role doesn’t match their experience, it isn’t located anywhere close to where they live, it doesn’t say why they’d be a good fit for the role, and worst of all, it doesn’t even have their name.A good personalized email should contain these essential pieces:

• • An attention-grabbing subject line. Now that you know your candidate, Joe, loves the Houston Astros, open with an intriguing subject line like, “Congrats on last night’s Astros win.”
    • Mention something specific about why they’d be a good fit for the role. For example, go on to say, “Beyond your team’s win last night, I’m impressed with your career progression, specifically in regards to your software engineering experience.”
      • Share the details of the position and offer an opportunity to connect. Here’s what you might say: “My client is looking for talented software engineers like you. If you have time to chat in the next few days, I’d welcome the opportunity to tell you a bit more about the position and the organization.”
        • Have a clear call to action. Communicate next steps by saying, “Do you have ten minutes to chat this week?” or “Are you free this week to meet for coffee?”

#3: Stay in touch

Sending personalized emails is only the start of building your connection with candidates. You’ll want to foster and grow your relationship as they move through the hiring journey. Here are a few tactics for providing a first-class candidate experience:

• • • • • • Be transparent. The number-one point of frustration for job seekers is waiting to hear back about their applications. Share expectations and a clear timeline with candidates ahead of time and keep them looped in to any changes that may arise.
          • Offer interview tips. Set candidates up for success in their upcoming interviews with interview prep communication. Send candidates a quick email to share who they’re meeting with, what happens on site and a sample list of questions to expect.
            • Follow up. Whether your candidate is offered the job or not, follow up. Every candidate deserves the respect of knowing whether they are moving forward in the process or not. Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s “no black hole” philosophy reflects this candidate-first mind-set, where everybody who applies for a job — regardless of whether they’re qualified or not — will hear back from an actual recruiter. Telling someone they’re not a good fit isn’t easy, but they’ll have a lot more respect for you and your company if you are transparent and honest about next steps.

Conclusion

Making connections in today’s job market may not be easy, but it’s vital to finding your clients their ideal candidates. In fact, 96% of employers agree that building relationships is an essential part of being a recruiter.Standing out from the competition means exploring new outside-the-box tactics and, in this case, putting a personalized touch on your outreach campaigns and building a relationship from your very first email.Even after sourcing, researching the candidate and sending your email, you may find the role isn’t a match. That’s okay! Even if the role didn’t work out this time, there may be future opportunities that are a better fit. Building a relationship with the candidate keeps them in mind for future opportunities. Plus, a positive recruiting experience may change their mind the next time around.

Times HAVE changed. While word of mouth is still important, there is a whole new medium where your reputation is being discussed - and it’s online. I know I personally let the world know if I’ve had a good experience online - like when MailChimp provided me with great customer service AND a free t-shirt - versus a not-so-great one, like when the local theatre wouldn’t tell me the exact date the traveling Hamilton show tickets were going on sale. This review may have been a little one-sided...but those tickets are hard to get and I really wanted to go!Either way, the point is that people share how they feel online as well as look online to see what other people are saying about a company. Having an online presence is not only great for acknowledging praises or complaints, but also to show that the company has a human side! It’s important to make sure you own your brand online and here’s how:1. Make sure you're on all major social media platforms

If you couldn’t tell already, the first place I go to review a company is social media and statistics show that 68% of users will often go straight to a business’ social media profile to read reviews. If you're still not convinced, you should also know that online reviews have been shown to impact 67.7% of purchasing decisions. It’s clear social media is where reviews are being placed and giving consumers an account to tag allows you to see and acknowledge those comments.2. Make sure you own your company page on review sitesWhile people are leaving reviews on social media, there are other sites - like Glassdoor and Indeed - where not only can reviews be left but new job listings can be posted. If you’re listing jobs on these sites you want to make sure you own your company’s page. You can begin owning your company site - or check if it’s already been established - on Indeed by clicking here or on Glassdoor here. If you plan on implementing regular reviews you may want to look into creating your own ongoing survey program (which you can learn more about here).3. Respond to all reviews. Good and bad!When you’re receiving online feedback (good or bad), it’s always great to respond. Responding to a good review shows that you are attentive and that you care. While it’s a bit harder to respond to a negative review, neglecting to respond can send the message that you don’t care and don’t know how to acknowledge tough situations.4. Get your employees to share company content on social media

Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Linkedin, chances are your employees are active on at least one - and you could be leveraging that! Employee Advocacy is the act of turning your employees into brand advocates for your company. By having them share company content, you are extending your brand’s reach to all of your employees’ followers, and their followers’ followers. The list goes on and on. If you want to know how to get your employees sharing to social media, check out this strategy guide.5. When there is a funny trend, get on board!Companies like Wendy’s and Burger King have this down to a science. Anytime there is a trending topic, they are on social media talking about it with the rest of the world - and, in turn, humanizing their brand. Having personality on social media can be a risk at times, but the recognition you get for doing so may be worth it!One way I did this at Clearview Social was by sharing a funny tweet when #StupidThingsAlexaSays was trending on Twitter. I shared, “Alexa! Make me a content calendar for the entire year.” This tweet received a ton of engagement as well as communicated our brand's personality. What are your thoughts? Do you plan to implement any of these ideas? Let me know on social media.

As a provider of outsourced HR services you already know that your business' reputation is an integral component of your business strategy. But, what you might not realize is just how much your buyers want to hear from your clients during their vetting process.ClearlyRated’s 2018 HR Services Benchmark Study shows that buyers of outsourced HR services care about your business' reputation (24%) just as much as they care about the cost to hire your services (25%). Put differently, the average HR services purchaser cares more about the experience that your clients have working with your firm than the range of service offering or industry expertise that you may provide.

Buyers want to hear from your clients

Your team works hard to deliver an exceptional client experience, but no matter how often (or how well) you articulate this in your marketing deliverables - your most credible opportunity doesn’t involve your own website or even your background credentials. Instead, it involves your existing and former clients, and what they have to say about working with you.

Your most credible marketing opportunity involves what your clients have to say about working with you.

In 2017, Demand Gen report found that 97% of B2B buyers consider user-generated content (such as ratings, reviews, and testimonials) to be more credible than content produced by the service provider they were researching.The same holds true for buyers of outsourced HR services. Our 2018 HR Services Benchmark Study shows that buyers of HR services rate online reviews or testimonials as the top resources in helping judge a potential vendor fit (even while 3 out of 4 buyers visit your firm’s website during their purchasing journey).

Modern day reputation = client ratings & reviews

What does this behavior mean for your firm? The concept of “reputation” can no longer be limited to personal networks and word of mouth referrals - but instead is now strongly influenced by how your clients talk (or even worse, don't talk) about your firm online. This is where strategy becomes complicated for HR service providers and other professional service firms. Where can your prospective clients go to get an accurate depiction (from validated clients) about what it’s like to work with you? Think of today’s most popular online ratings-based directories (Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google+ to name a few). While these have understandably gained traction over the years, they weren’t designed to support experience-sharing between clients and buyers of HR services. In fact, you've likely experienced this first-hand. Your clients are hesitant to write reviews on sites that were not designed for them (or for you) unless they're exceptionally happy or exceptionally unhappy. Yet, the growing demand for reliable, transparent feedback has made credible client reviews for HR service providers more important than ever before.

ClearlyRated for HR Service Providers

We developed ClearlyRated.com - an online business directory - to help HR service providers translate client feedback into quantifiable, searchable information available to prospective buyers in the form of validated client ratings and testimonials. Your business' profile page on ClearlyRated.com is fueled by star ratings from ClearlyRated’s Net Promoter Score survey program - an industry-specific client experience survey optimized for the HR services model and your client audience. Client feedback is aggregated real-time in the ClearlyRated dashboard, where you can monitor star ratings, select the best testimonials to feature on ClearlyRated.com, and help identify your best referral opportunities. Click here to see how it works>>At ClearlyRated, we believe that it’s good business to place the client experience at the heart of your growth strategy - ClearlyRated.com is just one more way we’re helping to bridge the online reputation gap for HR service providers.

Interested in getting your company listed on ClearlyRated.com?

Contact us to learn more about how we harness client satisfaction surveys to help you build your online reputation. Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to stay up to speed on product updates, research releases, and educational opportunities for your business.

As an accounting firm partner, administrator, or marketer - you already know that your firm’s reputation is an integral component of your business strategy. But, what you might not realize is just how much your potential buyers care about your firm’s reputation.ClearlyRated’s 2018 Accounting Industry Benchmark Study finds that today’s accounting buyers rank firm reputation as the #1 influence in their decision to hire an accounting firm.Put differently, the average accounting buyer cares more about the experience that your clients have working with your firm than the cost, range of service offering, or even industry expertise that you may provide.

Buyers want to hear from your clients

Your team works hard to deliver an exceptional client experience across your firm. But no matter how often (or how well) you articulate this in your marketing deliverables - your most credible marketing opportunity doesn’t involve your own website or proposals. Instead, it involves your existing and former clients, and what they have to say about working with you.

Your most credible marketing opportunity involves what your clients have to say about working with you.

In 2017, Demand Gen report found that 97% of B2B buyers consider user-generated content (such as ratings, review, and testimonials) to be more credible than content produced by the service provider they were researching.The same holds true for buyers of accounting services. Our 2018 Accounting Industry Benchmark Study shows that accounting buyers rate online reviews or testimonials as the top resources in helping judge a potential vendor fit (even while 3 out of 4 buyers visit your firm’s website during their purchasing journey).

Modern day reputation = ratings & reviews

What does this behavior mean for your firm? The concept of “reputation” can no longer be limited to personal networks and word of mouth referrals - but instead is now strongly influenced by how your clients talk (or even worse, don’t talk) about your firm online.This is where strategy becomes complicated for accounting firms and other professional service providers. Where can your prospective clients go to get an accurate depiction of what it’s like to work with you? Think of today’s most popular online ratings-based directories (Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google+ to name a few). While these have understandably gained traction over the years, they weren’t designed to support experience-sharing between clients and buyers of accounting services. In fact, you’ve likely experienced this first-hand. Your clients are hesitant to write reviews on sites that were not designed for them (or for you) unless they’re exceptionally happy or exceptionally unhappy. Yet, the growing demand for reliable, transparent client feedback has made credible client reviews for accounting firms more important than ever before.

ClearlyRated for Accounting firms

We developed ClearlyRated.com - an online business directory - to help accounting firms translate client feedback into quantifiable, searchable information available to prospective buyers in the form of client ratings and testimonials. Your firm’s profile page on ClearlyRated.com is fueled by star ratings from ClearlyRated’s Net Promoter Score survey program - an industry-specific client experience survey optimized for the accounting firm model and your client audience. Client feedback is aggregated real-time in the ClearlyRated dashboard, where you can monitor star ratings and select the best testimonials to feature on ClearlyRated.com to help tell your firm’s story of service excellence.Click here to see how it works >>At ClearlyRated, we believe that it’s good business to place the client experience at the heart of your growth strategy - ClearlyRated.com is just one more way we’re helping to bridge the online reputation gap for accounting firms.

Interested in getting your company listed on ClearlyRated.com?

Contact us to learn more about how we harness client satisfaction surveys to help you build your online reputation. Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to stay up to speed on product updates, research releases, and educational opportunities for your business.

At ClearlyRated, we believe that it’s good business to place the client experience at the heart of your growth strategy. And after nearly 10 years of empowering professional service firms with client intelligence and actionable feedback, the ClearlyRated team is excited to announce the launch of our newest offering - ClearlyRated.com!ClearlyRated.com is an online business directory that helps B2B service providers translate client feedback into quantifiable, searchable information that is available to prospective buyers in the form of client ratings and testimonials. Imagine if JD Power & Associates had a lovechild with Glassdoor, and you see where we’re headed with ClearlyRated.com.

Filling the online reputation gap for service providers

Online reputation for marketers of B2B services is an imperfect channel at best - but, at its worst, online reputation can be intimidating, unpredictable, and costly.But it’s not a channel that you can afford to ignore. ClearlyRated's 2018 B2B industry Benchmark Study finds that modern service buyers consider online reviews and testimonials the most trustworthy sources of information about your business - not your website.You likely don’t consider consumer-review platforms like Yelp, Google+, or TripAdvisor to be a strong fit for credibly telling the story of your business in the online reputation channel. And you're not wrong - while these sites are wildly popular, they weren't developed to support experience-sharing between clients and buyers of B2B services. But the growing demand for reliable, transparent client feedback has made credible, comprehensive client reviews of the service you provide more important than ever before.ClearlyRated.com was designed to help you overcome these issues and transform the online reputation channel from costly hassle into fuel for growth.

The ClearlyRated.com difference

When you list your business on ClearlyRated.com - you’ve taken your first step towards building a credible online reputation based on validated client ratings and testimonials. No more being blind-sided by a negative review, no more wondering whether your online ratings match your clients’ actual experience.

Star ratings are fueled by ClearlyRated’s Net Promoter® Survey program - which is optimized for your industry and client audience. Client feedback is aggregated real-time in the ClearlyRated dashboard, where you can monitor star ratings and select the best testimonials to feature on ClearlyRated.com to help tell your business’ story of service excellence.ClearlyRated.com is just one more way that we’re helping B2B service providers empower their clients to tell their story of service excellence.

Interested in getting your company listed on ClearlyRated.com?

Contact us to learn more about how we harness client satisfaction surveys to help you build your online reputation.Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to stay up to speed on product updates, research releases, and educational opportunities for your business.

Yelp, Google+, TripAdvisor - if I asked you to tell me about your company’s “online reputation” strategy, these are likely the websites that would come to mind.These online rating platforms were born of (and have helped usher in) a new era of digital buyer behavior; one that capitalizes on the innate human desire to preview an experience before deciding to invest in it. And who better to trust than someone who has walked this very path before you?Unfortunately, online reputation is a complicated opportunity (and often a significant issue) for providers of B2B services. But research continues to point to the growing demand for credible, transparent interaction between clients and buyers. That’s why we built ClearlyRated.com.

Experience-sharing is a new pathway for trust

The Gallup organization reports that institutional trust in America is at an all-time low. And it’s not surprising when you consider ongoing data privacy breaches, a heavily partisan political climate, and accusations of (and revelations about) “fake news.”

But as our institutional trust has declined, individual trust has seen a renaissance.We trust what others have to say more than ever before - especially when they are perfect strangers who, theoretically, have nothing to lose by being honest. Think about the rise of businesses like Lyft and AirBnB - this service-sharing economy would not be possible without a trusted exchange of information between users who rate their experience with a given provider so that buyers can make educated (and safe) purchase decisions.

The challenge? Online review sites weren’t designed with the B2B service provider (or business service buyers) in mind.

Let’s make no bones about it, ratings-based directories like Yelp, Google+ and TripAdvisor are massively popular. Consumer-oriented businesses (like restaurants, fitness studios, barber shops, mechanics, you name it) invest great sums of time, energy, and money to boost visibility and maximize their brand presence to reach buyers who have taken to the internet to help them find their next great experience.But to a company targeting buyers of business services, the value of these online platforms becomes less clear. What the buyer cares about isn’t all that different (“Can I be confident that I will have a great experience with this firm?”), but the infrastructure that supports online reputation (the review sites themselves) isn’t a trustworthy delivery channel for B2B experience-sharing. Especially when credibility and comprehensivity come into question.

No controls + no validation = brand risk

Perhaps you’re a marketing professional who’s been tasked with managing the appearance of a negative review on one of your company profiles (perhaps one that you weren’t even monitoring until this point). I have certainly been there!Anyone who has experienced this understands how difficult it can be to manage around a negative online rating. To complicate things further, common review websites like Yelp allow reviewers to remain anonymous - which makes it incredibly difficult to track down and remedy the issue that spurred the poor rating and, in most cases, nearly impossible to validate that the reviewer is even a client.

Highs and lows don’t tell a credible story

You’ve likely seen first-hand that business service clients are hesitant to write reviews on sites that were not designed for them (or for you). And the rare instance where a review is left tends to tell one of two stories: the client is either exceptionally happy with the service they received, or is exceptionally unhappy.Our B2B buyer research shows that, while the overall star-rating that your company has on a given channel matters, the quantity of ratings that make up that overall score is just as important.How willing would you be to trust a single 5 star rating from a raving fan, versus 4.5 out of 5 stars based on 30 client reviews? The data suggests that latter would be far more compelling and, just as importantly, more credible.It’s worth noting that while a single negative review may not appear to tell a credible story (thankfully buyers understand that one person rating your firm poorly doesn’t automatically imply that they will also have a negative experience) our B2B buyer research indicates that negative reviews do have 2x the impact on a buyer’s willingness to consider your firm than positive online reviews do. So, if your firm is being considered alongside competitors, your online reputation and the presence of negative reviews will still influence how you are perceived.

Enter ClearlyRated.com

We created ClearlyRated.com to help bridge the gap between clients and buyers of business services. Our client survey process helps businesses build a comprehensive, transparent understanding of their clients’ experience with their firm, and their Net Promoter® Score provides an easy, quantified rating of their services.So, we asked ourselves, why not open up that information to buyers?

When you search for a firm on ClearlyRated.com - you’ll find validated star ratings and testimonials from current clients who have been asked for feedback by their service provider. ClearlyRated provides independent, 3rd party validation of client lists and survey responses, which means that star ratings are both credible and numerous to help prospective buyers get a complete picture of what to expect when working with a given firm.At ClearlyRated, we believe that it’s good business to place the client experience at the heart of your growth strategy. ClearlyRated.com is just one more way that we’re helping B2B service providers empower their own clients to tell their story.

Interested in getting your company listed on ClearlyRated.com? Contact us to learn more about how we harness client satisfaction surveys to help you build your online reputation.

I work with staffing firms to administer client and candidate satisfaction surveys. As staffing firms are starting to place more of an emphasis on the candidate experience at their firms, we’re seeing a trend towards more frequent surveying that correlates with key touch-points throughout a given employment journey. But with a more frequent survey cadence comes new concerns.But have no fear - there are resources that your firm can and should utilize to tackle talent satisfaction for growth. One such resource is a single metric known as the Net Promoter® Score, or “NPS®” for short (We’ll be talking to this concept quite a bit in this post so I encourage you to catch up on this blog to learn more about NPS and why it’s important for your talent survey initiative).Below are 3 common concerns that we hear from staffing industry leaders questioning the implementation of an ongoing cadence for candidate feedback.

Concern #1: Pulling a contact list more than once a year

We know that putting together contact lists for your candidates can feel a bit like pulling teeth (for most it’s very time-consuming and requires you to bring in more than one team member).I’m here to tell you that with the right process and communication pieces in place, this workload can be alleviated. By working closely with a number of staffing firms who measure candidate experience in an ongoing format, I’ve identified a handful of proven strategies you can execute on to make the process smoother for you, your team, and your candidates:

• Communicate initiatives internally - make sure your team knows what data you will need and how often.
• Collect smaller slices of data more often - breaking the data down makes it easier to digest and measure over time.
• Tell your candidates beforehand - let them know when they can expect a feedback request.
• Make survey responses a key metric and metrics a part of ongoing internal communication.
• Share your results often - both internally and externally.

If candidates know when to expect a survey and why you’re asking for their feedback, and what you’re going to do with it, they are more likely to give you their honest and candid feedback. And not to mention - you will have a much cleaner ATS/CRM!

Concern #2: Over-surveying your candidates

This concern is incredibly valid, and can often be the deal breaker in whether or not a firm decides to take the pulse of their talent annually vs. after each engagement. Below are a few ways to avoid survey fatigue:

• Pinpoint the right time to ask for survey feedback (hint: this is usually a time when engagement is high!)
• Communicate your process - let your talent know when to expect a feedback request, why you’re asking for it, what you’re going to do with it, and how you will use their feedback.
• Use technology to build in suppression rules - keep track of how often someone was surveyed and on which touchpoints, and prevent surveys from being sent to the wrong candidates.

Our industry research supports that your candidates are hungry for the engagement and opportunity to provide you with feedback - we see this when looking at the NPS of a staffing firm who does not survey (13%) compared to a firm that survey's after each engagement/project (41%). So even though you might perceive your firm to be sending a lot of surveys, your candidates are eager for the engagement and the opportunity to provide you with feedback.

Concern #3: “I don’t have the resources to implement this process.”

Again - a valid concern, but the good news is there are resources that can help you navigate this process. My team is here to provide helpful resources throughout the entire process. We provide trainings to you and your team, and we use technology to build in suppression rules for your firm to avoid the survey fatigue of your candidates.In case you're still on the fence (and we wouldn't blame you - an ongoing talent survey program is a huge endeavor) I thought I'd wrap up this post with an overview of just how far-reaching the benefits of gathering regular feedback from your candidates can be:

• Operations - promptly address any issues with detractors
• Marketing - celebrate and encourage promoters to help build your firm’s reputation
• Personnel - share your talent’s feedback internally and recognize team members going above and beyond for your candidates
• Sales/recruiting - incorporate feedback and testimonials from your NPS initiative for use in marketing collateral and sales conversations

The biggest missed opportunity we see when it comes to candidate surveys is focusing solely on identifying and resolving service issues. Keeping all of the potential benefits in mind and designing a survey program to fuel ROI across your firm will set you up for success.

Next Steps with NPS

• Have more concerns? Contact the ClearlyRated team for insights, best practices, and a tour of our survey platform.
• Interested in additional NPS data? View current NPS benchmarks for staffing firms.

• You aren’t growing even close to the rate that the staffing industry is averaging.
• You are not hitting your profit targets.
• Your recruiters want more resources, but your budget doesn’t support it.
• You want to hire the best people in the industry. However, you can’t afford them right now.

“There is no silver bullet.”How many times have you heard that, or even said that, when discussing such organizational problems and challenges?Right now, I want you to think of your perfect customer. Bring to mind the great relationship you have with that client along with the revenue and profit that your company enjoys as a result. What problem are you solving for them? Beyond filling job orders... what deep-seated needs and deficits is your team helping the client to fill? Where are you bringing confidence and clarity to their organization that would otherwise be a costly blind-spot?Now, do your best to imagine that you have hundreds or thousands more of this perfect client, and your organization is delivering your products or services to all of them and enjoying the same strong and profitable relationship.You know there are absolutely plenty of potential customers out there that have the exact same problem(s) and you can provide the solutions and the talent to solve them.And because of that, there really is a silver bullet. Ready?Solve your customers’ problems and you’ll solve your own™ With that, here are 3 common mistakes that even the smartest executives can make that prevent them from solving their customer's problems and how to avoid them:

Mistake #1: Not talking about your customers

After several successful years in sales and strategic sales management, I was so excited to have earned a promotion to the Senior Leadership Team. I was looking forward to making an even larger contribution to the growth of the organization as a result. We had several team meetings/calls every week; us C-Level people clearly had a lot to talk about... We had many organizational problems to solve. We discussed the p/l, people issues, productivity, legal risk, cost cutting, and economic changes. On and on, hour upon hour. After about five weeks of this, I couldn’t take it any more, and I simply interrupted the meeting and said, “are we EVER going to talk about a customer?”. The team was stunned. It was true. We were so inwardly focused on solving our problems that we forgot about solving our customers’ problems - and guess what? We weren’t.

Mistake #2: Not talking with your customers

I mean really talk WITH your customers. So many times, we leave it up to sales and recruiting to talk to our customers. See number 1. The senior team is busy with all the internal problems. Consider this, if you have any manager in your organization who does not talk with your customers on a regular basis, then you are not aligned to solve their problems. You can experience great innovation and growth by implementing a requirement that every department leader throughout the organization had a call with a customer every week. Ask your shared services staff (accounting, hr, etc.) to get on a call with at least one of your customers every week and talk WITH them. Connect and find out what their problems might be whether or not your company is positioned to solve them (btw – you probably are). And - wow! The things you’ll uncover. One of the easiest ways to tee up these conversations is through a consistent Net Promoter Score Survey process and follow-up plan.

Mistake #3: Not talking about the problems your company solves

I am certain that your perfect client is one where you have solved their problem(s) through delivering great talent, a great solution or a value-added service. Your sales and marketing approach must focus on talking about the problems you solve, not the product or service you deliver. Customers buy solutions, not people. Let’s take a simple example: Butler Street doesn’t sell training or consulting. We sell growth. We help companies and their people grow – solving the problem of lack of desired growth. Symptoms of this problem are evident in several areas including low client retention, lack of talent bench-strength and depressed margins. Get very clear on the problems your organization solves (see number 2) and take the time to educate your clients and potential clients on how your company solves them. Solve your customers’ problems and you’ll solve your own™Interested in learning how to communicate your value and begin to experience growth in less than 30 days. You may be interested in how Butler Street’s approach grows businesses! Click here to get the conversation started.