Our approach to client feedback is all about enhancing the client experience by listening to them. Their voices do matter for us, and as a professional service firm, it is our duty to identify important problems our clients may face and to help solve them. If we do not have adequate communication with our clients, we are unable to fulfill this task, nor our firm’s purpose.
Client satisfaction influences variables that are indicators of client loyalty and long-term client relationships. Their feedback and satisfaction are not solely related to the company’s quality management and marketing activities, but it also has a significant impact on PwC’s future and long-term corporate strategy. Therefore, client satisfaction is a material topic within our sustainability journey, and it is our goal to embed client feedback in our culture as a way to understand and engage with our clients along their journey with us.
Ensuring Client Satisfaction
Every year we conduct a Client Experience Survey (CES) that aims to obtain a general understanding of how our clients enjoy working with PwC Luxembourg and the overall relationship we have with them. Since we launched this initiative in 2011, we have ensured that our clients get a distinctive experience, that we keep delivering on the value promised and identify ways to improve. This is why the CES is more than just a survey; it is about continuous improvement and how we can increase and develop relationships by stimulating actions at the firm and client level.
Our process to target contacts has been smarter than before, to ensure the right coverage of relevant clients for this exercise. This year we sent out an electronic survey to 2,334 clients, out of which 652 replied. 41 contacts mentioned that they were not willing to answer the e-survey, and three asked to be contacted personally. We therefore organised specific individual interviews with them.
How we measure our clients’ satisfaction and what we learnt from them in the past year
Client Satisfaction is one of our 7 priority sustainability topics that was identified both by PwC and by external stakeholders in the context of the preparation of PwC Luxembourg’s sustainability strategy. To track our yearly progress, and ensure our clients remain satisfied with our services, we measure Client Satisfaction by the Loyalty Index and the Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Looking at the evolution of our NPS, we can analyse that it has significantly increased over time. This year, we notice a decrease of our detractors (-4) and increase of promoters (+5), which is an excellent score and a great rise from previous years.
There are four main reasons as to why our promoters would recommend PwC Luxembourg. They include:
1. We tailor our deliverables to our clients’ needs and apply insights and common sense when searching for the right answer.
2. We establish long-term relationships: clients appreciate that we develop long-standing and trusted relationships and they recognise that we learn from previous feedback.
3. PwC is available when necessary, by being proactive and taking ownership of issues and opportunities.
4. Our clients appreciate that we try to make a difference by telling them things they do not know like sharing our deep industry knowledge.
However, we are also aware that in order to improve and to be the most relevant for our clients, we must also listen to and acknowledge their criticism. Below are the top improvements aspects mentioned by neutrals and detractors:
Share with our clients things they don’t know. As clients look for relevant insights that are specific to them, they expect us to bring an in-depth experience on key topics of their industry.
Tailor our deliverables to our client’s needs: we should apply insights and common sense when searching for the right answer.
Help them achieve their objectives: being able to provide clients with opportunities that are of real value.
Be more available when necessary, by being proactive and taking ownership of issues and opportunities.
In order to fully understand the feedback we receive and how we can really improve our services to fulfill our clients’ expectations, we have an ‘alert’ system set in place that notifies either a PwC Partner, director or manager when we have received a rating of 5 or below on the overall satisfaction or recommendations. This year we received 17 alerts and for each of them, we make sure that the PwC team in charge does a proper follow-up: they ensure issues are raised and discuss an action plan with the client.
Over the last exercise, we went much more in detail in the comments received and integrated them into strategic action plans from the LoS and Industry. We have stimulated leadership discussions around lessons learnt and addressed suggestions in the appropriate manner. In addition, communication among PwC Partners, Directors and Managers community has significantly improved. Verbatim from clients are sometimes really positive that we want to share them and recognise through them the value of the services delivered by the PwC people.
To complement the existing and historic annual process, we have implemented this year the Service Engagement Survey (SES). This one aims to ask feedback to clients as soon as a mission has come to the end. For this one, we ask specific feedback on services delivered in the context of the assignment.
This helps us to immediately react and adjust our approach if needed. The enrollment of contacts has started in February 2020, therefore we do not have enough data to get trends out of this new initiative.
Working towards our values
It is key for us to be aligned with our values, as it ensures that we are able to provide the best possible services and work towards our purpose to build trust in society and solve important problems. As such, we ask our clients, within the CES, to what extent they see us demonstrating value-based behaviour.
Client Satisfaction & Sustainability
This year once again we raised the question on how likely our clients would be ready to engage with us on sustainability matters. Ratings and feedback received helps us monitor the evolution of clients’ mindset in respect with Sustainable development.
Metrics are very clear and we notice that clients are more and more interested in sustainability questions for their strategic development. More than 64% of respondents indicate that they’d like to engage discussions with us on that subject. Many free comments have been included in the feedback received, which give us additional insights for future projects and initiatives.
This material makes reference to GRI disclosures 102-44 ; 102-46a ; 102-46b ; 102-47 ; 103-1 ; 103-2 ; 103-3
New ways to keep in touch with clients during COVID-19
During lock-down, it was essential for us to maintain regular contacts with our clients. This situation was sudden, brutal and unexpected and we had to find new solutions, new ways to keep that precious link. With our IT tools & systems, we switched the format of meetings or events from physical to virtual mode. One-to-one exchange or communication with wider groups have been encouraged from both sides. We felt a real appetite from our clients to remain in touch with us, to have access to the right information even more than during “normal times”.
We also set up a COVID-19 free hotline, for clients as well as non-clients, an initiative implemented to help local businesses navigate and face the challenges presented by the crisis. As a responsible corporate citizen, our firm assisted our clients (and non-clients) benevolently to help them understand and apply the measures taken by the Luxembourg government. This was possible thanks to the 16 volunteers who participated in this pro bono activity.
