A low score warns that something is wrong. It doesn’t say what.
- Segment
- Financial services
- Topic
- Relationship with public sector clients
- Method
- Online in-depth interviews with clients and internal teams
Why?
The score shows where. It doesn’t show why.The starting point
A national financial institution served public sector organizations in several regions of Brazil. Its satisfaction surveys had been raising a red flag: some of these clients were giving low ratings to certain aspects of the relationship.
The numbers showed where the dissatisfaction was, but not why. In complex institutional relationships, a low score can mean many things: an operational problem, poor service, lack of information, too much red tape, too little contact or an expectation that was never understood.
To act, the institution needed to look past the score and listen to the people behind it.
- Operational problem
- Poor service
- Lack of information
- Excessive red tape
- Lack of contact
- Expectation never understood
Both sides of the same relationship
The study explored the topics that had received the most critical ratings in the earlier quantitative phase. Through online in-depth interviews, it heard from public sector clients with different profiles and from the institution’s own staff who serve them.
That made it possible to see the same problem from both sides: what clients expected and experienced, and what made it hard for staff to serve them.
The study focused on three topics: reciprocity in the relationship, meaning what each side expects in return for what it offers; perceptions of products and services; and expectations for advisory and consulting support.
- Reciprocity in the relationship
- Products and services
- Advisory and consulting support
The same word can have two meanings
A metric only works if the people answering and the people reading interpret the question the same way. So the study explored what clients actually meant when they rated reciprocity, and whether that matched what the institution thought it was measuring.
When those meanings don’t match, a company can believe it’s delivering value while the client is judging it by completely different criteria.
“reciprocity”
The product, or how it is delivered?
Criticism of products and services isn’t always about the product. It may be about access to staff, responsiveness, follow-up on requests or the availability of information.
The study separated those two layers to understand what mattered most in each client’s rating. It also checked whether service took the specific needs of the public sector into account.
- Access to professionals
- Speed
- Follow-up on contacts
- Information
The client’s yardstick
Every client judges a relationship against some benchmark. Often, that benchmark is what they get, or know they could get, from other institutions.
So the interviews explored the yardstick each organization used to judge the relationship. Without knowing it, it’s hard to understand why the same service earns a good rating from one client and a poor one from another.
What can still be rebuilt
The study didn’t stop at finding out what went wrong. It also explored, among dissatisfied clients, what could still be salvaged, both in the relationship and in the business.
What changed for the customer
By combining clients’ views with those of staff, the study produced an improvement agenda for the public sector relationship, built around what both sides saw as priorities.
A dissatisfied client is still a client. As long as they’re complaining, there’s still a relationship to rebuild.