Good communication is the foundation for building client trust in management consulting firms. It can help consultants convey ideas, manage expectations, and resolve any conflicts or disagreements.
Because effective communication is crucial for your firm’s success, it’s important for your team to have a unified response to client requests – especially if you have more than one employee working on an account. Without internal team alignment, clients may receive competing directives or a disjointed consulting experience.
Here, we discuss how communication influences client perception of management consulting firms and how you can use technology – such as workforce management software – to elevate your firm’s communication process.
Why Is Unified Communication Vital to Success for Management Consulting Firms?
Effective communication, level of collaboration, and service delivery are all factors that companies consider when choosing the best management consulting firm for their business. If your firm doesn’t rank high in these areas, it’s likely to miss out on opportunities to be shortlisted for consideration.
According to a 2021 research study, “good and frequent communication” and “tailored service” were two of five criteria that managers of both large and small companies used to discriminate between good and poor-performing consultancies. Personalized service and personal relationships were especially important to small businesses.
Another study found that factors like the intensity of collaboration and sharing a common vision have a significant positive effect on management consulting success. Good communication is necessary for conveying your firm’s vision and integrating with a client’s internal team, which means it can help open new doors for your consultancy.
Using Workforce Management Software to Create a Seamless Client Experience
Internal organizational and collaboration tools can make it easy for each team member to stay up to date on a client’s project and preferences. For ease of integration, it’s best to find a communication platform that houses all of these capabilities in a single solution.
Workforce management software comes with built-in functionalities designed to keep employees and leaders aligned. Here are a few ways this technology can help improve your firm’s client experience.
Project Management Dashboards
Workforce management software includes project management tools that allow managers to see other team members’ work, client deadlines, and internal expectations. This gives both leaders and employees transparency regarding project progress, milestones, and individual client touchpoints.
Your firm can use project management software to track:
- All active projects by the client
- Where each project stands
- Who’s working on each task
- Project deadlines
- Employee workloads
This enables account managers to easily report on the real-time status of each item when planning and reporting calls with the client. It also eliminates the need for additional internal huddles or back-and-forth status checks to prep for these calls.
Shared Meeting Notes
Each time a team member meets with the client, they can input all of the client’s feedback and requests into shared meeting notes that can be seen by everyone in your firm. This helps ensure clients don’t need to make the same remarks more than once and that their expectations are consistently followed. It can also help keep employees updated on any changes to the client’s scope or deadlines.
This can show your client that you value their feedback and project goals and want to see them succeed. It can also help you maintain project progress if a team member calls in sick or is on vacation.
Real-Time Progress Updates
Workforce management software records all project updates in real time, which means everyone on the account is always looking at the same data.
This not only ensures that team members are always on the same page but also gives your firm internal visibility when major client milestones have been completed. It also gives your team the opportunity to congratulate each other on large accomplishments to build team morale, which can, in turn, motivate your employees to do their best work for clients.
Communication & Collaboration Tools
Effective internal communication and collaboration can result in higher client satisfaction, more innovative ideas, and improved service quality. Some workforce management systems come with built-in tools to enable quick and clear communication, such as:
- Instant messaging
- A virtual campus
- A “fish tank” view that shows regular working hours and leave time for all employees
- File sharing
- Employee social networks
- Shared message boards
Instead of having separate applications for each of these functionalities, your firm can access them all in one place to ensure messages are never missed. This means less time spent logging into different programs or searching multiple locations for a file and more time spent on client engagement.
Improve Client Satisfaction With Workforce Management Software
Regular, consistent communication is critical to your firm’s performance, ultimately dictating your clients’ happiness. By integrating one simple solution, you can enhance internal organization and teamwork to provide better service delivery.
Stand out in a sea of more than 1.3 million management consulting firms across the U.S. Start improving your reputation with coAmplifi’s all-in-one workforce management software for professional services firms. Schedule your demo now!
