We’ve been doing a lot of work at DevMynd recently around refining and systematizing our processes. It’s part of an evergreen effort to continuously improve and one tool we’re working on is our Project Report Card which we use to monitor the health of our projects.
As we were considering which things to monitor, the very first item we came up with was “customer satisfaction”. This seems to be an obvious choice for inclusion, it just makes sense that if a customer is satisfied with our work then we’re doing a good job. The more I thought about this though the more I felt that satisfaction wasn’t quite right. Not only is satisfaction a dull indicator, merely conveying adequacy, it is a trailing indicator. What we came up with as a replacement was “customer confidence”.
This shift in thinking is subtle but also profound, and the implications are broad in how we self-evaluate and tune the efficacy of our work.
Looking Ahead, Not Behind
As I mentioned, satisfaction is a trailing indicator, it really can only be produced by what’s in the past. Confidence on the other hand speaks to the future. When a customer is confident in a team’s capabilities, understanding, and investment in the project, the team is empowered. Without a customer’s confidence a team has less capital to spend on making tough choices and communicating hard truth. When confidence is high, the team has breathing room to do the right thing knowing that the customer will be a partner in difficult choices not an opposition.
Weathering the Storm of Dissatisfaction
Every project has its bumps, it’s an inevitable reality of professional services businesses. But, those bumps don’t have to result in total derailment. A customer can be dissatisfied with a particular aspect of a project or for a short period of time and still maintain overall confidence in the team, this is essential. Confidence is more stable than satisfaction, and working to ensure that a customer remains confident is critical to weathering moments of dissatisfaction.
This is not to say that a team should artificially or disingenuously prop up confidence, quite the opposite. When errors or issues occur, it is the team’s responsibility to make them visible immediately and correct them. The unexpected but welcome result of this is often increased confidence.
Relationship First, Results Second
Lastly, measuring confidence puts the focus on the relationship, where satisfaction is merely concerned with the results. Results matter of course, but the customer/partner relationship is much more imortant to both sides, or at least it is when both sides are motivated by the appropriate drivers. Asking the team, “do you think the customer has confidence in us?” tells a much more nuanced story and gives us insight into the state of the relationship.
So, at DevMynd(software development company) we choose to measure confidence, and let satisfaction follow.
