You said. We did.

Collecting feedback is easy. Acting on it consistently to build a rewarding client experience is not, says Murgitroyd’s Laurence Cheney.

As I prepare to move into the newly created role of Head of Clients, I have been reflecting on a question that many professional services firms continue to grapple with: how do we create client experiences that strengthen relationships, differentiate our organisations and support long-term growth? Over the years, I have come to view client experience as much more than a service initiative. At its best, it provides a way of understanding changing client expectations, strengthening relationships and helping organisations make better decisions about future priorities.

Our experience at Murgitroyd has involved moving beyond traditional feedback collection towards building a broader understanding of our clients and their needs. Along the way, we have learned lessons that may be familiar to others on a similar path.

Murgitroyd supports some of the world’s most innovative organisations across a wide range of sectors, markets and stages of growth. While their individual needs vary, clients consistently tell
us that a strong experience is about more than technical expertise. Responsiveness, commercial understanding, trusted relationships and clear communication all play an important role.
Understanding how consistently we met those expectations became the foundation for much of what followed.

Rather than relying on assumptions, we wanted to develop a clearer understanding of what clients valued most and where their expectations were changing. This helped us identify opportunities to improve the experience we provided while ensuring that business priorities remained aligned with client needs. We believed that better insight would lead to better decisions.

Our initial focus centred on client satisfaction surveys and Net Promoter Score measurement. These provided a useful benchmark and gave us an early view of how clients perceived the service they received. However, it quickly became apparent that the real learning often sat behind the numbers. Conversations, comments and individual experiences provided richer context and a far deeper understanding of what mattered most to clients.

As our approach developed, we expanded the range of feedback we collected. Client interviews, testimonials, event feedback, online reviews, improvement suggestions and informal comments all became valuable sources of insight. We also looked for ways to integrate feedback collection into everyday business activity, making it easier for colleagues and clients to share their experiences.

The latest stage of this work has focused on removing barriers to feedback capture and helping valuable client insight reach the right people more quickly. Throughout this process, visible and sustained support from our CEO and executive leadership team played a critical role in maintaining momentum and demonstrating organisational commitment.

Client insight platform #

As participation increased, a different challenge emerged. We were gathering feedback from more sources and hearing from more clients than ever before, but bringing that information together in a meaningful way became increasingly difficult. To address this, we invested in a dedicated client insights platform that allowed us to build a more complete picture of client relationships and experiences. Supported by a specialist consultancy, the platform helped us manage growing volumes of feedback and turn them into practical insights that teams could act upon.

One of the most important lessons we learned was that understanding clients does not automatically lead to improvement. Collecting feedback is only the first step. The greater challenge is ensuring that insight is translated into clear priorities, ownership and action. This required leadership commitment, effective governance and a culture that encouraged people not only to listen but to respond.

As the programme matured, our attention increasingly moved towards creating the conditions for ongoing improvement. The platform and consultancy support that helped establish our insight capability also enabled a more structured approach to managing actions. Greater visibility, clearer ownership and stronger accountability helped ensure that feedback led to meaningful outcomes rather than simply accumulating in reports and dashboards.

We also recognised that feedback has greater impact when it is shared widely. Historically, much of the information we gathered sat within a relatively small number of functions. As a result, its influence on wider decision-making was limited. To address this, we invested in reporting, dashboards, leadership updates, internal communications and colleague recognition initiatives. Making client feedback more visible encouraged broader ownership and helped client conversations become part of everyday business discussions.

Another important development was recognising the value of closing the feedback loop. We adopted a “You Said, We Did” approach and shared more than 20 examples of client feedback directly shaping decisions and improvements across the business. Demonstrating the impact of feedback helped strengthen engagement and showed clients and colleagues alike that their views were being taken seriously.

Healthy relationships #

Over time, we also began to see feedback as a useful indicator of relationship health. Bringing together information from multiple sources helped us identify emerging concerns earlier, create opportunities for proactive conversations and address potential risks before they developed into more significant issues.

More recently, our thinking has expanded beyond understanding client perceptions alone. We are increasingly interested in how client insight can support client retention, strengthen relationships, inform service development and contribute to better business decisions.

We are also seeing that, when used consistently,client insight can influence decisions far beyond individual service improvements. It can help organisations align priorities with client expectations, identify opportunities to strengthen relationships and make better-informed investment decisions. Over time, we have come to view client experience as something that helps shape business strategy rather than simply reflect it. That shift in perspective has been one of the most significant developments in our own experience.

Looking ahead, my focus will be on ensuring that client insight continues to play a greater role in shaping decisions, strengthening relationships and helping us create better outcomes for clients.
While technologies, tools and methodologies will continue to evolve, the underlying objective remains unchanged: understanding what matters most to clients and ensuring that understanding influences how we operate.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson, however, is that no organisation has all the answers. Looking back, many of the decisions we have made have been influenced by people who were willing to openly share their experiences, successes and challenges. Communities such as MyCustomer Lens, CX courses and many informal conversations with experienced practitioners have all provided ideas, reassurance and fresh perspectives. I hope you are seeing my article as a small contribution to that same spirit of sharing, adding one more perspective to the conversation.

As our journey continues, I suspect that remaining curious and continuing to learn from others will be every bit as important as listening itself.

One of the most important lessons we learned was that understanding clients does not automatically lead to improvement.

This article originally appeared in PM Magazine.