Client satisfaction feedback

You find out when
they stop calling.

Twenty-one questions against a named project, asked by a form rather than by the person who ran the job.

An operative working on site, the work a client is forming an opinion about

In plain terms

Client satisfaction feedback asks a customer, in a structured way, what they thought of a specific piece of work. In the trades it matters because the relationship is usually assessed by the person who ran the job, standing in front of the client, which is the one arrangement guaranteed not to produce the truth.

Unibuild sends a twenty-one question form against a named project, covering the quality of the work, whether instructions were followed, health and safety on site, cost and budget management, six dimensions of overall satisfaction, whether it finished on time, whether they would use you again, and five free-text questions. Every question is optional.

How satisfaction is usually measured

Asked at the end of the job, by the person who ran the job.

Standing in front of the client. Nobody tells that person the truth.

The next tender

Goes somewhere else. You hear why afterwards, second hand.

A supervisor, in March

The good feedback

Arrives as an email to one person, gets a thank-you, is never seen again.

Unusable at tender

The PQQ asks

For evidence of client satisfaction. Two days of searching mailboxes.

Best you get is a screenshot

The contracts manager

Thought the relationship was good. It was, until it was not.

Nobody measured it

A verbal answer

Given politely, on site, to somebody's face, at the moment they are leaving.

Worth nothing

Repeat work

Assumed, until the framework is retendered and you are not on the list.

Found out too late

The underlying issue A client will tell a form things they will never tell your contracts manager So ask with a form

Twenty-one questionsAgainst a named projectQuality of workInstructions followedHealth and safety on siteCost and budgetSix satisfaction dimensionsFinished on timeWould use againFive free-text answersAll optionalFrom the client portalFrom a QR on the site posterKeyed in by staffDistribution list emailedClient acknowledged Twenty-one questionsAgainst a named projectQuality of workInstructions followedHealth and safety on siteCost and budgetSix satisfaction dimensionsFinished on timeWould use againFive free-text answersAll optionalFrom the client portalFrom a QR on the site posterKeyed in by staffDistribution list emailedClient acknowledged

What the module does

Six decisions that get a form actually filled in.

Against a named
project

Not a general satisfaction survey about your company. A form about one job, which is the only version a client has anything specific to say about.

So the answer is about work they actually remember
And it can be compared job to job rather than year to year
Attached to the project, not to a marketing list
Which is also what a tender wants to see

Specific, so answerableLive

Twenty-one questions,
all optional

Quality, whether instructions were followed, health and safety on site, cost and budget management, six dimensions of overall satisfaction, on time, would they use you again, and five free-text boxes.

Every one of them optional, on purpose
A client who answers three still leaves you something
Rather than abandoning a form that demands all of it
The free-text is usually where the real answer is

Something beats nothingLive

Three ways
to reach them

From the Feedback item in their own portal, from a QR code printed on that project's site poster, or keyed in by your staff from a PDF the client sent back by email.

Because different clients respond to different things
A facilities manager who never logs in still has a phone
And a client who prefers email is not excluded
All three land in the same place

Met where they areLive

Not asked by the
person who ran it

A form removes the social pressure that makes verbal feedback worthless. Nobody tells a contracts manager to his face that his supervisor was the problem.

The difficult answer becomes possible to give
Which is the only kind worth collecting
Asked once, properly, rather than continually
And recorded rather than relayed

The answer they would not sayLive

Your team gets it,
the client is thanked

On submission your distribution list is emailed the complete response and the client receives an acknowledgement, so nobody is waiting to find out and nobody feels ignored.

The whole response, not a score
To a list, so it does not sit in one inbox
The client knows it arrived
Which is most of why they answer the next one

Seen, and acknowledgedLive

Evidence when
a tender asks

Held as records against projects rather than as praise in somebody's inbox, so evidence of client satisfaction is something you retrieve rather than reconstruct.

Two days of mailbox searching becomes a filter
With the project and the date attached
Rather than a screenshot of an email
Which is what a buyer actually wanted

Retrieved, not reconstructedLive

Ask your last three clients what they actually thought.

Not the contracts manager's impression of what they thought. Most firms have never had the answer in writing, which is why the next tender is a surprise.

Book a demo → 30 minutes. The demo runs on our own data.

Why most feedback schemes produce nothing

Six reasons a satisfaction form goes unanswered.

The form is easy. Getting a busy client to fill one in, honestly, is the actual problem, and it is a design problem rather than a persistence problem.

Because it was about the company

A general satisfaction survey asks somebody to summarise a relationship, which is hard and vague. A form about one named project asks them about a fortnight they remember clearly, and that is the difference between a reply and a deletion.

Because every field was mandatory

A twenty-one question form with everything required is a form that gets abandoned at question nine. Making all of them optional means a client who only wants to answer three still leaves you three, and three real answers beat a perfect form nobody submitted.

Because the wrong person asked

Feedback collected verbally by the person who delivered the work is not feedback, it is politeness. The whole value of a form is that it removes the social cost of saying something difficult, and that is worth more than any question you could add to it.

Because it only arrived one way

A facilities manager who never logs into a portal will scan a QR code on a poster. A client who prefers email will send a PDF back. Offering the portal, the poster and a member of staff keying it in is not redundancy, it is the reason the response rate is not zero.

Because nobody acknowledged it

A client who fills in a form and hears nothing does not fill in the next one. An automatic acknowledgement is the minimum, and a human follow-up on anything critical is what turns a complaint into a retained account.

Because it went to one inbox

Feedback emailed to a single person disappears when that person is busy, on leave or has left. Sending the complete response to a distribution list is what makes it something the business has rather than something an individual received.

Your clients are one half. Your own people are the other.

The same module carries a confidential channel for your workforce, and the things they will not say out loud are usually the things you most need to hear.

See the employee channel → Or call the office on UK hours

Questions

Asked by whoever
owns the relationship.

How does the form reach the client?

Three ways, because different clients respond to different things. The client opens the Feedback item in their own portal, or scans a QR code on that project's site poster. Or your staff key it in from a PDF the client sent back by email. A facilities manager who never logs into a portal will still scan a code on a wall. All three land in the same place, against the same project.

Will clients actually tell us the truth?

Far more often than they will tell the person who ran the job. A form removes the social pressure that makes verbal feedback worthless, so the difficult answer becomes possible to give. Every question is optional, so a client who only wants to answer three still leaves you three. The free-text boxes are usually where the useful answer turns up.

Who sees the response?

Your distribution list is emailed the complete response, not a score, so it does not sit in one person's inbox while they are on leave. The client receives an acknowledgement at the same time, which is most of the reason they answer the next one.

Can we use the responses as evidence at tender?

Yes. Each response is held as a record against the project it is about, with its date. When a PQQ or tender asks for evidence of client satisfaction, you retrieve it with a filter. A separate survey tool attaches answers to a mailing list. Here they sit with a named piece of work.

What do we do when the feedback is bad?

Ring the client the same week about anything critical. The platform gets the complete response to a list of people quickly, against a named project and with a date, so nobody can miss it. A human follow-up on a critical answer is what turns a complaint into a retained account.

What does the form ask, and can we change it?

Twenty-one questions against a named project: the quality of the work, whether instructions were followed, health and safety on site, and cost and budget management. Then six dimensions of overall satisfaction, whether the job finished on time, whether they would use you again, and five free-text questions. If your firm wants to ask something different, the form is changed for you, and changes after go-live are included in the monthly fee.

What else can the client do in their portal?

Plenty. Clients see and approve quotes, raise call-outs, and see progress photos, the project planner for their jobs, certificates, and the training and qualifications of the operatives on their site. Their records are read only, and each client only sees the projects you assign to them. How the client portal works.

The platform