CLIENTS' FEEDBACK AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FIRMS

摘要

The increased competition among professional services firms means that, on one hand, they need to concentrate on sharing, capturing and disseminating tacit and explicit knowledge within their organizations in order to efficiently utilize their knowledge bank. On the other hand, they need to place emphasis on maintaining customer relationships by providing quality service, satisfying existing clients and attracting new ones. As professional service providers to their clients, their traditional role as the "expert" who knows what is best for the client has undergone many changes. Nowadays, many clients are sophisticated and experienced, and this requires professional services firms to shift from a services-orientated to a client-orientated approach. Receiving feedback directly from clients is an effective way to achieve this goal. The importance of client feedback is attracting more and more attention in both research- and practice-orientated literature. The empirical part of this study investigates the approach/attitude of one type of professional services firm in construction - quantity surveying firms - towards feedback from its clients. The methodology employed was a questionnaire survey sent to quantity surveyors in four locations, namely Australia, Hong Kong, the UK and the US. The findings show the benefits and obstacles encountered by firms in seeking feedback from clients. While clients' knowledge of the services provided was important, firms also risked offending clients, and some clients were reluctant to provide feedback to professional consultants. The findings suggest that knowledge management could benefit customer relationship management from various business perspectives.