Willingness and Readiness to Act
A key element often overlooked in agency evaluation programs is your willingness and readiness to act on the feedback you receive from your agencies. Agencies sometimes feel that their feedback disappears into a “black hole.” To prevent this, here are three vital communication steps you should follow:
First, always respond to your agencies, letting them know you’re taking their feedback into account. This acknowledgment lets them know that their voice is being heard.
Second, take appropriate actions based on the feedback and allow the agency to comment on the changes being implemented. This creates a sense of inclusion and ownership for your agency partners.
Third, if for any reason you decide not to act on a part of the feedback, communicate this to the agency. They need to understand that you’ve considered their input but have a thoughtful reason for not acting on it.
Decoding Feedback
Improvements often come from small adjustments rather than massive overhauls of existing processes. This involves analyzing the feedback carefully. In your formal evaluation programs it helps to pair traditional Client-on-Agency ratings with Agency-on-Client feedback for a more comprehensive view of the issues.
Some agencies will be more candid than others. With this in mind, it helps to focus less on the exact scores and more on trends and patterns in ratings. A drop in scores, regardless of the scale, is worth your attention.
One of the most frustrating factors to deal with is “sweetened” comments, where feedback addressing issues is couched in compliments. This may require some reading between the lines. The good news is you may find that comments become more direct as agencies become more accustomed to the 360-degree process.
Treat Feedback Responsibly
Given agencies’ varying degrees of openness, you should avoid comparing overall feedback scores across agencies or using those scores to rank performance internally. This can be seen as a breach of trust, which may lead to undermining your entire feedback process.
Taking Ownership of the Action Plan
Once you’ve committed to addressing feedback, it’s essential to have a systematic action plan. We recommend incorporating a structured communication strategy, which should:
- Identify the main processes and behaviours the client needs to improve
- Create a plan with clear owners and deadlines
- Identify and use development resources
It’s crucial that client stakeholders take responsibility for the action plan. The effectiveness of any action plan depends on its implementation. This is a shared journey that helps strengthen your client-agency relationships over time.
Read our article on the power of 360-degree agency evaluations