Quality and value

By Alison Huntington. 

What drives a great client experience? You’d be forgiven for thinking that there was one rule that applied to everyone. After all, we’ve written extensively about convergence in the consulting market, and how clients struggle to see much difference between firms, which kind of suggests that everyone has figured out the same winning formula.

But our data paints a more nuanced picture than that—the drivers of high scores (by which we mean a high proportion of people speaking positively in our client survey) can vary significantly from one firm to the next. Let’s take firms that people often lump together—McKinsey and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG hereafter)—and look at the drivers of positive perceptions about their digital transformation work. 

The greatest driver of high scores for McKinsey is the extent to which it’s seen to have an innovative approach to its work.

By Fiona Czerniawska.

“They’ve done it again!”, said a recent client we interviewed. “They’ve sold us on promises about brilliant new technology and streamlined processes, and they’ve ignored the fact that success depends on people.”

In case it’s not clear, the “they” he was referring to are consulting firms. With two years of digital transformation under the industry’s collective belt, clients are starting to ask for hard evidence of results (a point I covered here). They’re also complaining that consultants aren’t engaging sufficiently with what they have increasingly come to believe is the main obstacle to delivering genuine transformation in practice: changing people’s behaviours. And they’re worried that, as robotic process automation becomes embedded in transformation work, more and more investment cases will depend on reducing their workforce in some areas, and redeploying people in others. “I want to know how consulting firms are going to help deal with the collateral impact of new technology and processes,” continued my irate executive, “but no one is talking to us about that.”

New research by Proudfoot suggests that this client, and all the others who’ve talked to us in a similar vein over the last few months, are right to be concerned.

By Fiona Czerniawska.

… But he’s not your everyday, brain-on-a-stick strategy consultant. No, he feels real empathy for the difficult situations in which clients find themselves, and is genuinely sad that they don’t have an expensive fountain pen like his. Which is why he’s finding his conversation with Carl so distressing.

Carl is a client. He’s got two decades of senior management experience under his belt, and he really couldn’t care two hoots about Martin’s fountain pen. No, he’s talking to Martin, because Martin and his team have been carrying out a refresh of Carl’s corporate strategy. Of course, they haven’t been doing that by themselves: As someone who’s used almost every major consulting firm under the sun, Carl is aware of the importance of working closely with the consulting firm. Martin calls this co-creation, but Carl simply wants to ensure that his staff pick up the skills and knowledge they need to help them do strategy work in the future. Carl is also not a fan of management speak.

“… so, this could be ground-breaking collaboration,” Martin is saying.

“Great.” Carl finds Martin faintly amusing and doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. He does, however, want to interrupt Martin’s smooth and apparently unending monologue by asking an important question. “But I’d also like to talk about how we measure the value you add.”

By Alison Huntington.

“KEVIN LOST 40 LBS IN 8 WEEKS BY DRINKING OUR EXPENSIVE MEAL-REPLACEMENT SHAKES. YOU COULD BE LIKE KEVIN—SLIMMED DOWN AND TONED UP. CALL US NOW ON 0800....”

Short-term effort, huge return; it’s simple right? Except that fast-forward a few months, and Kevin is back to his original gargantuan size, weeping into empty Hershey’s wrappers.

Sometimes I worry that some of the advice I give out to consulting firms about changing clients’ perceptions risks creating some Kevins (albeit suited and well-remunerated ones). 

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Sometimes you really, really want to scream.

The consulting industry has one of the best value propositions of any industry in the world. What do consultants do? They make business better. So what do they say they do? They talk about how good they are at teaming, and at cross-border working. They tell us they’re more innovative than the next firm, better at implementing than the last. But do they tell us that they’re going to make our organisations better? As I said, in the deafening silence, you want to scream with frustration.