KPI of the Day – Business Consulting (BC): % Consultant retention by client
Definition
Measures the percentage of consultants working for the same client in a new consultancy project.
Purpose
To indicate how successful consultants are in service delivery, an existing client demanding a new project is most probably satisfied with past engagements.
Recommendations
In the consulting industry, building positive relationships with clients is often what keeps such companies going. Therefore, consultants are expected to nourish healthy relationships with their clients, as well as, ensure that they build credibility and trust.
Most issues within client-consultant relationships often lie with non-technical issues, such as lack of communication throughout project execution, setting expectations too high or too low, underestimating project complexity, scope, or duration, and lack of follow-up on intermediate results.
All of these issues can lead to diminished loyalty of clients or even their loss. Managers in the consulting industry are, on the one hand, expected to anticipate such issues and, on the other, plan for unexpected losses that might endanger the business. One of the ways to do this is by looking into % Consultant retention by client.
Moreover, targets depend on the type of activity. For example, financial consulting for a company related to an investment project can be done once in a couple of years, whereas consulting related to Human Resources projects (recruitment, motivation, performance measurement, etc.) can be more frequent.
Furthermore, this KPI allows managers to assess the performance of employees by the percentage of clients that return to work with the same consultant. By monitoring this KPI, managers can get early warnings for underperforming consultants, as well as award and recognize overachievers.
If you are interested in more Business Consulting-related KPIs, smartKPIs.com subscriptions provide access to +500 KPI examples.
Our dedicated Library contains relevant resources to improve your KPI practices, and if you want to further improve your knowledge, feel free to explore our latest publication – Top 25 Business Consulting KPIs: 2016 Extended Edition, download our webinar on this topic – Business scenarios in strategic planning or maybe even enroll in our course, Applied Strategy and Business Performance Improvement with KPIs, which provides a three-day roadmap for the long-term improvement of your organization.
Image source:
Tags: business success, Consulting performance, KPI
20bet
| #
Your article gave me a lot of inspiration, I hope you can explain your point of view in more detail, because I have some doubts, thank you.
Reply