Working at Groundwire can sometimes feel like working in a busy train station. At any one time we may have thirty to forty client projects to manage, with many other internal projects in process.  Despite all of this action (or maybe because of it!) we take deliberate efforts to make sure we are listening carefully to all of our clients, and then using what we've learned to improve and shape our work.

Five ways we do our best to listen to our clients:

1) Using Client Demand to Drive Innovation Investments

One way we listen to our clients is through our project work.  The majority of our innovation on web and database projects evolves from us thoughtfully applying technology in response to real client needs.

For example, our pressroom, slideshow, image banner rotation and e-card add-on products for Plone were all tools we developed for a website project.  They were then released as open source products and have been reused over and over again. 

On the Salesforce database consulting side, innovations such as the modeling of leadership ladders, outcomes tracking and almost all items in our "Salesforce secret sauce" - http://www.groundwire.org/services/database/onenw-salesforce-functionality came directly from real client needs.

2) Project Evaluations

Groundwire evaluates all projects against specific metrics of productivity to understand what we are doing well and what we could improve upon.  We regularly review those surveys and report the findings to our funders.  Questions in our evaluation surveys allow us to hear from our clients where we are providing the most value and where we can improve our work.  

2008 Project Evaluation Results

3) Confidence Check-ins

It is not enough that our clients are happy with our solutions -- we want to make sure they know how to use them effectively.  As a result we do a check-in survey at least three months after a project is complete that asks clients how confident they are in the basic, intermediate and advanced tasks relating to their website or database system.

If we see a specific problem, we follow-up individually with a client.  If we see a pattern, we adjust our trainings.

2008 Website Confidence Survey Results

This listening allows us to also know who our power-users are so when we have ideas we want to explore, we know which clients to use as resources.

4) Usage Statistics

Salesforce also does a great job of letting us know how clients are using the database we built for them.  Thanks to a few simple scripts, we can determine how often the staff of an organization is logging-in to Salesforce per month. Don't worry, we only record overall frequency, not individual usage, so we can gain a big picture perspective on how the tool is working and determine if follow-up training is needed.

SF Client Log-in Graphic.gif

5) Need Support?

One of the best ways we make sure we are listening to our clients is to make it easy for them to ask us for help.  Questions from clients provide Groundwire with a good indication of where they are struggling and where they are successful. We do a yearly analysis of the types of questions our clients have and if we are seeing a regular problem, we can address it for all of our clients.    

These are just a few of the ways we are listening to our clients and using that information to become even better at what we do.  We have our ears open over here and encourage you to pick up the phone or send us an email if you have an idea you would like to share.