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.
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