2 - Client Care Flashcards
What is Client Care?
The identification of your Clients and the continuous process of understanding their needs, feedback and behaviour in order to conduct yourself in a way that improves the relationship.
Give me some examples of Client Care?
- Identifying the Client
- Understanding how they operate and their behaviour
- Understanding Client drivers such as timescales
- Communication and relationship
- Feedback and performance review
- Identifying any conflicts of interest
- Openness, honesty and trust
- Handling and managing complaints
- Lessons Learned
- Holding PII
- Handling Client Money correctly
How do you exercise good Client Care?
- Regular feedback reviews
- Understanding what the Client needs, asking them
- Handling complaints across wider
- Following the (IS0 9001)
What are the RICS PII Level requirements?
- Up to £100k = £250k
- Up to £200k = £500k
- Above £200k = £1mil
Minimum excess is 2.5% or £10k whichever is higher
Why is client care important?
- Retain clients
- Reduce likelihood of conflicts
- Comply with the RICS Code of Conduct for providing a quality service.
What is a Lessons learnt workshop?
Review of recent failings or successes on a project.
How do you act upon feedback received from a client?
- Feedback would be recorded
- Understand how to rectify the negatives
- Review the improvement
- Share the positives
- Stace CHP
What is a KPI?
-Key performance indicator
-Can be used to measure performance
What are some KPI examples?
-Amount of snags/defects
-Construction cost overrun
-H&S scores
How do you manage client expectations?
Agree on a strategy
Agree on timelines
Open and Honest
Listen
Understand expectations
How do you deal with a complaint from a client?
-Acknowledge receipt
-Notify the appropriate person
-Comply with the complaints handling procedure
What is the RICS documentation on handling client money?
-Client Money Handling Professional Statement
-Provides clear controls and procedures to keep client money safe.
What is suggested in the Client Money Handling PS?
-Keep records and accounts of all dealings with client money
-Have controls to ensure money flows correspond with the agreed instructions
-Compliance with all anti-money laundering legislation
Are there any other guidance on Client Money?
RICS Professional Statement on Countering Bribery and Corruption, Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing
What is included within the Countering Bribery and Corruption, Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing PS?
-Don’t accept a bribe
-Report breaches / suspicious to relevant authorities
-Undertake checks on clients and customers
-RICS members must not be complicit
What is included in a RFP?
-Scope of service
-Terms of appointment
-Basis of pricing
-Project Details
-Insurance
-Team CV’s
How would you calculate your own fees?
Identify the scope
Assess team resource
Assess duration
Apply the a rate against this
What would you do if you underestimated a fee proposal?
-If scope had increased then it would be reasonable for fees to increase.
-If not then this would likely be a mistake and I would deal with this ensuring that no agreed level of service was reduced.
You are asked to reduce your fee by a client
-I would explain the calculation process and make clear that this is the fee matching the scope
-I can review the scope and see if this could reduce the overall fee.
What would you do if you verbally agreed the services?
-Follow up in writing
-Confirm fees, scope and T&C’s
When should you decline work?
- Conflict of interest
- Illegal or unethical
- Conflict with RICS Rules or Codes
- No competence, resource or time
Time you had to give a client negative information? How did you deal with it?
The tenderers returned bids for a Pre-Demo audit which was above the level that they had envisaged.
I advised there was money in the contingency that could be used for this
What’s the difference between a project dashboard and a report?
Dashboard - Short summary of actions in the period
Report - Detailed summary and explanations of statutory items, programme, design changes and tracker summaries.
How do you manage communications with your client?
Establish from the outset frequency and form of expected communications as all clients differ from this.
Some like fortnightly updates on dashboards, whereas others prefer only monthly reports.
What are the different types of trackers you use?
Action Tracker
Insurance Tracker
Planning Deliverables Tracker
Appointment Tracker
Prior to working with a new client what pre-appointment checks would you undertake?
- Competency check
- Conflict of interest
- Anti money laundering checks
- PII to cover value of instruction
- Formalise in written terms of engagement
When setting up a new practice what procedures would you put in place to ensure good client care?
- Regular client feedback
- Processes to formalise engagement / communication
- Keep client information confidential
- Agree a consistent formatted document tailored to their needs.
- Client money handling procedure
- Complaints Handling Procedure
Why is client care so important
- Retain clients
- Professional negligence claims
- Insurance claims can be costly
- Part of RICS requirements to provide a good quality service
What would you do if you received a complaint from a client in writing?
- Call client to say you’ve received the complaint
- Issue CHP
- Report with senior individual
- Notify PII insurer
- Meet with client to receive feedback
What is a complaint and why is it a serious topic?
- A complaint that a situation is unsatisfactory or unacceptable to a client.
- RICS requirements to be handed in line with the CHP
- Loss of clients / reputation
What’s the difference between a client and a customer?
Customer - Someone that buys something
Client - Someone looking for professional service from the business
How do you conduct yourself with a new client?
- Prepartation
- Friendly / engaging
- Inquisitive to key challenges
- Well presented / polite
Please provide an overview of your quality management process?
- Peer review process
- Standardised format of documentation
- Authorisation / signature process
- Accessible file storage systems.
What is your firms procedure for obtaining clients feedback?
- Day to day informal comms
- KPI’s
- Client performance reviews
