RTI's Client Listening Program

“It’s been highly beneficial for us to meet with much greater frequency in the first couple weeks of the project to really dig into what the client was hoping to get out of the project, what their objectives and expectations are, and to help manage their expectations about what we are able to do with cognitive testing, what we can tell them at the end of this in case there is non-alignment at that point. This kind of conversation and approach to understanding client objectives has been really important for this program because they have all of these different projects on very short timelines, seven weeks from start to finish.”

“Feedback from the CLP surveys is literally feedback coming directly from our clients, and our RTI leadership pays attention to it. Our client has been very generous in providing critical feedback on areas where we can improve. That has included everything from the way that we communicate, to how our contracts are set up, to the specifics we use to measure the quality of our technical work. And we’ve taken their feedback really seriously over the last few years. As a result, our relationship to the client has evolved to the point where they see us as a trusted partner and we are really given the first right of refusal on work that they could easily send to another contractor.”

“In sending the client listening survey to a new client, the client acknowledged that the project had a really tight schedule and they had some ‘unspoken anxiety’ that we would not be able to keep to the schedule. As the Project Director, I was able to take that feedback and say ‘This is something we are paying close attention to, and we see it's a concern of yours. So let’s add a check-in at each of our meetings, specifically looking at the schedule, and confirming the extent to which we are on track.’ I was grateful to hear their unspoken anxiety via the Client Listening Program and be able to address it directly.”