Celebration of professional services excellence
The 2017 Client Choice Awards gala dinner and ceremony were a memorable celebration of professional services excellence. Some 300 representatives of firms, sponsors, and supporting associations gathered in Sydney on 7 March to applaud the Australian and New Zealand winners of 33 Awards for firms and practitioners.
The Australian Financial Review and the beaton team congratulate the Winners and thank the Finalists for your efforts.
Celebration of professional services excellence
The voices of the clients of firms in the consulting engineering, accountancy, legal, specialist IP and management consulting professions were heard loud and clear. The online survey recently conducted by beaton from November through January again yielded high quality data, giving our research team confidence about the validity and reliability of the findings.
Noteworthy trends
Some of the noteworthy trends in professional services excellence included:
The strides made by consulting engineering firms in closing the gap between this profession and the law and accountancy professions.
The increasing prevalence of New Zealand law and consulting engineering firms in the line-up of finalists and winners.
The growing proportion of women in the ranks of the most client-focused practitioners – epitomised by the winning of the Best Professional award by Jennie Mansfield, Ashurst.
The large proportion of most client-focused practitioners from smaller firms in all professions. The sampling challenges smaller firms pose for beaton in identifying these top-performing practitioners makes this even more remarkable.
The success of the new awards for the firms with:
The most improved Net Promoter Score – won by Piper Alderman,
The highest cost consciousness rating – won by Nous Group,
The best value – won by Johnson Winter & Slattery, and
The most consistent excellence – won by McGrathNicol.
Who are the serial winners?
Analysis of winning firms over the last three years – 2015, 2016, 2017 – reveals the following. Of the 44 firms that achieved one or more wins in these years:
28 won in one year only,
12 won in two years, and
only 4 succeeded in winning in each year (for the record these firms are HLB Mann Judd, King & Wood Mallesons, KPMG, and PWC).
In some years a single firm may have won more than one award, so the total of 44 represents the number of firms, not the number of awards.
Voice of Clients in Professional Services
The 2017 Client Choice Awards ceremony marked the launch of beaton's positioning as the Voice of Clients in Professional Services, about which we will have more to announce in coming months.
More on winning in the Client Choice Awards