Knocking it out of the park is no guarantee of client satisfaction, explains Chris Jenny, a senior partner with The Parthenon Group who oversees the firm's Private Equity Practice. His philosophy is that superior client service "is about day-to-day delivery and overdelivery."
"We all have stories about working all night or flying to some little island or pulling data from someplace you'd never dream of." What really counts, Jenny says, is the quality and continuity of the personal relationship, underscoring "continuity."
"It's about the amount of effort you put in before, during, and after you have a fee-for-service relationship," says the consultant, who joined the firm in 1995 after leaving Bain & Company. Today, Jenny occupies a strategic position on Parthenon's talent bench. It's one that permits him to keep one foot in consulting and the other in the world of venture financing.
The secret behind overdelivery is knowing how to mobilize the resources of your firm, according to Jenny.
Another element of client satisfaction, he says, is to "always be absolutely straightforward. Give them the news — good and bad, not just what they want to hear."
The skill comes in figuring out how to deliver bad news — "not just standing up in a presentation and delivering it. Delivering it privately, in stages. That requires a lot of thought."
In addition to his 14 years as a consultant, Jenny has ten years of operating experience running start-up and mid-market companies for private equity firms. Jenny was president of TDX Corporation, an investment company affiliated with the Noel Group, a large New York–based private equity firm.
He says that those ten years' experience "gave me a pretty good perspective" on what it's like to be on the operating side, and what the executives on that side of the table need and want.
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