Executing Creative Communication Strategy: To Maintain Client Privacy in Consulting Industry

Researching about Consulting industry and a few high-profile consulting projects, I realized, for many companies privacy and confidentiality are paramount. It is one of the deciding factors for choosing a consultant or consulting agency and rightly so. Who would be comfortable if your consultant shares your projects details publicly or privately to anyone? This allows your competitor or the whole market to take advantage of it and crush you. So, companies while choosing consultants have not only legal but also moral and ethical concerns.

Many new consultants hurry in excitement while sharing their client’s success with the world but the good intent turns into a bad result because most clients prefer to remain quiet about their inner-workings and decisions. Therefore, it is wise to control and regulate information with clear intent, precision, and methodology.

Over the last 6 months, I've worked extensively in this specific direction so to ensure absolute privacy and confidentiality of our clients and their projects. Especially when we are delivering case studies and presentations of our work.

First of all, the approach to communicate our work to other clients and the industry needed some extra touches so that we can tell compelling stories of our clients' success through case studies while maintaining the utmost discretion at the same time. Our journey in achieving this balance has been innovative, fun, and client-centric, setting us apart from rest of the consulting industry.

The Challenge:

Early in our journey, we faced a significant challenge. Many potential clients were hesitant to share details about their projects due to the sensitive nature of their work. They feared that if they reveal their identities or expose strategic information, they may lose on important opportunities and potentially invite dangers. This hesitation was a barrier to building trust and demonstrating our expertise to new clients through real-world examples.

The Solution:

There, after studying their requirements, limitations, and concerns, I developed a communication strategy that eliminated all worries and helped us understand their requirements without mentioning their names. Here’s how we did it:

1) Anonymized Case Studies:

We devised a method to transform our clients' problems and solutions into anonymized case studies. Each case study is carefully crafted to remove any identifiers, focusing purely on the nature of the challenge and the innovative solutions we provided. This allows us to share our success stories without compromising client privacy.

2) Flexible Consultation Options:

I introduced a dual-option for consultation framework:

Anonymous Questionnaires: Clients can opt to keep their identity and project details completely confidential by using our detailed questionnaire system. They can describe their issues in broad terms, which our experts then translate into specific queries which are then put forth by the client representative for gaining insightful advice without needing to know the client's identity. This requires a proper understanding of client's problems, potential regulatory hurdles, and also a little bit of psychology. Therefore, our experts could list our and create a sequence of these questionnaires in such a way that the client representative can have 100% flexibility to navigate the conversation in any direction he needs and

Proxy Consultations: Alternatively, clients can authorize us to consult on their behalf. In this scenario, we handle the consultations with experts chosen by the client, gather all necessary insights, and deliver a comprehensive 1-2 pager regulatory analysis with solutions back to the client, ensuring their anonymity throughout the process.

This frameoffers unparalleled flexibility. Clients can choose the level of anonymity they are comfortable with, whether they want to remain completely anonymous, partially anonymous, or engage directly with our experts. This flexibility builds trust and demonstrates our commitment to their comfort and security.

4) No Records, No Censorship:

The consultations are completely unsupervised and undocumented in a sense that we do not store, duplicate, or use the data of consultation for any other purpose than facilitating it. There is absolutely no physical or digital record of the consultation either, ensuring complete privacy and confidentiality. The communication is directly between the expert and client without any mediation and censorship.

The Results:

One of our clients, a leading tech company, needed regulatory advice for a new product launch. Concerned about privacy, they opted for our anonymous questionnaire system. We gathered the necessary details through a series of carefully crafted questions, allowing our experts to provide precise, actionable advice without knowing the client's identity. The client successfully navigated the regulatory landscape and launched their product on time, sharing feedback on how the anonymous process was both reassuring and effective.

Another client, in the energy sector, chose the proxy consultation route. By allowing us to manage the consultations, they received expert guidance tailored to their needs without exposing any sensitive information. They later reported significant progress in their project, attributing it to the customized solutions we provided.

How We Earn Trust? With Genuine Care And Experience of Government Inner-workings.

What sets CUNSULT apart from larger consulting firms is not just our unparalleled flexibility but extensive network of top level regulatory experts such as Secretaries of Ministries, Heads of Govt. Departments, PSU chiefs etc. Our founder and CEO, along with our extensive panel of advisors, are seasoned administrative officers who have held top positions in government offices. They possess intimate knowledge of regulatory bodies and the intricacies of policy-making, often having been the architects of key regulations themselves. This insider perspective allows us to pinpoint the exact expertise needed for any regulatory challenge, a capability that many larger firms lack.

So that's why you should connect with us. Regardless of your field of work, whether you are our competitor or client, reach out as we have something for everyone.

Until then, take care.