I’m surprised by how few small firms and solo
practitioners attempt to solicit any kind of concrete feedback from their
clients. Every consumer products company worth its salt is constantly figuring
out new ways to provide incentives to their customers to provide feedback and
information. Scores of B2B companies have been doing the same for years, and
many large firms regularly follow suit.
Why Do It?
There is a lot of value of sending out a client
satisfaction survey. The establishment of a written survey evidences a
formalized process that reflects that your firm is organized, well run, and
forward looking. In many cases, clients will be flattered, or at least
impressed, that you took the time to find out what they think. And it you
structure your survey properly, it will provide you with invaluable information
about your current performance, areas of improvement and potential growth
opportunities.
What Should It Include?
Every firm will need to tailor its survey to its
practice, but there are a few universal areas you will want to cover:
Initial Engagement: Why did the client initially choose your law
firm? Were those expectations met or exceeded? Were there other strengths that
the client discovered after retaining your firm?
Competency: How satisfied is the client with the quality of your
legal work?
Responsiveness: How quickly and thoroughly are clients’
calls and e mails returned? How good is your follow up during ongoing matters?
Communication: How well is the client kept informed of
developments?
Billing: How much value do clients believe they are
receiving for the fees they are paying? How easy to understand are invoices?
Suggestions: Giving clients the opportunity to offer constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement will give you a great insight into what your clients think about you. Open ended questions, like “name two ways in which we could serve you better” or “what would you do differently if you were running our firm?” are examples of what to look for.
Referrals and Recommendations In many ways, these are the acid test of a
firm’s success. Find out why clients would or would not recommend you to
others.
A Few Last Tips
Try to keep your survey
relatively short and thank clients in advance for taking the time to help you
help them. Remember, your clients are just as busy as you are. Spend some time
to figure out the questions to which you really want answers, and then
construct your survey accordingly. Once you have a draft, take the survey
yourself, and have others in your office do so. In this way, you will be able
to judge whether a client will take the time to fill it out for you.
As far as actually putting
the survey together, there are some very good DIY platforms out there. We like
Survey Monkey, which has good drafting and analytical tools. There are other
sites and software, like QuickSurveys.com and QuestionPro.com, which may work
for you. One thing you don’t want to do is waste the opportunity by putting
together a survey that isn’t going to give you meaningful information. This
isn’t an ad, but we would be happy to put together a proposal for any firm
looking to create a thorough, affordable client survey. You can also Google
client and customer survey design firms.
The Omega
Legal Marketing Blog is a service of Omega Legal Marketing, a dedicated law
firm marketing company specializing in creating custom designed comprehensive
marketing programs for small law firms and solo practitioners. You can learn
more about us at http://omegalegalmarketing.com;
you can contact us at admin@omegalegalmarketing.com.
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