CLIENT SATISFACTION SURVEYS FOR SMALL LAW FIRMS

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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