Law Practice Management Asked and Answered Blog
Category: Developing
Oct 24, 2018
Law Firm Client Surveys – Developing a Client Service Improvement Plan
Question:
Our firm is a twenty-four attorney litigation firm in Pittsburgh. We represent insurance companies and business firms. We recently conducted a client satisfaction survey of our top tier clients via telephone and face-to-face interviews. We have discovered that we have numerous issues regarding client satisfaction. Where do we go from here?
Response:
Nothing is more important to your firm’s future than exceptional client service. An effective client service improvement program is one of the most important marketing initiatives that a firm can undertake. National studies demonstrate that approximately 70% of clients who stop using a particular attorney do so because they feel they were treated poorly or indifferently and 30% changed attorneys because their previous attorneys weren’t available. Clearly, from what law firms’ clients are telling us in our telephone interviews with them – attorneys and law firms need to improve client service by integrating a client-first service focus into everyday practice.
Frequently when we mention action plans and implementation to a group of attorneys we get the following reactions and responses:
- Lets create a committee and study the matter further
- We need more time
- We don’t have enough data or information
- We have always done things this way and we don’t want to change
- We don’t have time to do it
- We are already busy – we don’t need any more business – everything is fine the way it is
Moving from debate to action planning and implementation is difficult for attorneys. However, unless a firm can move from debate and ideas to actual accountability and implementation it will remain anchored in the past in a field of dreams, obsolete practices, and unhappy clients.
Here is a road map to help you get started:
- Assemble the client service improvement team
- Review the issues discovered from the client survey
- Identify and write a client service mission statement and client service goals
- Brainstorm solutions you can and are willing to implement
- Put together the client service improvement plan
- Implement the plan
- Notify clients, especially the clients that were interviewed, of the changes that the firm will be implementing.
Click here for our article on developing your client service improvement plan
Click here for our blog on client service
Click here for our article on client satisfaction
Click here for our article on client surveys
Click here for our article on analyzing survey results
John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC
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