The Lawyer’s Office

Client surveys are key to retention and development

By John W. Olmstead

The end of the year is a good time to plan for the future and to look back at where you have been. A client survey is a great way to do it.

Many law firms have spent too much energy on developing new clients and not enough retaining old ones. For many law firms, obtaining new work from existing clients is the most productive type of marketing.

Therefore, more firms are developing and using client satisfaction surveys to obtain feedback about client satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the firm, unmet needs, and future opportunities.

Much can be learned by talking to your clients. Structured telephone interviews and other forms of surveys, conducted by a neutral third party, can reveal many surprises as well as answers.

Client satisfaction surveys can be the best marketing investment that your firm can make. Find out what bugs your clients and you will learn to out-think and out-service your competitors.

Before you invest any time, money or effort in developing an overall strategy for service improvement, you must survey your clients to understand what they want and expect from your firm. An initial survey helps you identify the starting point for your service improvement journey.

Planning the survey

The type of survey that your firm chooses depends on your purpose for doing the survey. Are you looking for some insight into why you’ve lost clients? Are you interested in getting a general idea of how your clients feel about your firm?

Following are some of the basic types of surveys that you may want to consider:

• Random Client Survey or Census. These surveys are used to measure overall client satisfaction, highlight any widespread service problems, and identify new business opportunities.

A random survey involves selecting a percentage of your clients (sample), contacting them by phone, mail or in person (or a combination of all three), and asking them to evaluate the services they receive from your firm. A census involves surveying all clients rather than taking a sample.

• Lost Client Survey. This type of survey is used if your firm wants to know why you have lost a particular client or group of clients. With this survey interviews are conducted (usually by telephone or in person) with clients that no longer do business with your firm.

•  Key Client Survey. Rather than doing a random survey of your client base, you may want a more targeted and focused survey of a particular client group.

For example, if 80 to 90 percent of your business comes from 10 clients, you may want to create a survey that is specifically targeted to them. The advantage of a targeted key client survey is that it is limited in scope and precisely focused.

Before you commit time and resources to a client survey identify your purpose and establish specific goals and objectives. Develop a survey plan. Insure that a follow-up strategy is incorporated into the plan.

Survey methods

Survey methods are simply the different ways that you can use to collect feedback from your clients. The four main methods are:

• Written Questionnaires and Online Surveys. This method involves a one-to-four page document that poses a series of specific questions tailored to the needs of your firm and addressing specific concerns and business opportunities of the client group that you are surveying.

The questions should consist of a mix of closed and open-ended questions. Closed-ended questions should be designed to facilitate statistical compilation and presentation.

• Telephone Surveys. This is our favorite method, the one we use most often in our work with law firm clients. It offers very rich insight and action-orientated feedback.

The telephone questionnaire used is quite similar in design to the written questionnaire described above, which contains both “ask and answer” and “discussion” questions.

• Focus Groups. These are groups of eight to 10 of your clients who come together, at your invitation, to answer service-related questions that are prepared by you and presented by your moderator.

Because of the group dynamic, a focus group usually provides a lot of rich feedback in a relatively short period of time.

• Face-To-Face Interviews. When you want to get the most anecdotal information from your clients in the most personal format, use the face-to-face interview method.

Follow-up strategy

There is nothing worse than asking clients for feedback, and then doing nothing and not following up. Once your firm has taken the initiative to actively invite feedback, you must take actions to correct at least some, if not all, of the problem areas identified.

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John Olmstead, chair of the ISBA Committee on Law Office Management and Economics, heads the St. Louis consulting firm of Olmstead & Associates.