By Nancy Roberts Linder of Nancy Roberts Linder Consulting
Understanding the components of client service is a key competitive advantage for law firms of any size to keep the business they have, as well as provide cross-selling and new business opportunities. And the best tool a law practitioner can use to understand and measure client service and the strength of client relationships is the client survey.
To Interview Or Not To Interview
Ideally, a firm would want to survey all of its clients, but in some cases this may be unreasonable and not economically feasible. When choosing which clients to survey, here are some rules of thumb to follow:
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Survey your top clients. It is essential that you obtain annual feedback from your top revenue producing clients regarding their satisfaction with lawyer performance, responsiveness and overall value. Keeping these clients satisfied will not only ensure the future of the business relationship, but can also lead to new client opportunities through additional business or referrals from these happy clients.
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Select clients who have had a significant decline in billings over the past year or two. The purpose here is to try to ascertain why the business has fallen off. Has the key contact left the client company? Has there been reorganization in the management structure? Is the work being sent to another patent, IP or...
