Spring 2015 issue of Horizons

avoided. The questions in the questionnaire should be designed to understand a firm’s service delivery methods and should do so in a genuine manner. When questions are inserted that appear as direct marketing techniques, clients may not answer the questionnaire truthfully or feel as though they’ve been trapped by a sales gimmick as opposed to being asked to provide feedback on a trusted advisor. In order to get a complete understanding of the status of the firm’s relationships with clients, these questionnaires should be administered for every client project, regardless of size, partner or matter. The firm’s systems should be set up to “trigger” the delivery of the questionnaire at a defined point during a project. Exceptions to this policy should be limited and approved only by firm management. The means by which to send questionnaires vary. Some firms have achieved greater response rates to their questionnaires by sending them through traditional manual mailing methods. Other firms prefer to send questionnaires through electronic means, either through an application added to the firm’s email system or through popular survey sites like SurveyMonkey ( www.surveymonkey.com ), in order to make the data received easier to analyze and aggregate. The medium through which the survey is sent should be decided upon after evaluation of the preferences of the firm’s clients and partners. Every client will not complete the questionnaire. This is to be expected, but many clients will complete the questionnaire and, as responses are received, the firm should obtain a general understanding of the state of their client relationships. The state of these relationships can be further analyzed for trends specific to certain partners.

Informal activities are essential to developing the attorney/client relationship. They foster trust, collaboration and create a level of comfort between the attorney and client. These activities, however, are not a substitute for a formalized service quality program. A formalized service quality program that is engineered to measure client satisfaction has many benefits. Namely, it can: ∙ Provide deeper insight about the effectiveness of all aspects of the firm based on client feedback. ∙ Raise awareness among firm management regarding attorneys’ individual relationships with clients, especially in instances in which there is a significant amount of autonomy when handling client matters.

∙ Provide a means to assess clients’ needs before clients realize specific needs exist.

∙ Provide an additional factor for the partner compensation process.

Tools and Methods to Measure Client Satisfaction

Client Questionnaires Questionnaires are a critical element to understanding the various aspects of a law firm’s service delivery. However, they should be designed in a way that should not be burdensome on the client while also providing a level of depth that will be useful to the law firm’s management. Some sample questions are listed in the example on page 53. These questions should be designed to determine whether the delivery of the services to clients is consistent with the firm’s values and business objectives. However, these questions should not be used as a direct marketing tool. Any questions that resemble: “would you consider using our services again?” or “what service can we offer you next?” should be absolutely

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