In his post about gauging client satisfaction (post no longer available), Robert Armstrong provides some helpful tips for gathering feedback from your clients to help you improve your law practice.
While I am a big believer of gathering regular feedback from customers, in the spirit of healthy debate, I want to disagree with one of the points made in Robert’s post. To paraphrase, he states that the methods that you use to gather feedback (personal interviews, questionnaires, etc.) are not as important as the questions you ask.
While this statement is perfectly reasonable on its face, in practice, I have found that personal interviews, in person or on the phone, yield far greater insights into your customers’ point of view than the most carefully crafted questionnaire.
My experience has been that the “gold nuggets” that will really help you improve your practice rarely come from the initial answer to a question. They typically come from the follow-up questions and ensuing conversation.
Let’s look at this typical survey question as an example – “How would the client rate the attorney’s professional competence?”
If this question was sent via email or written survey, the client would typically either write in an answer (fair, good, excellent) or indicate an answer based on a grading scale ( 7 out of a possible 10).
If you received feedback of “good” or “7”, how would you use that to improve your firm? What if the feedback was “excellent” or “10”?
If you maintain an average satisfaction score 8.5, is that good or bad? It depends, right? If you are going to take action (or decide if action is needed), you need more information.
Another trend I see with written surveys is that we tend to only follow up on the complaints. We only fix the problems. We may be missing some great insights and opportunities when we don’t drill down on the “good” responses to learn what we did well and why it was important to the customer.
While having a personal conversation may not be the most efficient (or comfortable) way for professional service firms to gather feedback, it is, in my opinion, the most effective way to do so.
So rather than spending large amounts of time crafting the “perfect” questionnaire, pick up the phone and have a conversation with your customers about how you are doing and what you can do better.
What’s your experience with gathering and implementing customer feedback?
