All ears: Launch a firmwide client listening programme

Three things you will learn from this Masterclass:

1. How to design a custom client listening programme

2. How to launch your programme and enthuse your partners

3. How to ensure your programme benefits your firm

 

Many proprietary brochures and websites invariably trumpet that law firms are client focused, yet research has found that a large number of them do not have client feedback programmes in place. If clients' needs and wishes are truly at the heart of your firm's strategy, then you need to solicit feedback and listen to your clients.

Programme design

When designing your client listening programme, the advice of the late Dr Stephen Covey holds true: begin with the end in mind. In other words, to select the most appropriate client listening method, you must first consider your business objectives in seeking client feedback. The data to be gathered, the reporting format, the intended audience and the timetable will vary considerably depending on your objectives. These may be as diverse as wishing to:

• retain a specific client;

• win a particular pitch;

• assess an individual for promotion;

• increase penetration in a given sector;

• set fee rates; or

• rebrand the firm.

?You will need to consider what type of information you would like to obtain, the best way to gather it and who should have access to the findings.

Facts or feelings?

Once the goals have been agreed, it's time to decide on whether to embark on qualitative or quantitative research, or a mixture of the two. Qualitative research looks at why people feel or behave the way they do rather than what they do. It can help you to understand not just whether your firm's clients are satisfied with the service they receive but also how they feel about your firm and the individuals they work with.

Quantitative research, on the other hand, is designed to track what is happening rather than why. It can answer questions such as "what proportion of our clients think we offer value for money?" Quantitative research must involve a representative sample of the client population to achieve statistically meaningful results.

Attributed or anonymised?

You should also decide at the outset whether to obtain anonymised or attributed responses from clients. Either way, you must explain very clearly to clients how their data will be treated and used, and you must obtain appropriate client consent.

Anonymised data can be very useful for firmwide strategic planning. Individual partners, however, will crave personal feedback from their clients on their own performance in relation to specific matters and the health of their client relationships.

Lunches, interviews or questionnaires?

Informal client listening is a practice that has always been employed by rainmakers and business support staff to enhance client relationships. Partners regularly find excuses to call their clients or to take them out for a drink or a meal and always seem to know the latest developments at their clients' companies. Such instinctive client care is greatly to be encouraged and is the approach that most partners are comfortable and familiar with.

However, on their own, such client meetings may not produce optimal results. Your firm may benefit from more structured client interviews which are reported and shared and where there are checks and balances in place to ensure adequate follow-up.

Interviews are the method of choice for ascertaining the views of high-status or hard-to-reach individuals (typically key clients) or for addressing sensitive topics. Not only do open dialogues allow interviewers to get under the skin of any issue, but they also send a powerful message to clients that they are valued by the firm. However, conducting interviews involves a significant time and resource commitment to gather feedback and then analyse it.

Questionnaires can be delivered on paper, online or by telephone. Standard questions can be sent out to a large number of clients simultaneously or in rolling programmes. Off-the-shelf software (which may even be free of charge) and online survey tools like Survey Monkey are available that can automatically track and collate responses and provide assistance with graphical representation of results.

Questionnaires can be cheap and quick to administer. They are not, however, the panacea that they might at first appear. Questionnaires may be ignored by clients and their rigid format makes them unsuited to obtaining feedback on complex or sensitive issues.

 

Implementation

If you are facing push-back from their partners, below are the commonest objections to client listening raised by partners who have not experienced the benefits first-hand and the counterarguments that you can make ?to each.

Excuses and rebuttals

1. There's nothing to learn

Partners who do engage with their ?clients are often amazed at the insights they glean into their clients' service expectations and future plans. While steering well clear of any 'hard sell' during a feedback interview, Mark O'Conor, UK managing partner at DLA Piper, notes: "It's amazing how often you get instructed whilst you are having a client catch-up or shortly after".

 2. Clients won't like it 

Clients respond enthusiastically to feedback requests where the law firm relationship is important to them and where the firm emphasises the benefits that will accrue to the client. Clients are increasingly requiring their advisers to institute feedback processes.

3. There is no time for client listening

No-one doubts the time pressures faced by lawyers or the burden of billable hour targets. However, healthy client relationships are of paramount importance and it is important to make time to maintain them. Alternatively, business development executives or independent consultants can conduct client interviews and may achieve better results.

4. Asking questions brings risk

Don't be an ostrich!

5. Questions are pointless if no action is taken

This last point is valid. The solution, which is to ensure that client concerns are responded to, is dealt with in the final part of this article.

 

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Client listening: Suggested discussion topics

Interview discussion guides should be tailored to suit the objectives of your firm and the circumstances of the client. Generally, service and relationship reviews should examine: the state of your firm’s relationship with the client; the quality of your firm’s recent performance; the client’s perception of the fees and value offered by your firm; and the client’s likely future needs.

1. The relationship

• Rationale for selecting the firm
• Have expectations been met?
• Overall state of the relationship
• What is being done well?
• What could improve?
• Comparison with other firms
• Quality of relationship with key contacts
• Are matters appropriately staffed?
• Does the firm understand the client’s business?
• How likely is the client to recommend the firm?

2. Recent performance

• Satisfaction with overall performance
• Assessment of legal advice, commerciality, sector or business knowledge, responsiveness, project management and communications
• Consistency across practice groups and offices
• Coordination of multi-jurisdictional transactions
• Examples of outstanding or disappointing performance
• Individual performance

3. Value

• Importance of price to the client
• Does the client feel that the firm provides value for money?
• Happiness with the firm’s communications on fees
• Satisfaction with value-added services

4. Client horizons

• Client priorities
• Expected sector or company changes likely to impact legal needs
• Departmental plans
• Help needed from legal advisers

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Launching the programme

You cannot expect all of your partners to embrace client listening from the start. Almost always, client listening programmes begin with willing volunteers who later become champions for the programme, which gradually gains traction.

Dick Tyler, senior partner at CMS Cameron McKenna, which has a well-established client listening programme, says that a soft launch works best. His advice is to "start doing it before you announce that you will be doing it, so that when you do announce it you can say 'well, actually, we have already been doing it and we have got evidence that it works'."

Reaping rewards

It has been argued that the existence of ?a client listening programme may lull firms into falsely believing that they have a client care programme in place when, in fact, the measurement of client satisfaction just provides the baseline data on which the firm needs to found its strategy and service standards. Once you have decided how to obtain client feedback, you need to determine how best to put clients' comments to work.

Reporting

When partners conduct their own ad hoc client listening meetings, the feedback they obtain may remain no more than a mental note. Some conscientious partners may make a file note, but sharing the intelligence that they have gleaned does not seem to come naturally and needs to be encouraged.

Ideally, the findings of client listening exercises will be disseminated widely, but it is not necessary for everyone in the firm to receive the same information. A client may have commented on the personal performance of one partner and other members of the team or may have revealed confidential deal or company information that would not be appropriate to share outside of a narrow circle.

In this era of information overload, few people, whatever their position in the firm, have either the time or the inclination to sift through reams of irrelevant information. Reports should therefore be tailored to suit the needs of the intended audience.

Client partners will be interested in detailed reports of their own clients' views so as to be able to tailor the service that they provide accordingly. Heads of practice groups may choose to receive individual client reports so that they can give praise where it is due and oversee remedial action plans where required. In the conduct of their strategic remit, the firm's leadership team are likely to be more interested in a big-picture view, where the findings of a series of client reviews are collated and analysed.

Don't forget the client

Not only should client listening ?reports be action oriented, but they ?should also have both an outward and inward 'face'. All too often, firms are so absorbed in creating client care plans ?that they forget to communicate these ?with the most important stakeholder ?- the client.

Indeed, the best approach can be to create bespoke client-care plans collaboratively with the client. Not only will this take the guesswork out of client service, but it will also provide the firm with continued client contact and relationship-building opportunities.

Client listening programmes ?are becoming more commonplace. ?As Chris Sutcliffe, director of business development at Ashurst, puts it: "The forum for advantage may have moved ?on to 'how well are you responding?' rather than 'are you doing it?'".

?Sally Dyson is the author of Client Listening: Why it Pays and How to Do it (www.firmsense.co.uk)