My 1st Client Survey

      I am about to send out a detailed client survey soliciting feedback from my clients about the services they have received from our law firm. I will be fascinated to learn more about the following issues:

1. Will client clients fill out and return the form in the self addressed return envelope?
2. Will they be willing to criticize or provide constructive criticism or, on the other hand, will they feel compelled to simply provide positive feedback? Obviously positive feedback is nice but will do little to improve the services which we provide. I have strongly encouraged each client in my cover letter to focus on the things that we can do better.
3. Will the client survey generate more work? I have a sneaky suspicion that by sending this client survey, clients who have not used our services over the last couple of months will find a project for us to preform. They will remind themselves what good service has been delivered and, I believe, this will trigger work moving forward.
4. Will we be surprised that clients we thought were happy, are really dissatisfied? Lawyers are especially vulnerable to the phenomena of thinking more of themselves than others do. I suspect that I will receive at least one or more surprises from the customer surveys returned.

      I would be interested to hear from any other firm that has conducted a client survey about the above issues. Perhaps we can compile our collective customer survey experiences and see if we could spot some trends.

Comments

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I came across your blog in searching for client survey ideas. My husband is in a solo partice and is in court most of the day.
Two staffers run his office and lately we have concerns that we could improve in areas.
Have you formulated a survey? Thus far we have focused ours on customer service, first impression, promptness and professionalism questions.
To begin with we are sedning the surveys to cases that are completed to see what kind of feedback we get from that. Our plan was to keep the survey confidential at first to get as much honesty as possible.
We will consider active cases later. We are also considering mystery services to get feedback from random "potential clients" to see what the first impression is that they reciive.