Traditionally within the legal sector, client surveys arrive when everything is over and your matter concluded. Useful for the organisation, perhaps, but not necessarily for you, the client who’s taken the time to respond.
Listening while we can still make a difference
At Stephens Scown, we think there’s a better way. Our approach is to listen to clients during their relationship with us, rather than simply asking them to look back on it afterwards.
Our client listening programme offers you the opportunity to feed back during our work on your matter. We won’t send too many requests (up to three in any year), but your survey responses tell us what is working well and, importantly, what could be better.
And that’s a distinction that matters. If a client is unclear about costs, wants more frequent updates or simply doesn’t know what the next steps are, we have the opportunity to address those concerns. If we can help you during your matter, it might also help us improve things for the next client.
Knowing it today gives us the opportunity to improve things for clients of the future.
Feedback should lead to action
But listening is only worthwhile if you are prepared to act on what you hear.
We have seen relatively small interventions make a significant difference. In one case, a client raised concerns about increasing costs and the pace of their matter. The team was able to contact the client, explain what was driving both and provide greater reassurance and transparency. Later feedback showed a much more positive experience.
In another, feedback about unanswered emails allowed us to identify what had happened, reconnect with the client and re-establish effective communication.
These aren’t simply scores on a dashboard. They are opportunities to improve someone’s experience while there is still time to do so.
More than 1,000 voices shaping our service
Our latest client experience work has now taken us beyond 1,000 pieces of client feedback in little over 12 months. That growing body of insight helps us spot wider patterns as well as individual concerns. It influences decisions about communication, processes and the way our teams work, helping us make changes based on what clients actually experience rather than what we assume they want.
Great legal advice will always be fundamental, but clients experience much more than the legal advice itself. They experience how clearly things are explained, how easy it is to get an update, whether they know what happens next and, ultimately, whether they feel listened to.
Closing the feedback loop
We don’t believe client feedback should primarily exist to prove that a firm provides good service. Its real value comes from making that service better.
Sometimes that means celebrating something that has worked particularly well. Sometimes it means changing a process across the firm. And sometimes it simply means picking up the phone because one client has told us that something doesn’t feel quite right.