Conducting Client-Service Programs as a Competitive Advantage

By implementing a market-leading client-service program, your firm can gain a tremendous strategic advantage over its competitors.  The information that is obtained from client-service interviews systematically highlights the critical, and often relationship-defining, issues and priorities of your key clients' principal decisionmakers.

Client satisfaction and loyalty, among the most critical determinants of a law firm's success, are under assault by any number of marketplace trends and realities.  Lateral migration is one potential threat to law firm/client relationships; a firm’s failure to institutionalize client relationships leaves it vulnerable to losing key clients when partners responsible for those clients depart.  Equally as damaging, however, is the potential for client disenchantment with one or more lawyers or with firm performance in general. In a marketplace in which choices abound, no law firm wants to render itself vulnerable to client dissatisfaction.

Zeughauser Group partners work with law firms to implement systematic and institutional approaches to client service.  We work with firms to measure client satisfaction, the first step in a long-term and integrated client-service program.

Client-service interviews are among the best marketing investments that a law firm can make.  They yield invaluable information about client relationships and competitors. And in the normal course of conducting the interviews, they typically produce more billable work for the firm. In our experience, one-on-one, objectively conducted in-person interviews yield the richest data by far and generate more billable work opportunities for the law firm than any other survey method. In-person, client-service interviews offer significant short- and long-term benefits, including:

• Increased client loyalty
• Improved communications between the firm and its clients
• A clear expression to the client of the importance and value of its relationship with the firm
• Increased understanding of how clients perceive the firm and the law firms with which it competes
• Improved understanding of the range of clients’ legal needs
• Opportunity to review with clients the breadth of services provided by the firm
• Opportunity to learn of, and rectify, potential problems before they jeopardize client relationships
• Development of benchmarks to be used later in evaluating areas of improvement
• Understanding of key service patterns to be used in developing firmwide service standards and training