I was having lunch with a close friend the other day. He’s now the Managing Partner of a pretty large, well-established, regional law firm. He was telling me a story about how he went to dinner with the CEO and General Counsel of a client he had just won a case for, and the CEO remarked that the firm had represented the company for all seven years the CEO had been in that position, and in that time, no one from the firm leadership had ever called him or gone to dinner with him. My friend rightly indicated that things were changing.
That story led to a discussion about client service surveys, which my former firm was doing n the 1990s and which Butler Rubin (my current firm) has been doing since I joined in 2000. These meetings are a unique chance to find out how things are going, to talk about real or potential problems, to find out what others are doing to impress your client, and to learn about the client’s developing needs. The right environment needs to exist for these interviews to be useful and popular—we convinced everyone that criticism is not to be feared. It is an opportunity to do something better. Not responding to criticism—or not seeking it out—were both significant problems however.
My friend’s firm is planning to do client satisfaction surveys. Now that they have taken their heads out of the sand, I think they will be impressed with the value of the surveys. I know my friend’s leadership will make them a more formidable firm. But I am left to wonder why so many firms, particularly large firms, don’t really dig into their relationships with clients to find out how to deepen them. I am always left with the vision of the poor ostrich with its head buried in the sand.
Comments