How To Create a Post-Client Survey for Your Law Firm

Surveys play a fundamental role in shaping today’s customer and client experiences. They appear after every online purchase and are especially common in eCommerce — but how do they play into law firm marketing? 

In short, post-client surveys are game-changers. They open attorneys’ eyes to common concerns that limit client satisfaction while also revealing what’s going well and why.

If knowledge is power, these surveys pack a punch: they offer relevant and reliable insights that can drive much-needed improvements to every aspect of the attorney-client relationship.

Interested in building surveys into your communication strategy? Below, we will explore post-client surveys: why they matter and what it takes to obtain thoughtful and actionable feedback. 

What Are Post-Client Surveys?

Surveys allow clients to share their thoughts and opinions about their recent experience working with individual attorneys or entire law firms. 

Featuring a series of purposefully selected questions, these surveys encourage clients to get honest while offering attorneys a valuable glimpse at the ‘typical’ client thought process. 

Topics covered may include:

• What clients like or dislike about law firm communication. Thoughts on response times, communication mechanisms, and general rapport. 
• Client perceptions of lawyers’ competence. Whether clients perceive their lawyers as credible or as authorities in their practice areas. 
• Thoughts on law firm transparency. Whether clients feel that law firms are sufficiently upfront about fees and billing. 
• Overall satisfaction and willingness to recommend law firms to other potential clients. Encouraging clients to share numeric ratings. 

These surveys should not be confused with (or sought in lieu of) conventional reviews or testimonials. Although reviews remain crucial for seeking feedback, they serve a different function: sharing insights with both attorneys and the public. Client surveys, however, strictly aim to inform attorneys. 

Benefits of Sending Post-Client Surveys

The main advantage of the post-client survey is securing feedback, which may influence future strategies for working with clients. These surveys encourage clients to share their honest opinions, which attorneys may otherwise struggle to pinpoint. Other benefits worth considering include:

• Maintaining brand awareness. Client relationships should be consistently nurtured. Often, however, attorneys let these relationships lapse following successful case outcomes. Surveys can form the basis of longer-term relationships and may even lead to repeat business.
• Resolving complaints. Empathetic survey responses can make a world of difference for disappointed clients and could even determine whether those clients go on to leave negative reviews. 
• Strategic planning. Post-client surveys influence strategic decision-making, especially as it relates to proposed policies or communication strategies. Without nuanced survey responses, attorneys might not even be aware of critical law weaknesses. Structured feedback can help them determine where room for improvement exists while also offering a benchmarking strategy to reveal changes in client satisfaction over time. 

Essential Steps for Creating and Sending Post-Client Surveys

Many attorneys intuitively understand that they can benefit from actively seeking client feedback. This process can feel intimidating, however, and some attorneys may struggle to build this critical step into the client lifecycle.

Thankfully, many technological solutions — including survey templates — promise to streamline the process, removing the guesswork from sending surveys and allowing attorneys to instead focus on responses. 

Ready to harness the power of post-client surveys? Follow these steps to get started:

• Establish survey goals. Client surveys should not be haphazard. Rather, they must be carefully crafted, complete with targeted questions that reflect key objectives. Aim for measurable goals that address key concerns about law firm performance and attorney-client relationships.
• Segment clients. While a broad-based survey can produce fascinating insights, a more targeted approach may be preferable, especially for law firms with numerous practice areas. After all, feedback from divorce clients may not be relevant when striving to improve rapport with medical malpractice clients. 
• Write survey questions. Many law firms encourage clients to provide ratings — often on a 1-10 scale — but this may not produce enough details or reveal why clients feel the way they do. Instead of relying exclusively on ratings, incorporate open-ended questions aligned with previously established goals. 
• Select a distribution method. In most situations, this will involve email, but some attorneys prefer phone-based surveys. Chatting over the phone feels more personable and may be appealing when qualitative responses are prioritized over quantitative feedback. Email offers enhanced convenience, however, and can also prove more useful from an analysis perspective: structured formats and responses bring a systematic approach to survey analysis. 
• Send reminders. Clients may not respond to survey requests right away, but don’t give up; in some cases, busy clients may require multiple reminders before they answer survey questions.
• Follow up with clients. If you are determined to improve long-term brand awareness while establishing close client relationships, don’t let the conversation end with a completed survey. Follow up on address client concerns or simply thank clients for offering thoughtful feedback. 
• Analyze survey results. A brief glimpse at post-client surveys should provide a wealth of insights, but in-depth analysis can provide even better takeaways. This should highlight trends in client responses and also, how these evolve over time. Benchmarking may reveal considerable changes in client perceptions, so surveys should be continually distributed. 
• Make changes. Client survey responses should drive action. Integrate survey analysis into decision-making efforts and determine which policies or procedures could be adjusted to improve client satisfaction. 

Build Stronger Attorney-Client Relationships

Post-client surveys represent just one piece in a complex legal marketing puzzle. Our team at Martindale-Avvo can help you find new ways to grow. Reach out to discuss your goals with our marketing experts.