12 Ways to Increase Client Satisfaction at Your Law Firm

Developing a system to ensure client satisfaction is the best way to maintain a strong reputation and build a loyal client base for your law firm. Providing a positive client experience will open you up to more referrals. A satisfied client is the best source of marketing as they tell their friends, share on social media and leave outstanding google reviews, allowing you to rank higher online and grow your firm quickly.

Once you're known for good customer service, people will go out of their way to work with you. Legal clients desire to feel cared for and listened to. People going through a stressful time don't want to wait forever for responses or spend time researching the best lawyer. In this article, we will teach you how to satisfy clients to the point they begin marketing for you organically.

Clients providing free marketing might sound too good to be true. Still, it is possible if you have engineered an effective strategy for client satisfaction and established yourself as an industry leader. Getting to this stage of your law firm's evolution takes some work, and we will show you how achievable it is, starting with generating more positive reviews.

Positive reviews increase your credibility and show people who may be on the fence that you are the right attorney for them. Bad experiences, on the other hand, jeopardize your reputation and create unhappy customers who leave reviews online. Now is the time to start learning how to minimize unfortunate situations and maximize the number of happy clients.

You might be wondering, where is the best place to start when it comes to improving client satisfaction? One of the biggest challenges clients are facing today is response times. Over 40% of people who leave a voicemail or fill out a web form wait two or three days before ever hearing back.

This first impression can make or break a law firm's reputation. You will be significantly ahead of your competitors by offering a way for potential clients to reach you 24 hours a day and respond promptly to incoming leads.

Beyond the first interaction, there are many ways to check in and ensure your potential clients' needs get met. Below, we will dive into 12 ways to make your law firm stand out and build an outstanding reputation.

Ways to improve client satisfaction for lawyers:

1. Offer a client satisfaction survey to everybody.
2. Offer free off-the-clock check-ins once a month to provide clients an outlet to communicate how they're feeling.
3. Tell clients about ways you've reduced their total cost through law firm efficiencies.
4. If your firm is big enough, create a client service team or single team member to handle client relations. If it's not big, create an automated email to check in with clients about their level of satisfaction.
5. Be sure to use automated emails and texts to keep clients updated about where you are in the process with their case.
6. Focus on best serving your specific niche, as this prevents you from becoming spread thin with clients that don't fully align with your firm's strengths. Refer leads that aren't an ideal match to other reliable law firms, and they will do the same for you.
7. Get to know your client's needs and inclinations, such as their communication style, billing preferences, their preferred form of communication, etc.
8. Find common ground and establish empathy from the start. A great way to do this is by creating an engaging, interactive video for your Intaker chat. If you haven't already set that up, you can learn more by reading the help center article, "First Dialog with Interactive Video."
9. As we said before, make clients feel like a top priority by being prompt in your response time. Invest in an assistant or automation services if needed. If you are an Intaker user, learn more about enabling Intaker's CONFIRMATION TEXTS and CONFIRMATION EMAILS.
10. Pay attention to detail and keep an organized record of everything clients share. Excellent customer service comes from paying attention, so avoid asking the same questions multiple times.
11. Pretend you are a client, land on your site, and reach out to yourself to see how easy the process is. If it is challenging, imagine how difficult it would be for someone lacking prior knowledge. Everything you do should come from a client-first approach, imagining how your marketing and strategy ultimately affect the client.
12. Make it as easy as possible for clients to pay your law firm. Many companies offer automated billing for lawyers, and it's certainly worth investing in as that is the preferred payment method of most clients.

We already talked about why client satisfaction is so crucial for lawyers. Now, let's talk about why it needs to get measured in a quantifiable manner. By taking the time to track the success of your client satisfaction efforts, it will become much easier to pinpoint what your law firm needs to do to foster long-term relationships. One great way for legal professionals to do this is by using a client satisfaction questionnaire.

Below are some example questions you can use when creating your first questionnaire.

10 Law Firm Client Satisfaction Survey Questions

1. Was our work efficient enough to meet your needs?
2. Were you satisfied by our response time to phone calls, texts, and emails?
3. Did we meet your expectations in terms of legal help?
4. Did you feel supported and heard by our team throughout the legal process?
5. Was our billing easy to understand?
6. Did you find our website and online presence professional?
7. Did you find the Intaker bot helpful when contacting us online?
8. Would you recommend our law firm to a friend or family member?
9. What is one way we could improve in terms of communication, services, knowledgeability, etc.?
10. What would you consider to be our greatest strength?

We hope these sample questions can help manage your law firm's reputation. The next step after sending out the survey is to follow up. If you received a positive response from someone, that's a great time to ask for an online review.

Be sure also to reach out if anybody expresses a less than positive experience in the satisfaction survey. That's the perfect opportunity to reach out, damage control, and prevent the mistake from happening again. You'll also likely be able to take with the person and come to an amicable conclusion rather than the alternative, which could lead to them posting a negative review.

Online reputation management is crucial to how successful a law firm will become. Word of mouth is still powerful, but the internet is the primary way leads find lawyers. It's also worthwhile to manage your social media platforms and stay on top of any feedback you might receive. Managing your online presence is becoming increasingly important, and hiring a marketer to take care of this for you could even be worthwhile.

Great customer service and responsiveness will set you apart and make you a standout amongst other law firms yet to adapt to the fast-paced digital environment where we currently exist. Educating your legal team on keeping clients happy will increase profitability and build better relationships with clients.

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