Mining for feedback from the coalface

My experience of feedback forms is not positive. It is a condition of most quality marks that firms offer feedback. As a firm, we used to send a form to every client but only very rarely got any replies. 

This book suggests that obtaining client feedback is not only essential but potentially profitable for the professional firm. It offers a step-by-step analysis of how to do this. Should you send out questionnaires or interview clients, and who in the organisation should manage this? If you send a questionnaire, there should be some incentive to reply. It is probably important to be able to say ‘You said…, we did…’.  

I am not sure if this sort of detailed feedback works for everyone. A firm with mainly business clients probably needs this feedback more than lawyers with individual clients. For some, the ‘client experience’ is likely to be negative because we are dealing with outside agencies that work at their own pace. Perhaps we should do feedback during the case, not at the end, and send questionnaires to other professionals who work with us and support clients. There is much we can all review and change about our questionnaires and interviews. 

David Pickup is a partner at Pickup & Scott Solicitors, Aylesbury