legal sanity

In my last post on lawyer discontent and client dissatisfaction, I suggested that this dual malaise has a common cause: a breakdown of the lawyer-client relationship. There are many takes on what it takes to revitalize business relations in disrepair. Adding to the ensemble is “loyalty expert” Fred Reichheld’s new book, The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth. I haven’t read the book yet, but I sampled its message in Reichheld’s recent article for Harvard's Working Knowledge called A Satisfied Customer Isn’t Enough. According to Reichheld, companies need to comprehend the “economic value that results from building better customer relationships.” There’s a direct correlation between great customer relationships and a company’s positive, long-term economic growth. To help businesses understand the value of “deep” customer relations, Reichheld came up with a system for measuring an organization's performance from the customer’s perspective. The system involves an evaluation of company “promoters” - people who answer “yes” to the “ultimate question: would you recommend us to a friend?” and company “detractors” – customers who “generate negative word of mouth” and readily defect to the competition. The assessment yields what Reichheld terms the company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS). As far as metrics go, I find this very interesting. Reichheld’s insights pair well with a great post from morepartnerincome in which guest blogger John Remsen, Jr. sheds light on various law firm client feedback programs. For a different angle on facilitating strong lawyer-client connections, check out Jim Calloway’s two part article on The Client-Centered Law Practice (and Part 2) [thanks to Dan Hull for the tip].