Lewis Roca is a US law firm headquartered in Phoenix, AZ – with offices in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. The Lewis Roca team has been working with ClearlyRated since 2018, leveraging the Net Promoter Score® survey methodology to support and enhance their “Experience Amplified” client service model. Since implementing NPS®, the Lewis Roca team has made great strides to measure and improve the experience that clients have with their attorneys and firm overall. In this blog post, Lewis Roca’s Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, Lisa Simon, shares the story of Lewis Roca’s client service journey. The Beginning: Building from a strong foundation Lewis Roca, like many firms in the U.S., is an organization born of mergers with like-minded firms. The Lewis Roca team originates from three legacy firms, each of which brings their own commitment and philosophy around client service. When the firms came together to create Lewis Roca, they sought to unify that mindset toward a consistent, client-centric approach. This led them to the development of their core operating principles – what they call “Experience Amplified.” “The leaders behind our Experience Amplified initiative understood that client service was more than just table stakes. They saw how service could shape our brand, our reputation, and ultimately our ability to continue to grow in a challenging market. That’s when we set out to create service standards that would codify the way we work with clients and the experience we promise them. We were about a year and a half into our Experience Amplified initiative when we realized we needed a way to measure the success of that program.” – Lisa Simon Implementing a legal client NPS survey with ClearlyRated Client service had been a top priority for Lewis Roca for many years, taking shape in the form of interviews between managing partners and clients. While interviews solidified relationships and demonstrated Lewis Roca’s commitment to the client experience, the process didn’t readily allow for actionable insights or scalable process improvement. “Conducting what we call ‘relationship reviews’ is one way of learning more about our clients’ experience and opportunities for us to improve. However, our findings from those anecdotal interviews are fairly difficult to quantify. In order to truly invest in our Experience Amplified initiative, we needed a way to measure the impact of our behavior. I knew that NPS was a powerful way to accomplish that goal.” – Lisa Simon Lisa and her team had identified NPS as their preferred method for determining client satisfaction because of its history and context as a service quality metric. “NPS is a proven methodology, which is important when working with lawyers,” says Lisa. When the Lewis Roca team began to research potential NPS survey partners, Lisa’s first resource was her network of fellow legal marketing and business development leaders. Understanding how other firms had solved for this need was a top priority, since digital surveys were a first in the firm and the stakes were high. “My priority with our first survey was to secure buy-in from the partners and ensure continued investment in the effort. If we didn’t execute it well, if we upset a client, if we emailed the wrong person, I knew we would have a very difficult time advocating for another survey to sustain this metrics-oriented culture around service.” – Lisa Simon After speaking with a few survey vendors, Lisa and her team decided to move forward with ClearlyRated. The Lewis Roca team leaned heavily on ClearlyRated’s experience working with professional service firms as well as our survey dashboard and reporting capabilities to build a Net Promoter® survey program that would measure the value of their Experience Amplified initiative and inform future progress towards an exceptional client experience. Working with ClearlyRated, Lisa’s team at Lewis Roca developed and deployed a client survey initiative that: Utilized industry best practices and benchmarks for client satisfaction surveys Leveraged the Net Promoter® Score to standardize service metrics and track progress Measured specific client perceptions to identify Lewis Roca’s largest drivers of client satisfaction Ensured actionable insights for the partners and attorneys Supported comprehensive reporting and notifications based on client feedback parameters “I thought I knew a lot about NPS. But going through this process has been so fun – especially learning more about NPS drivers and analyzing the data in a way to understand what’s really behind a specific client rating. To me, that was a really rich aspect of this process. Getting an NPS score itself was helpful, but I didn’t anticipate getting behind that number and understanding the day-to-day activities that our attorneys could engage in to drive that score higher and create better relationships with our clients.” – Lisa Simon Outcomes from LRRC’s first client survey with ClearlyRated Lewis Roca’s client survey results have empowered the Lewis Roca team to capitalize on client feedback in real-time. The feedback they have gathered from clients through their ClearlyRated survey has empowered attorneys and relationship-holders with the insights they need to monitor and improve their clients’ service experience. It has also resulted in new revenue opportunities. During their first ClearlyRated NPS survey, the Lewis Roca team identified an at-risk client who indicated in their survey feedback that they had experienced a billing issue. Thanks to their survey program and detractor follow up process, the attorney was able to immediately act on this feedback. Not only was the issue addressed, but the communication opened the door to new work for the firm – and the attorney closed the phone call with two new matters. “All of our attorneys are grateful for the information that comes through our ClearlyRated. But I suspect they are even more excited about the opportunity to reach back out to their clients. To me, that’s the most important piece of all of this: the issue itself is less important than the way that we respond to it. For us to be able to respond so quickly to feedback has been monumental.” – Lisa Simon Words of wisdom for law firms embarking on their first client survey initiative When considering the elements that created a successful survey launch at Lewis Roca, Lisa credits firm leadership with the vision and commitment to support what might otherwise be a culturally-challenging initiative. “We needed our first client survey to go perfectly – and I think I can use that word, it went perfectly. Part of that has to do with the fact that all of our attorneys were aligned around the client service standards, and they understood WHY we were implementing a survey program. No partner was caught off guard, and we received almost zero pushback throughout the process. That allowed my team and ClearlyRated to move through the paces and create a remarkable client survey program that created measurable value to our firm, and left a great impression on our attorneys.” – Lisa Simon In addition to a central service philosophy and buy-in from leadership, Lisa encourages other legal marketing professionals to think about how to make the process as approachable and clear as possible for attorneys. “If I could give one piece of advice it would be this: Educate. Communicate. Educate again. Communicate again. And break it into a manageable process to start. (That’s more than one piece but they’re all important!)” Next steps for Lewis Roca’s NPS initiative What’s next for Lewis Roca’s client survey initiative? Building upon the success of their first NPS survey, the firm plans to go live with their second in Q2 of 2020. Lisa’s team is also considering how to leverage client feedback gathered in the survey in the form of testimonials or as prompts for client features. We love working with Lewis Roca and know big things are ahead – we can’t wait to see what they accomplish next. Interested in implementing a Net Promoter Score program at your firm? ClearlyRated would love to help! Learn about the ClearlyRated NPS program. Browse our helpful NPS blog posts. Contact us to speak with one of our consultants.
