Utilize feedback
Listening is a critical leadership skill. As the head of your company, you are always obligated to keep yourself in the loop with regard to what your employees and customers are saying about your company.
“One of the things I stressed upon taking over the firm as chairman was my realization that, even though I have spent my entire career at the firm, the biggest mistake I could make was to not listen to the ideas, insights and perspectives that our partners have,” he says. “That includes partners who were newly arrived at the firm.”
But it’s not just you. Anyone in a management position in your company needs to listen. They need to hear what their subordinates are saying and what your customers are thinking. If those channels of communication wither, your company could stagnate.
Listening is not something that simply happens with employees, clients or customers. It has to be a conscious decision on your part.
“I decided to be a good listener,” Soroko says. “I’ve communicated that openness to our partnership, and there has been a largely positive response. To have meaningful client relationships in business, you have to realize that this is too big of a job for yourself alone. In this business, the key for me is, ‘Will my partners come through for me and treat my clients like their own in terms of giving them the most outstanding service they can?’ That’s the best story I can hear as the chairman, that a client is raving about the service from a new lawyer. Then, I know our relationship with that client will be stronger than ever because of the teamwork we exhibited.”
After Soroko took over the top post at Duane Morris, he and his leadership team began to formulate a plan for collecting feedback from clients, then using that feedback to improve the way the firm does business.
“We decided that this had to be attacked in a way that is more systematic than simply waiting until we got anecdotal evidence of client satisfaction or dissatisfaction,” Soroko says. “We decided that what we needed to do was reach out to clients by sending a team out to visit them. That team would then help us assess what we were doing right or wrong.”
Many companies distribute client satisfaction surveys. Duane Morris took it a step further, with the surveys taking the form of in-person interviews, conducted on the client’s home turf whenever possible.
“It’s been a great learning tool,” Soroko says. “We’ve found out much about our clients’ needs for the services we provide and their relationship with our firm.”
The feedback is then disseminated throughout the firm so lawyers can take the information that is relevant to their practices and use it to improve their client service. They might even get some ideas for new services to offer.
During the in-person survey interviews, clients have expressed a need for other legal services, helping Duane Morris increase the span of its service.
Soroko says you must take the good with the bad when seeking feedback. Customers might criticize parts of your business that need improvement, but you might also find new ways to serve your customers.
“It’s one of the most interesting things that we’re learning from those interviews,” he says. “Areas in which clients are indicating a need for legal service, areas the clients are not currently having addressed by Duane Morris. In many instances, we could be the answer for a client’s needs.
“For instance, we might have a client for which we were largely doing construction law. But the client satisfaction survey might indicate a pressing legal need in another area, possibly an area in which the partner we have serving the client was too busy and really hadn’t inquired with the client about it. That’s how this client survey interview process has been an excellent way for us to assess the needs of our clients on more of a 360-degree basis. It’s really been a win-win situation.”
Flying around to visit each one of your customers might not be practical in every case, but the need to gather feedback in some form and use it to improve your business is constant and something about which you should be vigilant.
