Unhappy clients who leave your firm or decide to not use your services any longer, aren’t your only worry. You’re likely to lose any chance of ever landing one of their friends as a client. Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine posts a “Dear Mr. Dell” letter to the company when he returned his computers. Gosh, as you can see Jeff was pretty unhappy, and it appears he stirred things up a bit with his blog and podcast. If I were Dell, I know I would be very concerned about future sales.
The point of mentioning this post is that it got me thinking how unhappy clients can hurt a law firm’s future legal business. It is that multiple effect of telling others about their unhappiness, and in today’s blogosphere, that is not a good thing. My advice is that if you have an unhappy client, deal with the issues now before the client leaves and tells others.
One way to find out whether you have unhappy clients, is to ask them. Client feedback is vital in light of today’s competitive legal marketplace. Best to find if there is a problem before the client sends you a “Dear Mr. Dell” letter, or just doesn’t take your phone calls.
Thanks a bunch to Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion for the tip about Jeff’s post.