South Korea encouraged people to get a COVID-19 test just for the heck of it. There weren’t many sick people over the summer and they had excess test capacity. They decided to root out undetected community transmission because they had the resources. They went COVID hunting in hopes of finding a case or two that they could then track and trace and maybe find a few more.

They were ahead of the virus, so they used the time to be proactive and keep it under control.

Rooting out COVID is a lot like rooting out unhappy clients. They’re out there, they’re not always symptomatic, and community transmission can creep up you unexpectedly. Unhappy clients have the potential to cause huge problems for your law firm. They hide, they fester, and they grow stronger with each passing moment.

Client dissatisfaction is much like a virus. It spreads. It infects everyone in close proximity. Your clients know people like themselves, which means they know potential clients, or maybe even other current clients. They talk to each other, then they go online to talk some more. They vent, they complain, and your potential clients evaporate.

Unhappy clients get under the skin of your team and subtly increase turnover. They impact your mood and perspective. They can quickly turn a good day bad and a great year into a disappointment. One bad online review can spoil your mood for a long, long time.

You won’t always know who’s unhappy

I want happy clients. I want to know that we did a good job and met their needs. I need them to tell their friends and family and colleagues about us to help us build our practice. I love the warm feeling I get when I hear of the positive comments they make about us in the community. Of course, it’s tough to make all the clients happy, all the time. They turn on you sometimes.

But it’s not always apparent that a client has turned. Little things can trigger a client’s disappointment or frustration during emotional periods. As the case drags on, the potential for client upset increases. Sometimes it’s losing a motion hearing. Other times it might be something as seemingly trivial as misspelling a client’s last name. Things inevitably happen during the course of every engagement that cause the client concern. It’s hard to anticipate the specifics, but we always know the potential is there.

Some clients yell and scream when they get upset. They want the world to know they’re agitated. But others keep their mouths shut. They’re upset, but they stay quiet.

Many clients simply won’t tell us when they’re distressed with our work. They keep it to themselves, afraid to alienate their lawyer. They’ll suffer in silence, perhaps even notifying us that they’ve found other counsel, before we even realize there’s a problem. Of course, long before they’ve fired us, they’ve already started spreading the negative word about us in the community.

Ignoring dissatisfaction allows it to fester until it explodes

Many of us put our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. We want to believe that clients who don’t speak up must be happy. We’ve already got a handful of clients whose demands are driving us to the edge of sanity, and the last thing we want to do is surface more demands from more clients. We’re stretched to the limit.

But our desire for happy clients isn’t enough to make the clients happy. That’s not how it works. We may have a deep wish for them to be satisfied with our work, but only they know what it’s going to take to keep them on track emotionally. With each new development in their case, they have the opportunity to perceive things in their own special way. Sometimes, they perceive something inconsequential in the most negative manner possible.

But even in these moments of dissatisfaction, many clients hold their tongues and keep their grievances to themselves. They don’t speak up. They simply let that negative energy grow like an increasing viral load for later spread.

They’re dangerous, and you really need to know they’re nearby, waiting to unload on you.

You need to find the virus before it spreads. You have to go hunting for the upset clients, or they’re going to pop up in unexpected places, at unexpected times, in ways that can damage your law firm.

Surface it and fix it

There’s a tipping point with client upset. There’s a moment when they’re too far gone. They’ve settled into a belief that you can’t do the job and need to be terminated. There is a point of no return, beyond which no amount of fast-talking and tap-dancing can return the client to the fold.

You have to find that negative emotion before the tipping point is reached. The clock is ticking. The danger is increasing. And sadly, you don’t even know it’s happening.

Obviously, we can’t address a client’s growing concern if we don’t even know it’s happening.

Your mission is to find out who’s unhappy and fix it.

Now, before we go any further, I’m sure there’s a small part of you gloating right now. You’re in a good place and haven’t had an upset client in quite some time. You’re thinking, ah, client upset is another lawyer’s problem–my clients are happy, and if something went wrong they’d tell me right away.

Listen, my friend: snap out of it. Let go of that delusion and join us back here in the real world. Humans get upset. It’s not always rational or reasonable. There’s definitely some hidden dissatisfaction in your client base. Denial is not a strategy. It’s time to go full South Korean and unearth that unhappiness, so you can nip it in the bud. Some people are going to be unhappy, no matter how well you’re doing the job.

Welcome back to reality.

A systematic approach to happiness

South Korea tested healthy people, looking for asymptomatic patients infected with the coronavirus. You need to do the same thing. You need to test your asymptomatic clients, looking for dissatisfaction with your law firm.

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How do you test? You ask them how they’re feeling about their matter. A simple question like how are you feeling about things? can do the trick. It opens a door that enables them to communicate their issues. In our firm, we had someone call every client, every thirty days, to find out how they were feeling about things.

Another way to find those quietly unhappy clients is to encourage everyone to report complaints. By everyone, I mean everyone. Encourage clients to report their issues. Mention it at the initial consultation, put it in the client agreement, and send email reminders periodically.

Get staff to help you gauge client satisfaction. Ask everyone to report unhappiness to a central reporter. Our receptionists were our best source of unhappiness detection. Unhappy clients are usually willing to tell the receptionist when they’re frustrated about not getting their attorney on the phone, or upset about something that’s going on in their case.

I’m much more likely to tell a waiter that there’s a problem with my meal than I
am to tell the chef when he comes out and asks if everything is OK.

We asked the receptionists to send a notification to a central registry. We required reporting of even the smallest of upsets. That notification triggered an alert on our internal communication system, so that everyone immediately knew we had a festering situation. We then undertook an organized approach to addressing the immediate concern. Beyond that, we added the client to a watch list, and we then worked to fully turn the client around.

When we first launched our program for finding client unhappiness, our associate lawyers felt like they were being checked up on. They didn’t like it. They were uncomfortable with their clients being checked by others. The interference troubled them and left them feeling vulnerable and criticized.

We worked hard to help them understand that they couldn’t fix a problem they didn’t know they had. We explained that we gathered the information so they would have the opportunity to proactively correct the situation. We helped them see the impact of client dissatisfaction on their evaluation by the firm, as well as the impact on their compensation. By being proactive, we were able to provide them with the information they needed to protect themselves from upset clients. Ultimately they came to see the program as a tool that helped them do a better job, get better client reviews, and increase their compensation.

Vaccinate your practice

Treating client unhappiness after it’s discovered is critical. But vaccinating your clients against unhappiness is even more effective, and less costly over the long haul.

For us, the creation of a vaccine didn’t require a degree in medicine or pharmacology. But it did require clinical trials. We discovered that the best prevention for client dissatisfaction was client communication. Talking to clients helps them stay calm and resilient. Building the relationship between lawyer and client immunized the client from the upset caused by the triggers that are inherent in ongoing case developments. More communication results in fewer upsets–we proved that to ourselves with testing.

We learned, through trial and error, the optimal level of communication that our clients needed, in order to minimize upset. We couldn’t eliminate the virus of client upset but we could keep it largely under control, at a manageable level. That’s sometimes the best you can do in these situations.

It’s easier, less expensive, and less draining for the law firm team to be proactive about upset clients. Settling clients down before they heat up is much more manageable than waiting till they’re in meltdown. Launch a program to eliminate upset before it happens. But–and this is critical–never stop hunting down those festering cases of upset that you haven’t yet identified.

The cost of client distress is high. You can’t afford to let it spread. Build programs for prevention, and execute a testing plan for discovering hidden upsets. You’ll never eliminate dissatisfaction entirely but you can make it a manageable part of running your law firm. That’ll protect your reputation, grow your practice, and prevent overwhelm of your systems. It’s time to get busy.