News: Client Satisfaction Guaranteed, Or Some Money Back

By Karen Wagner

This month the Chicago firm of Coffield Ungaretti & Harris is announcing what it believes to be the first of its kind in the legal world--a written guarantee of client satisfaction. That is, satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. (Some of it anyway).

“We’re very excited about this,” says Ross H. Fishman, Coffield Ungaretti’s director of client services and a partner in the firm. Fishman has been working on the concept since he arrived at the firm in August 1994 from a marketing position at Winston & Strawn, Chicago.

“We talked about the idea of the guarantee as being a way of encompassing all of the good qualities that lawyers think about themselves and would like to convey to their clients. The guarantee says all of the right things, but in a much more active, tangible way.”

What the guarantee actually does say is simple and straightforward:

“We guarantee that as a client of Coffield Ungaretti & Harris you will receive cost-effective legal services delivered in a timely manner. We promise to involve you and communicate with you regularly.

“We cannot guarantee outcomes; we do guarantee your satisfaction with our service. If Coffield Ungaretti & Harris does not perform to your satisfaction, inform us promptly. We will resolve the issue to your satisfaction even if it means reducing your legal fees.”

“It’s very similar to what we put in our fee letters,” says Allen P. Lev, managing partner of Holleb & Coff, Chicago. “It’s something we already do.”

Lev’s reaction, which would appropriately be characterized as typical of Chicago’s legal community, is buttressed even by Coffield Ungaretti’s marketing committee chair, Gwen V. Carroll, who admits she already adds a note to each engagement letter about “possible, conceivable concern whatsoever” about the bill.

The firm, however, is sure there is a difference. “Any time you put it in writing and are willing to tell the world about it is somehow different, even if you already do it anyway,” says Richard A. Ungaretti, chair of the executive committee and the firm’s co-founder. “We have, in fact, guaranteed our services. We are prepared to sit and talk with clients when they’re unhappy and deal with our billing if that will make them happier.

“Telling the world we’re doing this will invite more confidence about our service and will help the whole firm, the total organization, be responsive to some of the underpinnings of what started this law firm.”

Is It Just a Gimmick?

After months of research that involved focus groups and one-on-one interviews, the marketing committee presented the guarantee package to the firm’s executive committee this past April. First reactions were not unanimously positive. According to Carroll, Ungaretti responded with a “WWWWhat?” Senior partner Kevin M. Flynn, who is a member of the marketing committee, says he was startled when he first heard about the idea of a written guarantee.

“I was concerned that it would be viewed as a gimmick,” says Flynn. “It sounded gimmicky to me. Obviously, my view has changed.”

Eventually, the idea gained favor among the executive committee and the rest of the firm’s nine equity partners, who have given it their stamp of approval. However, the fate of this project clearly lies in the hands of the next generation of lawyers at Coffield Ungaretti, who recognize the importance of marketing.

Fishman insists this is a lot more than marketing. “I’m not shying away from the fact that we hope there’s tremendous marketing potential in this,” he explains. “But, that’s not why we’re doing this. It’s an added benefit."

Fishman is hoping that the written guarantee will become a revolutionary idea much the same way advertising in general and alternative billing practices have changed the way the profession operates. He refers to the Washington, D.C., law firm of Howrey & Simon, which has been using image advertising successfully since 1990. He also mentions Fred Bartlit of Chicago’s Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott’s use of the media to market his concept of a better way to practice law through alternative fees and technology.

“We’re trying to combine both of these issues,” says Fishman. “We have a tangible concept that we think will tremendously benefit our clients, and we are hoping to successfully market that through PR and advertising. But the primary benefit is to our client.”

If the kind of service that is guaranteed has been provided all along, what then are the risks for Coffield Ungaretti?

“This decision is being driven by the senior equity partners of this firm who have everything to lose and a lot to gain,” says Dennis J. Gallitano, a member of the marketing committee. Or, maybe, a lot to gain, and not very much to lose.

“We don’t know what level of risk there is because none has ever done this before,” says Fishman. “We have nothing to compare this to, except Nordstrom, Federal Express.”

Fishman says response to the written guarantee was very positive in the focus groups and individual interviews, which encompassed “dozens” of one-on-ones with general counsel. The only negative feedback came from “conservative competitors who claim it’s a marketing gimmick,” he says.

Flynn believes the only significant risk is that the industry will not give adequate consideration to the guarantee, and will simply either ignore it or condemn it. “I must say that, because it’s novel, because we think we are the first to do it, there will be those skeptics,” Flynn surmises.

Of course, innovation invariably is feed for skepticism, especially among fellow law firms. “Obviously, it’s a marketing tool,” was the response of Joel D. Rubin, managing partner of D’Ancona & Pflaum, upon hearing the wording of the guarantee. Rubin categorizes the whole approach as misguided. “This makes it too formal,” he says. “You don’t want to put down policies and procedures for how to complain.” Clients, he adds, want more personal relationships when it comes to complaining.

A Climate for Complaining

While Coffield Ungaretti’s research showed that in-house lawyers liked the idea of a written guarantee, nonlawyers liked the idea better than lawyers. It seems the word “guarantee” arouses suspicion.

“It’s a good idea to have a written guarantee with your client,” confirms Lev of Holleb & Coff. “But I don’t particularly like the word ‘guarantee.’”

One risk that Carroll says she did not consider at first, with her initial “wide-eyed excitement” about the guarantee, was the possibility that clients would think results would be guaranteed. The ARDC would have problems with that, of course, since results cannot be guaranteed.

“We think we have made that very clear,” Carroll says. “It’s not like guaranteeing a clock, where the guarantor says, “This clock will work, or you get your money back.’ We may not win in court and our clients won’t get their money back, but we will respond to their phone calls, we will do our work efficiently. If they don’t like how much time we spent on the work, they will talk to us about it. And if we can’t resolve the problem to their satisfaction, we will reduce their bill. Period.”

The guarantee, the firm believes, will hopefully result in a climate conducive to complaining. “Where it’s going to find meaning is when somebody calls up and wants their bill adjusted,” Carroll says. “We adjust bills right now; we’re only putting in writing what we’re already doing. We want to create a climate for the client where he or she is comfortable about calling about a bill.”

Thus, the underlying strategy to the Coffield Ungaretti written guarantee is to search out those complaints before they compound.

“Clients don’t pay law firms now if they aren’t satisfied,” says Flynn. “We all know that. The point is, let’s have the discussion. Let’s ferret out hidden dissatisfaction. Let’s ferret out problems that exist in relationships up front so when we get to the billing standpoint there aren’t any surprises or misunderstandings.”

The firm is simply putting an increased burden on itself to find out what each client perceives as quality service, says Fishman, noting statistics by the U.S. Department of Commerce that report 90 percent of clients in general are unlikely to complain. Instead, he says, “They leave.”

Fishman cites statistics from an article by F. Reicheld and W. Sasser Jr., published in a 1990 edition of the Harvard Business Review, which reported that a 5 percent improvement in client retention rate can boost profits by almost 100 percent.

In effect, then, if used properly the guarantee is a way of minimizing the risk of losing a client in an extremely competitive climate. “Clients leave for a variety of reasons,” says Gallitano, “and we don’t want client service to be one of them.”

This article is reprinted with permission from the July 1995 issue of Illinois Legal Times.