April 13, 2020

 Liam Brown

law company law firm liam brown csat net promoter score customer satisfaction survey results kpis

Responding to COVID has had us all fixated on now. Business leaders are starting to think about what’s next. I’d like to discuss the results of our 2020 Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Survey and where Elevate is headed.

We use Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure customer experience. NPS measures the difference between the number of customers who are enthusiastic about Elevate (our “promoters” who score us 9 or 10 out of 10) and those who are not (our “detractors” who rate us 0-6 out of 10).

Our 2020 NPS (conducted in Q1, measuring our performance during 2019) was 31, which was an improvement on our prior year NPS, which was 20.

Over the last five years, our NPS rose from 32 in 2016 to 39 in 2018 (measuring our CY 2015 to 2017 performance, during which we grew from $21m to $38m in sales), but then it fell to 20 in 2019 (measuring 2018, during which sales were $48m).

I have written previously about how falling NPS sounded the alarm that we weren’t delivering the consistent level of service that our customers expected. We concluded that the root cause was that our management team had been stretched too thin, or in some cases we had managers in roles that no longer fit their capabilities or experience. We made a string of acquisitions in Q4 2018 and Jan 2019 and re-organized our management team. Our goal was to ensure that each of our services had scale and the focus of domain-expert managers.

Our 2020 NPS rebounded to 31 (measuring our 2019 performance, during which sales were $82m), indicating that our response is paying off. The integration of recent acquisitions has largely gone according to plan, and all the acquisitions outperformed expectations. The management reorganization and investments in the professional development of our people are making a difference.

Our other Key Performance Indicators have been stable over this period. When asked to rate Elevate on how well We Innovate, the extent to which we show We Care about customers, and the degree to which We Deliver on our commitments, customers have given us remarkably consistent scores. Overall, customers rank us slightly (5%) higher than five years ago; 4.2 on a five-point scale.

We help customers elevate the business of law. Today, customers have little choice but to buy AI software from one company, data science, product training and change management from another, legal professionals from yet another, and then weave that all together themselves. We are working hard to prove that Elevate as a whole is greater than the sum of our parts. Going forward, we will improve how we coordinate our capabilities so that customers will be better able to buy one multi-disciplinary solution for a ‘Job to be Done’ from Elevate.

None of this is possible without our people. I’d like to acknowledge your expertise and passion for making a difference. Thank you.