Communication Tools

Reputation audits are business-as-usual for many corporations. Often they’re done by phone, like a political poll. “On a scale of 1-10, how would you describe your feelings about the X-Y-Z corporation?” “On a scale of 1-10, have your feelings about the X-Y-Z corporation been affected by news reports about the A-B-C product?”

The trick, of course, is to convert the data gathered during reputation audits into a coherent brand-building, or brand-rebuilding, strategy. To that end, reputation audits are like market research. They identify demand so you can provide the supply.

For professional service firms, however, reputation audits are a new frontier. Most firms, especially law firms, only have the vaguest notion of how they are perceived in the marketplace. Their reputation audits are based only on casual conversations with colleagues or with headhunters.

For professional service firms, reputation audits should dovetail with client audits. For decades, law firms have acknowledged the need for client audits to pinpoint areas of client satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and as a marketing tool to identify client needs that the firm could be serving but is not serving.

Yet lawyers have avoided client audits, as well as reputation audits, because they do not want to jeopardize their control of the client relationship, or because they are simply afraid to hear what clients have to say. But for professional service firms, reputation audits and client audits, safeguard existing business and point toward new business.