Langtons Chartered Accountants

The Research Project

Mackman Research collaborated with Langtons Chartered Accountants to gather up-to-date client feedback on behalf of the company. The research was designed to gain an insight into how stakeholders engage with the Langtons brand and their satisfaction with Langtons’ services.

Results:

• 41 clients and 16 professional contacts took part in the survey
• 69% response rate for key clients
• A detailed report provided key findings and verbatim

The Client

Langtons Chartered Accountants are a well-established, partner-led firm with offices in Liverpool. Throughout their 150 years in business, they have built up a collaborative approach with clients, and they offer bespoke solutions that take into account the client’s needs and aims. They are made up of five partners and a team of experienced accountants and specialists whose goal is to help their clients achieve their financial ambitions.

Brand Facts:

• Langtons is a leading firm of chartered accountants based in Liverpool that offers services including specialist tax advice, corporate finance and wealth management.
• Their partner-led approach provides clients with a personal, collaborate service.
• Langtons are members of Accelerate, meaning that they can provide international expertise from a pool of accounting firms in more than 130 countries.

Project Facts:

• Langtons contacted Mackman Research to gain an insight into their clients’ impression of the business and their satisfaction with Langtons’ services.
• Together with Langtons, Mackman Research designed a questionnaire that gave clients and professionals the ability to elaborate on their answers and make recommendations for the future of the business.
• A list of individuals were invited to participate in the research. The study adopted a mixed methodology, using telephone interviews in the first instance for key clients and professional contacts. The survey was also available online.

The Brief

Mackman Research was commissioned by Langtons to conduct a survey of their stakeholders in order to establish their opinion of Langtons’ service offering and client communication. The research incorporated both clients and professional contacts.

The feedback aimed to gain an understanding of how well those who use and engage with the company feel that Langtons is performing for them. This included general comments about the impression clients had of the Langtons brand, and the words they would use to describe Langtons. The research findings will assist Langtons in establishing what their stakeholders view as their strengths and weaknesses, and to implement any recommendations arising from the survey results to ensure that Langtons continues their excellent customer service and support.

Key areas which the survey focused on were:

• Respondents’ business relationship and history with Langtons
• Respondents’ perception of the Langtons brand
• Respondents’ satisfaction with Langtons’ service offering and range
• Improvements and opportunities for additional services

The Research Design & Methodology

Langtons supplied Mackman Research with an approved list of contacts: these were separated by ‘Clients’ and ‘Professionals’.

Participation was optional, either by telephone interview or online survey. The invitation to take part in the research also informed the participant that their survey data would remain anonymous unless they chose to allow Langtons to use a quotation for marketing purposes.

Mackman researchers made calls to clients and professionals to complete the stakeholder feedback during a three week data collection period. Telephone interviews lasted between eight minutes to half an hour. When the respondent was unavailable, an appropriate time was scheduled to call back.

The research consisted of both quantitative and qualitative questions, which included core ranking questions from ‘Always’, ‘Sometimes’ and ‘Never’, and from ‘Excellent’, ‘Average’ and ‘Poor’. Open-ended questions were included to gain free comment.

Research Outcomes

A total of 57 respondents completed the survey. For further evaluation, the results were split according to pre-determined client and professional contact segments. For some questions pertaining to Langtons’ services, quantitative results were also split by partner. The verbatim data was further grouped by theme and also ranked by frequency.

The key findings from the stakeholder perception and client satisfaction survey were written up in a detailed report which displayed the results visually and provided written insight into the satisfaction of Langtons’ stakeholders with their service offering to date. Verbatim explained the reasoning behind the ratings from respondents to provide an in-depth account of how Langtons is delivering extremely satisfactory services and communication to their clients.