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The Legal Ombudsman is wishing to commission qualitative research to understand the needs and expectations of its customers. The research will listen to the views of our customers on our service delivery, helping us to identify and understand our service users’ needs and establish a set of customer defined service principles from which we can monitor the quality of our service.
The Legal Ombudsman
The Legal Ombudsman was set up by Parliament to make it simpler for consumers of legal services to access an independent expert to resolve complaints about services received from lawyers. Our aim is to provide a complaint handling service that is fair, accessible, easy to use and focused on resolving complaints informally and quickly.
Independent of the legal profession and government, we are an Arms
Length Body paid for by a levy on the legal profession. There is no cost to the tax payer and we are not consumer champions. We are overseen by our Board, the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC). The OLC reports to the oversight regulator – the Legal Services Board and their sponsoring department the Ministry of Justice. To carry out our role effectively, we work with a number of other organisations including government departments, regulators and consumer bodies. From January 2015, we will also be able to accept complaints about claims management companies.
Customers’ needs ITT February 2015

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The Legal Ombudsman wishes to appoint a provider to conduct a series of focus groups for current and potential users of their service. As part of its ongoing commitment to learning and continuous improvement, the
Legal Ombudsman is looking to establish a series of customer lead service principles against which it can benchmark and monitor its performance. Fundamental to the success of this project is gaining a detailed understanding of the the needs and expectations of our service users.
The research will listen to the views of our customers (both lawyers and complainants) on what is important to them from our service. It will identify their expectations and experiences across the broad spectrum of our service provision and provide us with a firm evidence base from which we can establish a set of customer defined service standards.
In particular, the research will answer the following key research questions:
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What do you expect from an Ombudsman scheme?
 What makes a good experience for our customers?
 What service values are important to our customers?
 What are the key drivers for customer satisfaction?
 How do these vary between lawyers / complainants?
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How do these vary throughout the complaint process?
 How does we perform in delivering these standards? How could we improve our processes and procedures?
Our customer satisfaction survey has shown that the outcome of our investigations have a significant impact on our customers’ views of our service and differentiating views on outcome from service will be a key challenge for the research. For this reason, we are interested in gaining the views of both our potential service users and those at the start our process to understand their expectations before their view has been affected by the outcome of our investigation. We will also be interested in hearing from customers who have had a complaint resolved through our process on their views of on our performance and any potential areas of weakeness and opportunities for improvement.
Customers’ needs ITT February 2015

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Customers’ needs ITT February 2015
The successful service provider will be expected to organise and facilitate a number of focus groups with existing customers and potential users of our service. The Legal Ombudsman will be able to provide a list of potential participants for the service user element of the study, but the research team will need to identify members of the general public for participation in the wider study of perceptions and expectations of the service. It will also be important for the research team to ensure that all the focus groups provide a balanced representation of the demographic profile of our customers.
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Organisation and facilitation of focus groups.
 Analysis of results and production of a succinct report, detailing the key views of our complainants.
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Presentation of findings to the Legal Ombudsman project group.
20 February 2015 w/c 2 March 2015
9 March 2015
30 April 2015
Closing date for tenders.
Interviews with potential providers and contract offer made to successful applicant.
Contract signed and work underway.
Focus groups completed and findings reported.

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Submissions will be judged on their overall quality and value for money, together with their likely success (risk) in answering the key research questions within the agreed timeframe. Tenders should set out dates for completing all key milestones such as information gathering, analysis and report writing, along with a full break down of costs.
The successful contractors would be expected to agree to the Legal
Ombudsman’s standard terms and conditions (please see our website) or to propose reasonable alternative terms as part of their proposal.
The appointed contractor will be expected to work closely and collaboratively with us throughout the project, particularly in the design and production of the online survey questionnaire.
The project will be managed by Sian Lewis, Policy and Research Officer with the Policy and Communications team, to whom all enquires about this research brief and tender documents should be addressed.
Contact sian.lewis@legalombudsman.org.uk.
Proposals should be emailed to sian.lewis@legalombudsman.org.uk by
5pm on 20 February. They should be sent as attachments in pdf format.
Late submissions will not be considered.
Customers’ needs ITT February 2015