Method

An online Customer Satisfaction Survey was presented on this website. Respondents were asked a series of questions about their experience with Norton Peskett Solicitors. For Yes/No answers: Yes is tabulated as approval, No as disapproval. For answers on a scale of 1-5: 1-2 are tabulated as disapproval, 3 as neutral, and 4-5 as approval.

Some questions are mandatory, some are optional. For optional questions, if the respondent chooses not to answer, the question is not included in the results. It is not considered to be a neutral response. A neutral response is one in which the respondent has explicitly answered with a 3 on the scale of 1-5.

The survey is still open, and further contributions are strongly encouraged. Results will be tabulated, and the graphs updated, on a monthly schedule.

Summary of Results

Norton Peskett's Overall Approval Rating is 19%. Only 16% of Norton Peskett's former customers would use them again. Why do these numbers differ? The first is based on a scale of 1-5, asking the respondent to give an overall rating. The second is based on a yes/no question, asking if the respondent would ever use Norton Peskett again.

Anonymous Respondents

The first graph summarizes the responses from 267 respondents who preferred to remain anonymous. Of these 19% are satisfied with the service they received from Norton Peskett, 15% are undecided, and 66% are dissatisfied. Of these respondents, 16% have indicated that they would be willing to use Norton Peskett's services again, whilst 84% would not be willing to do so. Additionally responses are broken out by several categories that focus on aspects of service that are likely to be of interest to potential future customers of Norton Peskett.

Respondents were also given the opportunity to provide a detailed description of their experiences with Norton Peskett. Although these spanned a wide range of issues by far the most common were failure to communicate with the client, and lack of knowledge of the relevant areas of law.

Confirmed Former Clients

To date there have been 54 respondents who were willing to provide proof of their real world identities. Their responses are graphed in the separate report restricted to confirmed former customers of Norton Peskett.

Of these, 17% are satisfied with the service they received from Norton Peskett, 14% are undecided, and 69% are dissatisfied. Although these respondents may appear at first sight to be less satisfied than the anonymous respondents, the difference is not statistically significant (p<0.01). Of these respondents, 13% have indicated that they would be willing to use Norton Peskett's services again, whilst 87% would not be willing to do so. Likewise for this question differences between the confirmed former clients and anonymous respondents are not statistically significant (p<0.01).

Norton Peskett's Claims in Context

This graph compares Norton Peskett's claim of a 98% customer satisfaction rate with the national average of all solicitors in the UK, and with the empirical measurements of Norton Peskett's actual customer satisfaction rate based on a survey of their actual customers. The error bars, and all tolerances stated in the text, are 95% Confidence Intervals. This corresponds to approximately ± 1.96 standard errors.

Norton Peskett's own claim of a 98% customer approval rating provides no hint as to the precision of their measurement. Nor do they provide any parameters of their study from which Confidence Intervals might be inferred. The National Average of 83% ± 1.89% was measured by a survey commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, a façade of the Law Society (SRA 2008). The sample size of that survey is 1,553, the standard error is 0.965. Norton Peskett's claimed approval rating is 15% above the national average, that is almost 16 standard errors above the national average. A claim that high is so unlikely as to require robust proof to be taken seriously.

The empirical survey of Norton Peskett's customers conducted on this web site is based on a sample size of 321. The measured overall customer approval rating is 19.26% ± 4.15%. The standard error is 2.11%. Norton Peskett's own claims exceed the measured value by 79%, that is over 37 standard errors. The probability of Norton Peskett's claim being truthful is thus exceedingly small. Indeed, the probability of deviating from the mean by an amount exceeding 37 standard errors is so small as to be meaningless for any practical purpose; thus I feel quite safe in stating that Norton Peskett's claim is a lie.

Investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority