Time to take a cue from your counterparts in medicine: Two prominent studies in 2006 (Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt) reported overwhelming data that complaints and malpractice claims were significantly lower — even after major mistakes — for doctors who consciously improved both their patient service systems (billing, office communication, etc) and their bedside manner (specifically, their empathy and interpersonal listening skills). The lesson is self-evident: great client service = wise risk management.
But more than preventing angry clients, you want to create true advocates among your clients — people who sing your firm's praises to their colleagues and friends. From the very first contact with you and your people, potential clients and referral sources are making judgments about your firm and how it operates and the value they're getting. Unfortunately, far too many attorneys take their clients for granted and they don't pay attention to their clients' experience.
Be one of the firms that does pay attention to your clients' experience and watch what happens.
AREAS OF FOCUS
- Establish a Client Welcome Process
- Set Appropriate Expectations
- Communicate Proactively
- Give Clients Extra Value
Establish a Client Welcome Process
You keep answering the same questions over and over. Clients call at the wrong time and messages pile up. Isn’t there a polite and orderly way to get new clients to follow protocols? Can’t they back off and let you get the work done for them, instead of pressing you with unreasonable demands? How can you avoid what seems like unnecessary handholding and rising frustration that all too often ensue once even routine cases are underway?
Whatever your practice area, every new client should be heartily welcomed to your practice and formally thanked for the trust they’ve placed in you. Additionally, each should be provided with an attractive and well-written client handbook preparing them for working with you and your office and explaining how their understanding and participation assists your firm in serving them in an efficient, timely, and cost-conscious manner. Contact information, office hours, names of staff, policies and procedures, and answers to frequently asked questions will orient them to the process for which they’ve hired you to represent them. Cover the typical course of action and probable time frames for moving things along and what you will need from them at various points along the way, so that you are literally on the same page and have a common frame of reference when the time comes for discussing the specifics of their case.
We help you draft and design the welcome packet you need, leaving you and your staff free to do the work you do best. We help establish the peace of mind you want in your clients, by showing them they are in competent hands and giving them the tools they need to partner with you in the smooth and effective handling of their matters.
Set Appropriate Expectations
Perhaps you’ve spent precious time explaining to a client, yet again, just how things go or how long they take. Typical delays − even though no fault of yours or your firm’s − can strike clients as bad marks on your account. Once a client gets upset, it’s hard for them to hear your reassurance and to trust your advice.
An important part of your business is to educate your clients about what is reasonable to anticipate from you and your firm. Be clear up front in setting your boundaries and your expectations of them in all key areas: fees and payment structure, communications, anticipated legal process, possible outcomes, and time frames. Give clients their options in advance and in writing. By setting appropriate expectations, you also set up the performance measures by which your clients will assess their experience. When you then get back to them sooner, deliver results under budget, or take care of something for them in your off hours, you’ll score extra good will and satisfaction.
As you work on this imperative, you’ll gain confidence in setting, speaking, adhering to and upholding your expectations, as well as meeting and exceeding those of your clients. Happy clients; happy you.
Communicate Proactively
One disgruntled client can do more damage to your business and reputation than two happy clients can do to repair it. Seven out of every ten people will tell their friends about what they considered a “bad experience” with a professional, while only three out of ten will mention having been thrilled.
Communicating proactively − that is, anticipating client questions and anxieties and clearly addressing them in advance − creates good will and prevents difficulties. And building understanding, trust, and rapport with a client is far easier than recovering later from a misunderstanding. When everyone knows where they stand, and the vocabulary for communication has been established by you as the advisor, clients feel cared for and assured of your competence.
Our experience in strategic communications and client satisfaction gives you a strong partner in establishing the right habits of proactive communication and giving your clients that priceless “…they think of everything!” feeling about your firm.
Give Clients Extra Value
Why is it that your competitors are surging ahead? You’re working days, nights, and weekends—what more can you do?
In today’s market, clients want to be wowed. Taking extra interest in your clients’ lives, troubles, and concerns, and giving them more than they hired you for, puts you in a championship league of law firms. That something extra, that personal touch of care that goes beyond your standard, billable agreements with them, gives your clients the wow factor. You offer to conduct a seminar on trusts and estates law for your client’s clients. You feature a client in your monthly newsletter, which goes out to several hundreds or thousands of business people. You introduce a client to a referral source. You bring one to a top-notch networking event, send another a recently released book or article related to their field. If in the course of your work on a client’s matter you see some way that you can help them get to the root of their problem and better prevent similar legal troubles in the future, you point them to the expert help they need. The ways to deliver the wow factor are countless.
We at SuccessTrack ESQ teach you to think on your feet about delivering extra value to your clients and to cultivate their loyalty and strengthen your brand. The personal and individual touches that spring from a culture of giving clients extra value can be neither imitated nor repeated, but are creative and particular gestures. And these are the ones that make taking their business elsewhere unthinkable to your clients.
