Law Firm Client Service

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You are in for a treat today, while I’m away at the ILN’s Regional Meeting of the Americas – we have a very special guest post! We’re welcoming Joanne Thorud, the Director of Marketing for the ILN’s Boston member, Davis, Malm & D’Agostine. She’s talking about one of my favorite subjects – client service – and shares with us an excellent post on why communication is so important in keeping clients happy. 

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Last week, I attended the Legal Marketing Association New England’s annual regional conference in Boston. The theme of this year’s conference was Simplify to Maximize. There were a dozen programs and over 30 speakers who presented topics focused on cutting through clutter and static and delivering clear and concise messages. One message that resounded in almost every program I attended was communication is key to maximizing client relationships. It is not a new or revolutionary concept, but it is extremely relevant, especially in today’s legal climate.Continue Reading Silence Isn’t Golden When it Comes to Managing Client Relationships

The advice to "think like a client" in order to improve your client service is not a new one – but today, I want to offer you a little bit of a twist on that advice, which will help you to up your game. 

The idea of thinking like your client can be a daunting one – while we all endeavor to understand our clients’ challenges, concerns, and pain points no matter what field we’re in, unless we’ve spent time there ourselves, we’re only privy to second-hand knowledge (for the most part). 

But whether we’ve been on the client side in our own industries or not, we’ve all been and are clients – as lawyers, you are purchasers of various services, from consultants to building services to office products and more. In our personal lives, we are consumers of goods and services, including everything from groceries and electronics to personal care, travel, and more. 

I’ve asked you before to think of yourselves as the client in these cases, and to identify what it is you want from those interactions – things such as understanding of what you’re really asking, common courtesy, on-time delivery, exceeding expectations, etc. Continue Reading Client Service: Think Like a Client!

As I was thinking about client service this morning, I wondered to myself whether there was anything left to discuss that hasn’t already been said. Of course, there’s an old adage that roughly says something about there being no new ideas, just new people discussing them, but even here at Zen, we’ve already talked about things like: 

And more. 

So instead, I started to think about issuing a challenge – to ask yourselves

How did I make a client happy today?"

Of course, there’s the obvious answer that doing their legal work, solving a problem, addressing a challenge, getting a big win, etc. all would make a client happy. Continue Reading Client Service: How did you Make a Client Happy TODAY?

This morning, Nancy Myrland wrote an excellent blog post on one of the most important questions you should be asking your clients, both new clients and long-term clients: 

What can I do to keep you as a client for the long haul?"

Nancy must be reading my mind again, because I have "client service" down as the subject to focus on for today’s post.  Her post got me thinking about the counter-question to this one, which is "What would make you leave?" 

Clearly, finding out the reasons that a client would stay with you and your firm long term is essential – you want to be doing the things that make your clients happy, and what better way to find out what those are than to ask them? 

But I’d argue that almost as important is finding out what might make a client leave. 

Continue Reading Client Service: What would make you leave?

Last week, when we talked about thinking like a marketer, I shared the following statistic from Blue Kite Marketing: 

People use hundreds of products and services every day. About 95 percent of those interactions go completely unnoticed. Another three percent of those experiences are ones that you are complaining about."

What that tells us is that people will share bad experiences and great experiences, but the "good" experiences just get forgotten.  Creating excellent experiences for your clients are obviously the goal here, but just as important is avoiding the bad ones that will stick with people and motivate them to market on your behalf…in a negative way. 

There are two little words that can diffuse an unfortunate situation, and they are just not used enough these days: 

I’m sorry."

Continue Reading Client Service: The Power of “I’m Sorry”

This afternoon, I was thinking back to my very first "official" job, as kennel help at a pet store in northern New Jersey. It was hard work, and long hours, but playing with puppies was a pretty great benefit of working there. It also taught me a lot, and one lesson I remember being crystal clear – don’t be afraid to ask questions. 

The story is that after working there for a little while, the store’s owners let me assist with other kinds of work at the store, including running the register. This was not too complicated, but a job that involved a lot of trust (we were dealing with pretty big sums of money, for one thing). Most of the charges were paid either by credit card or cash. But there was one afternoon when a woman wanted to pay for her puppy and his associated gear with a check. 

Thanks to my fourth grade teacher who had done a unit where we all got "checkbooks" and had to learn to use them to make payments, my 16-year-old self was pretty comfortable with what a check looked like, and which fields needed to be filled in. But there was one extra thing I was required to get from this woman in order to process the check. Continue Reading Client Service: There are no Stupid Questions

Like many people, I shop regularly at Target. It’s one of my favorite stores. So when I first heard news of the data breach they’d experienced, my heart sank. I am a Target Red cardholder, and had used my card to shop there three times during the time period identified. 

And then I learned about the full scope of the attack – that it affected shoppers who used ANY credit card at Target during that time, and involved more than just information about their card numbers. I saw many people panic, and agreed that if I had used my debit or another card there, I would have been canceling it immediately. 

From the breaking of the news story right up through the letter I received as a cardholder this week, Target has done a number of things – some good and some questionable – that affect their reputation. While law firms have different concerns and vulnerabilities than a consumer store like Target, mistakes, oversights, and crises can and do occur and we can learn from Target’s handling of the data breach. Continue Reading What the Target Data Breach Aftermath Teaches Us About Crisis Communications

The week before last, I was on the road in Chicago. Funnily enough, I checked in to the Amalfi Hotel in January, and because they changed names, checked out of the Kinzie Hotel in February. 

One thing that didn’t change was their high level of service though, and I want to share a story with you to illustrate how easy it is to genuinely please a client, and not only make them loyal to you, but make them an advocate for your brand at the same time. 

We were checking out of the hotel on Saturday afternoon. I’d arranged for a late checkout, and was traveling to the airport with two of my friends and colleagues. One of them was delayed a few minutes, so two of us were sitting in the lobby of the hotel with our bags, waiting for her.

The doorman came over and asked whether we needed transportation to the airport. We said that we would, but that since we were waiting for someone else, we’d grab a taxi when she arrived. Continue Reading Good Client Service: How Well Are You Listening?

On Monday, I presented a short recap about the Zappos session at LMA’s Annual Conference to my local LMA city group.  So they’ve definitely been on my mind this week, particularly after a customer service experience I had with another company. 

We’ve talked before about how bad client service experiences can have a negative impact – and a lot of that is common sense. But what about lukewarm client experiences? 

To illustrate, I want to compare Zappos with the experience that I had with Groupon yesterday.  Zappos mantra is customer happiness – they don’t just want a satisfied customer, they want an ecstatic customer.  Ecstatic customers will go out and tell their brand story in a happy and positive way, so Zappos is not only creating repeat customers, but helping to facilitate new clients. Continue Reading What Kind of Client Experience Are You Creating at Your Firm?

A lesson I learned several years ago that has been invaluable to me is that of "identify, don’t compare." When you compare, you’re looking to match your situation exactly to that of someone else’s – and when we do that, we’re always going to come up different (and that can paralyze us).

But when we identify, we’re looking for those elements that run through a situation that are the same as ours – and this gives us the inspiration to keep moving forward, instead of giving up because we think we’ll never be the same. That lesson comes in handy when I’m sitting in a session like the Zappos one from the LMA Annual Conference.  Although it’s easy to try to compare Zappos to legal marketing and come up lacking because they’re a consumer-driven business, when I identify instead, I find many parallels which allow me to take the lessons that Graham was sharing with us and apply them to my own situation.Continue Reading Identify, Don’t Compare – Lessons from Zappos for the Legal Industry