What's Your Client Experience?

Client experience isn't client service or client feedback or key account management or even client relationship management, write Lee Grunnell and Jerry Angrave in Five star: The silk & steel of client experience for professional firms. In fact, it isn't a "thing" at all, but the way you do business:

Remember that client experience isn’t a project. It doesn’t start & finish. Done properly, it’s a fundamental part of how you do things - if you really want to be client-centric.

Their post provides a practical look at client experience and what means for you the service provider (and for your clients). It's an excellent starting point for everyone who wants to take it on. Read it and get going.

The Client Is Always Right. Even When They're Wrong...

It's not always easy to listen when your client complains about the service you provide, writes Ary Rosenbaum in Don't Ignore Your Client's Complaints. But it's always necessary. Because not listening says that you don't care, and when your client hears that, the end of the relationship can't be far:

The customer is always right and even when they’re wrong, you need to listen to their complaints whether they are justified or not. It is far easier to lose a client than to gain them and when people complain and you ignore them, they will take their complaints and business elsewhere. 

Read the post. Listen to what your client doesn't like, what she thinks of the relationship, what she wants you to change. Then fix it.

Do You Know If Your Client Is Changing Lawyers?

It's true that a client can fire her lawyer for any number of reasons. But most of the time, writes Pam Woldow in How You’ll Know When Your Firm’s Been Fired. you won't see it coming. That's because she probably won't ever come out and say that you're going to lose her work:

The fired firm was just quietly going to be choked off, using a tactic the GC called “the long tail,” meaning don’t jerk ‘em around or humiliate ‘em, just gradually turn down the wick until the light goes out.

Read the post. Pay special attention to Woldow's five signals that the work is drying up. Ask yourself which of your clients might be sending them. Then convince them to stop.

"Client Focus" Is In The Eye Of The ... Client

There's only one way to give your client she expects, writes Gina Rubel in How In House Counsel Defines Client Focus. You ask her:

The phrase “client focus” can take on many meanings for lawyers. [...] One thing is certain, it is important for every attorney to ask his or her client what their expectations are as they relate to providing client-focused service and then do everything it takes to meet those expectations.

Read the post for Rubel's take - and that of a handful of in-house lawyers - on what it really means to "focus on the client." Then start doing it.

Do You Hear What Your Client Isn't Saying?

It's important to listen to everything your client tells you. But, writes Michael Rynowecer in 13 Unspoken Rules of Client Relationships, it's probably more important that you hear what she isn't saying. Because you need to follow the same unspoken rules that your clients have made "part of their core personality, behavior and decision making." Like these:

1. Clients always find a way to hire the people they want when they want to.
2. Clients don't fire their law firms, they just stop giving them work.
3. “Your rates are too high” is a euphemism for “I want to give the work to someone else”.

Read the post. Let these unspoken rules guide your behavior. You may not master all 13, but you just might start hearing more of what your client wants. And isn't that the goal?

What Do You Call a 20-Year Relationship With Your Clients? A Good Start

When you're building your practice, stay away from the "fire and forget" work, writes Keith Lee, founder of Associate's Mind, in How To Build A 20 Year Relationship With Your Clients. Instead, focus on building a long-lasting relationship with your clients, providing customized, high-quality products and services that they'll brag about. Like apparel companies Gramicci and American Giant:

Gramicci built a relationship with me by providing a product that has lasted decades. American Giant wants to build that same sort of relationship. They’ve told me – everyone – that when you buy their products you buy them for life. These relationships are built on a high degree of quality that encourage me to place my trust in their products.

Read the post. Turn your clients into advocates and ambassadors for your work.

The Secret of Client Development?

The secret of client development really isn't a secret. It's straight-up, hard-working, honest to goodness client service. Service that would make your mother proud, that makes your best clients pick up the phone to tell their friends about they great lawyer they've hired.

That's why you need to read Dan Hull's "world-famous and annoying but highly correct, inspirational and soulful" 12 Rules of Client Service:

The client is the main event.

In This Future of the Legal Profession, The Only Constant Is Change

One thing is certain: evolution in the legal profession is true whether you believe in it or not. Because it is truly happening, write the authors of the 2015 Citibank Hildebrandt Client Advisory (pdf), who note:

Demand for law firm services appears to be growing at a more modest pace than the demand for legal services.

Such a statement would have been unthinkable in a not-too-distant past. Today, it just sets up a valuable discussion on the future of the legal profession, or as it's called in the report: "What It Takes To Be a Successful Firm:"

1. An Increasing Focus on Margin Growth vs. Just Revenue Growth
2. Growing Sophistication on How to Price and Manage the Delivery of Legal Services
3. A Different Leverage Model
4. Leveraging Technology
5. An Increased Focus on Partner Performance and Skillset
6. A strategic approach to practice and client succession
7. Differentiating the Brand
8. Client Centricity
9. Leveraging the Platform
10. Management of the Talent Pipeline
11. Leadership in a Volatile Market

Read the report. Prepare for your future.

(Hat-tip to Ron Friedmann)

Got What It Takes to Join the Client Service A-Team?

What makes the 30 law firms that deliver "the absolute best client service" different from the 650 competitors they outperformed? For starters, they have established formal, systematic client feedback programs. And they've incorporated client service metrics directly into their strategic plans. And, writes BTI Consulting's Mad Clientist in 7 Lessons from the Client Service A-Team, they've adopted five other service practices to make sure their clients keep coming back. And so can you:

The good news—no law firm engages in all 7 lessons. You will benefit from focusing on even a single one. Jump in, pick one, start today.

Take a lesson from the A-Team. Better yet: take seven lessons from them. Read the post, and start changing the way you think about and manage client service. Your clients - and your partners - will thank you.

Client Service: The Big Four Secrets of Big Four Success

Tom Kilroy’s “Big 4 a reason” on his blog GC’s Eye View. Let me say this up front: when you discover a blog written by a general counsel, add it to your RSS feed. Whether they’re writing about how the Big Four run client-service circles around law firms (as Kilroy does in today’s post), or biscuits or burgers, general counsel blog about that which is most important to them. And by “that which is important to them” I really mean “that which is important to you.”

Kilroy’s post demonstrates that point. In it, he looks at the ways in which the Big Four approach client service as he isolates what he sees as four secrets behind their success. Not their delivery of legal services secrets, nor their empirical knowledge secrets, but their client service secrets. The way they talk to their clients about the problems those clients are facing. The way they help their clients prepare for future challenges. They way they establish meaningful relationships with the people leading and managing the companies for which they work. Because those are the things that are important to Kilroy and, as he makes it clear in his post, those are the things he’d like his outside lawyers do more.

Shouldn't you be doing them too?