CUSTOMER SERVICE SPEAKER, CONSULTANT, &
#1 BESTSELLING BUSINESS AUTHOR
www.micahsolomon.com
www.customerserviceguru.com • [email protected]
7 Steps to Exceptional Client Loyalty
Loyal clients can provide lawyers with a strategic, sustainable advantage. Earning
client loyalty isn’t difficult, but it does require consistently providing clients with a
great experience. Here are seven tips to build the kind of client loyalty you can
bank on.
Creating true client loyalty is the fastest, most reliable way to build a strategic,
sustainable advantage in modern legal practice. Truly loyal clients are less price
sensitive, more willing to forgive your small foibles, and – most important –
almost completely immune to competitive entreaties from the firm across the
street or across the continent. This article will set you well on your way to building
the kind of client loyalty you can put in the bank.
But first, you need to accept an uncomfortable truth: Even your most experienced
legal clients do not likely understand the law on a technical level. Even if you’re in
a litigation practice, where the scorecard should be the most cut and dried, in
reality it’s hard for “outsiders” to determine what represents a good result for any
particular client. By contrast, it is easy for clients to judge you on such things as
whether your office seems well run in a business sense and whether you bill for
meals eaten while you work on a client’s legal matter. Therefore, it’s in your
interest to build client loyalty by focusing on factors in addition to pure, easy-tomisconstrue “results.” The tips below will help.
You can’t build client loyalty by benchmarking your service performance against
the other law firms’ prevailing standards – doing so is setting the bar too low.
It’s time to raise your game: Benchmark yourself against the best performers in
service-intensive industries, because that’s what your clients will do. All clients
judge every interaction with you based on expectations set by the best players in
the hospitality, financial services, and other industry sectors in which experts have
made a science of customer service.
Shelve your legal skills when it comes to resolving client problems – a
courtroom approach only gets in the way when working with your clients.
Resolving client problems means knowing how to apologize. It means getting rid
"The new guru of customer service excellence is Micah Solomon" --The Financial Post"
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CUSTOMER SERVICE SPEAKER, CONSULTANT, &
#1 BESTSELLING BUSINESS AUTHOR
www.micahsolomon.com
www.customerserviceguru.com • [email protected]
of a “let’s sort out the facts here and allocate responsibility” attitude when an
upset customer confronts you with a perceived service gaffe. Instead, take your
client’s side, immediately and with empathy, regardless of what you think the
“rational” allocation of “blame” should be. Train your staff to adopt this
approach, so the approach will serve you fully if a client hits the fan.
Faster service wins the day. Today’s customers expect speedier service than did
clients of any preceding generation. If drafting a legal opinion will take you four
days, first immediately contact the client to explain how much time you’re going
to need; then dig in to do the actual work. (Don’t expect to be treated as a hero if
you deliver anything later than promised, unless you have already managed the
client’s expectations.) Clients don’t know what is involved in you completing their
matter; they figure you can fulfill their requests automatically and quickly.
Fees must be appropriate and appropriately presented. Clients will notice if your
fee for proofreading documents is some astonishing figure like $350 an hour, and
so find a way to reduce it. You’ll make up the difference easily in retained clients
and referrals. Don’t bill for large amounts of unexplained copying or other
generic-sounding charges; document such charges and explain why the service is
necessary. And don’t charge for incidentals, such as a Starbucks latte that you
would have bought anyway while traveling.
Every hello and goodbye must be perfect. Psychology studies demonstrate that
people remember the first and last minutes of a service encounter much more
vividly – and for much longer – than what comes between. So make sure that the
initial and final elements of your client interactions are particularly well
engineered, because they are going to stick in your client’s memory. Do you or
your employees sound as though you’ve been interrupted – even for that telltale
split second – when a client calls or genuinely pleased to hear from her? Do you
screen calls unnecessarily? Do you “cold-transfer” people? If so, it’s time to stop.
At the end of a project, is the last communication to your client an impersonal,
mailed statement? Or do you offer a proper farewell, including thanks, and an
invitation to return if anything else is needed?
"The new guru of customer service excellence is Micah Solomon" --The Financial Post"
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CUSTOMER SERVICE SPEAKER, CONSULTANT, &
#1 BESTSELLING BUSINESS AUTHOR
www.micahsolomon.com
www.customerserviceguru.com • [email protected]
Dedicate yourself – and your systems – to remembering and acknowledging
each client in a way that is personal to the client. Loyalty is not built by the
tradition of standing ready to besiege clients with pro forma mailings describing
other services your firm can provide. Loyalty is built by realizing that every client
is unique and must be treated that way. Law firms thrive once they dedicate
themselves to engendering the deep loyalty bestowed on a beloved bartender,
doorkeeper, or hairstylist – the kind of service providers who would know a
client’s preferences, the name of that client’s pet, when that client was in last,
and so on. Loyalty is built, for example, by knowing that your business executive
client has a sibling with severe medical problems and then reading about a new
case that could help, forwarding the link, and offering to find an expert in the area
to assist – whether or not the expert has ties to your own firm. Enter this type of
personal information in your clients’ electronic files and thereby use your
computer system to effectively build client loyalty.
If you truly want to glue clients to your firm, learn to anticipate client needs –
even before they are expressed. Meeting a client’s wish before the wish has been
expressed sends the message that you care about the customer as an individual.
Doing this may seem to require telepathic ability, but in essence it is founded on
paying attention and knowing your customers. And it’s well worth the effort: The
cared-for feeling a client gets when her – not a “generic client’s” – wishes are
anticipated will generate the fiercest loyalty.
Conclusion
Achieving exceptional client loyalty requires aligning your employees and your
systems to anticipate what your clients want before they ask for it. It involves
hiring support staff and attorneys who have key customer-friendly traits (warmth,
empathy, a bias toward teamwork, conscientiousness, and optimism), aligning
your systems to center on what customers really want from your processes, and
never thinking you can save effort by trying to treat everyone the same. Great
service requires custom fitting. Every day, hour, and minute, you interact with
clients at your firm.
"The new guru of customer service excellence is Micah Solomon" --The Financial Post"
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