Getting it . . . or not

I remain puzzled as to why some people who should know better don't seem to get how client relationship works.

I was recently told about a senior partner in a law firm, who was asked if he was free to meet a new client - a client whom the firm in question had been assiduously courting over a long period. The client had eventually been landed, and work was starting to flow. The partner had not been involved in the process but his department had been.

The partner's response was, "Do I have to? Now we've got the client, and the work, is it really necessary?"

You may be thinking that I have made this story up. Sadly not. 

I wonder how long that client will stay.

Some thoughts about value

The end of November and we were in a hotel, a little north of London. I had booked the room online, after a fairly hurried web search (grandchildren don't arrive to a timetable). With few hotels in the area, the choice was limited. 

The hotel's website looked good: clean design, good images, and not too much guff. What I didn't do, but will in future, is look at what people said about their experiences of staying there. I did that the following day. A little too late.

What we found, within a short time of arriving, was a gap between what the website promised ("gracious country living"), and what the hotel delivered ("old, and tired, and dirty") - the language is my wife's. To some extent, there is always going to be this risk. I have learnt, over the years, to treat hotel websites with a degree of caution (a passing acquaintance with the potential deceit of marketing is useful) but what really got me this time was all about price and value.

The hotel wasn't cheap. Perhaps not quite Central London rates, but not far off - and had they delivered on the website promise, we would have felt we had had value. As it was, we felt ripped off. It is a hotel we won't be going to again, and even if we haven't posted any comment on TripAdvisor, we have told a lot of people about it.

And it made me think about how law firms and their clients look at value and price - and why when I talk with clients in the course of client feedback interviews, what they want to talk about when we talk about fees is not price but is value. For when clients are making decisions about their lawyers, and whether they are going to instruct them, or instruct them again, what the client will look at is value. And yet many lawyers are not capable of articulating what value they deliver, and, worse, many still make assumptions about what their clients value - rather than asking them.

Don't assume you know the answer, ask the question!

Client feedback is always interesting. Well, it should be, and if you are naturally curious, and allow the client time, it almost certainly will be. But be prepared for there to be resistance: the lawyer closest to the client may fear a loss of control; the client may think this is simply another box its lawyers want to tick; lawyers generally, as I have said before, rarely like questions being asked where they don't know the answers.

And it always seems easier to make assumptions about how things are going. After all, surely if the client is continuing to give you instructions, and is paying you, and if she hasn't complained, all must be well? 

Perhaps - but then again, perhaps not.

Earlier in the autumn I called a client about setting up a client feedback interview. Her immediate response: "I don't really do satisfaction surveys". We talked some more. I explained that it wasn't just about satisfaction (or dissatisfaction), but was an opportunity to talk about what really mattered to her in the relationship with her lawyers. And that we would likely be done in an hour. Two weeks later, the hour stretched to nearly two, and the insights she gave about the law firm I was asking about, and her group's approach to how they engaged with lawyers, and what they were really looking for, were useful, and are thought provoking. And they helped me make sense of some of the research I had done before I went to see the client.  

How the firm uses that knowledge is now for them to decide - but they have asked the questions.

And if you want to talk about how a client feedback programme might work for you, and what is involved, give me a call or drop me a line.

"So what made you switch?"

When was the last time you asked a new client why they had decided to instruct you, rather than their previous firm, or another law firm?

And if you didn't ask them, why not?

There are plenty of reasons why clients switch firms: changes in personnel; perceptions (fair or otherwise) about experience, expertise, or value; service failure (a.k.a. cocking it up); occasionally even cost. And just like there are, or may be, any number of reasons for a client to switch, there are, or may be, any number of law firms that could have done the work / wanted to do the work / are disappointed they aren't doing the work. But they aren't. 

So why are you? Weren't you curious? 

You should be, because understanding why your client switched to your firm is the starting point for keeping that client. 

So ask the question.