The Big Talk and Little Talk of Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy
April 26, 2012The Twelve Absolutes of Leadership: Interview with Gary Burnison, CEO of Korn/Ferry International
May 4, 2012In a recent post (Change is happening in the legal sector, law firms need to pay heed and deliver a better client experience if they are to prosper) I referenced a report from CXINLAW. This a follow up guest post from Carl White one of their partners..
Wednesday is my girlfriend’s favourite day of the working week. The reason? The free Stylist Magazine. Now of course, I don’t read this magazine (or watch Sex and the City), but I happened to glance at the front page which read ‘You are feeling thirsty? The caffeine addicts guide to the Britain’s best coffee shops’.
I am a self-confessed coffee addict, partial to boutique Aussie coffee shops and only one high street store, Pret. The coffee at Pret is good; what is outstanding is the customer experience. My best example of this is an early morning queue and a chap in front of me who asked for a tea. The upbeat guy from Pret smiled, threw out his arms to form a letter ‘t’ and said, “here you go sir, here’s your tea”. I know, it doesn’t sound funny, it’s ‘dad humour, but it cheered everyone up.
They guy from Pret knew his job was about more than serving the product, he knew it was about delivering an experience. Pret do this again and again and while the coffee is good, the service has turned me into an advocate. A consistently positive customer experience ensures I spend, return and recommend Pret and, in the process, ignore the three other popular coffee shops at the intersection near my office.
Whilst my background is retail, the focus of our business, CXINLAW, is perfecting the customer experience law firms and providers deliver to clients. Our innovative 2012 secret shopping report in the legal sector explores the impact customer experience can have on client retention, satisfaction and revenue. You could ask, ‘does the Pret effect work for law firms?’
Taking the Law Society’s most asked legal enquiries, a systematic sample of 100 law firms and legal service providers, and our CXINLAW secret shoppers, we applied our research methodology to evaluating the front-end ‘customer experience’ of law clients. We spoke to receptionists, legal assistants, fee earners, voicemails, IVR’s and on one occasion a lady who lives down the street from the law firm called as the number given on their website was hers not theirs.
The critical question posed to legal providers in our comprehensive report is:
‘If I were a prospective client of my own firm would I engage and recommend the service I received?’
Based on our research using a secret shopping approach formatted for the sector, only 8% of callers would confidently instruct and recommend the firms they spoke with. Whilst, 30% would most definitely not instruct and would actively tell others not to. This left a startling 65% of shoppers undecided and waiting to be persuaded after their enquiries were made to firms.
Now, let’s go back to my coffee shop example. There are four coffee shops to choose from near my office – Pret, Nero, Starbucks and Costa. Comparatively, there are probably 20 or 30 law firms within a few hundred yards of my office and approximately 10,000 law firms and providers in the UK. Is the product the same? Arguably, yes. Are the fee earners capable? On the whole, yes. Can the customer or client really measure the quality of legal advice? Not really. How do they compare on price? Not much in it.
So what matters most? Our research shows it is the degree to which a firm delivers a customer experience above the norm.
What’s clear is that the findings are a caffeine shot in the arm for a significant proportion of the legal sector. As one person from one law firm said:
“Really? 6 out of 10 calls to my firm result in the person being as likely to spend their money elsewhere?”.
Is it time that you gave your law firm a caffeine shot in the arm?
About Carl
Carl White is a Partner at CXINLAW, an innovative partnership between Potentio and Netlaw Media – responding to changes in the legal sector by providing expert advice, secret shopping insight, consultancy and tools to perfect customer experience in law firms, chambers and corporates. You can connect with them on Twitter here.
Thanks to Greencolander for the image.
17 Comments
Hi there, I found your blog via Google while searching for a related topic, your site came up, it looks good. I’ve bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.
Hello Carl
You have highlighted the ‘what is so’elegantly. The question is who is going to act on what is so. We know what is so about diet and health and yet more and more people are getting fatter and unhealthier.
This is a paradox that grips me: we know more and more yet we stay still and carrying on being/doing exactly what we have become conditioned to being/doing.
Therefore, I say that customer experience will show up as and when disruptors enter into an industry including the legal profession.
All the best to you and your girlfriend
Maz
Hi Maz,
Great comment and thank you for pointing out that dilemma. It is one that puzzles me too.
I think you may be right that the ‘need’ for change isn’t great enough for some people yet but then again there may be a bit of ‘rabbits in headlights’ syndrome going on where they have become so scared stiff that even though they intellectually know they have to move they physically can’t.
I have asked Carl to respond too and look forward to hearing his thoughts in due course.
Thanks again,
Adrian
Carl,
I have an accountant, he is an accountants accountant.
On first meeting him he looks like a door-mouse. He looks at me from behind big gold rimmed spectacles and talks about tax in a faintly excited manner.
You would run a mile
The thing is he is brilliant. he is on the front foot with all my issues, he doles out free advice, and, most importantly I trust him with my money
I recommend him to everybody I know who needs an accountant.
The thing is you only get to realise how good he is from the “back end” customer experience.
I don’t think it is just Lawyers who suffer from poor first impressions.
And maybe that is all the customer experience is for most businesses.
James
Hi James,
First impressions are crucial. However, in the case of your accountant I am sure that when you recommend him your recommendation comes with a preface that takes into account your (and their) initial first and ‘front-end’ impressions. Right?
Neglecting the ‘front-end’ customer experience leaves a lot to chance and in a world of increasing competition feels like a careless strategy and one that could put many firms in jeopardy.
Adrian
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