| Professional service firms will benefit immensely by implementing a practice-wide service strategy. Simply, a service strategy is a managed method of identifying and exceeding client work product and service delivery requirements. The following will assist firms in achieving this goal.
It is important for service providers to realize that the client defines service standards. Knowing your clients service requirements and meeting or better yet, exceeding them should be a goal of each service team. Consistently exceeding your clients' expectations produces pleased clients. Pleased clients give the firm more business; they give the firm referrals. And they become your strongest allies in the marketplace.
Three Methods To Determine Service Requirements: 1.) Research; 2) Client Policy Statements; and 3) Client Feedback.
Research conducted among 685 purchasers of legal services in Southern California identified client expectations about their outside counsel. Although this survey was conducted in Southern California, I find in working with clients in four countries that the results of this survey are relevant to professional service firms everywhere. Five service criteria were measured: 1.) Technical ability and judgment; 2.) Interest and attention; 3.) Responsiveness; 4.) Trust and confidence; and 5.) Value of services rendered for fees paid. Each of these five was then measured as follows:
Technical ability and judgment.
- Whether the firm provides the best available legal advice;
- Whether documents and letters are accurate and of high quality.
- Whether attorneys understand the unique aspects of their business and legal problems;
- Whether law firms handle complex matters expeditiously and
- Whether attorneys understand their clients specific legal needs.
Interest and attention
- How important the law firm makes their client feel;
- How much individual attention the lawyers provide; and
- How willing the attorneys are to help and to give personal attention the client requests.
Responsiveness
- How accessible the attorneys are and how promptly they respond
- Whether firm members handle client business in an expeditious manner.
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Trust and confidence
- How much they trust their Firm's advice
- How confident they are that their lawyers are providing the best available advice; and
- How strongly they believe that their attorneys' approaches to problem solving are appropriate.
Value of services rendered for fees paid
- Whether the fee structure accurately reflected the value of the service rendered
- Whether fees were competitive with other qualified firms;
- Whether an appropriate relationship exists between the services rendered and the fees charged and
- How willing they are to recommend the law firm to others.
The survey results produced these findings: Technical ability and judgment were rated the highest score by respondents (27%); Responsiveness; and Trust and Confidence tied for second among respondents (25 %) and Interest and Attention was rated at 23% (Value of services rendered for fees paid was not rated in this survey, but was considered to be a combination of the other four criteria.). One would expect that a client would rate Technical Ability and Judgment as the most critical quality their attorney must possess. This, in fact, was rated the most important. However, the survey concluded that: "No importance score can be said to be more important that the other as there is on statistically significant difference between the top and the bottom scores."
The survey also concluded that: "This means that were we to survey another 100 clients, Interest and Attention could be rated as the most important and Technical Ability and Judgment could be rated the least important".
Client Policy Statements should be reviewed by all fee earners providing service to the client. The issues included in the statement become part of the service strategy for the fee-earners.
Client Feedback programming should be an ongoing component of any service providers' client care and marketing effort. Whether the feedback comes from written surveys, client visitations, or any other credible means of obtaining client opinions, feedback provides fodder for the service providers quality program.
What clients are saying, which represents opportunities for those professional service firms interested in distinguishing themselves in the marketplace, is that in today' s highly competitive marketplace, all of the service dimensions are very important to them. Those service firms that identify client service standards and manage their relationship based on these standards will be winners in today' s business environment. |
