Category: Customer Service

Lawyers – Stop Doing Dumb Things to Customers

I’m delighted to welcome Louise Restell as our special guest blogger today. Louise is Head of Public Affairs and CSR for a London city law firm. I first met Louise at a Convergence networking event and we’ve kept in regular touch ever since. I saw Louise again most recently at a lively Big Society debate earlier this week and she got in touch with me the following day with this provocative piece about service in the legal profession. Huge thanks to Louise for putting pen to paper, we hope you enjoy the read. Louise and I would be very keen to hear from you about your experiences of dealing with lawyers, good and not so good.

I love the title of this blog, it seems tailor made for the legal profession.  In fact, I was rather surprised that Doug isn’t making a fortune out of law firms desperate to learn how to improve their customer service.  Or not, since I know a thing or two about lawyers.

I have decided to take up Doug on his offer to write a guest blog as I was particularly flabbergasted this morning when a colleague told me about some emails he’d received.  He is responsible for trying to get our lawyers to understand the new way the profession is regulated, which in a nutshell is about delivering what customers want rather than what lawyers decide to provide.

Following a routine presentation about what the changes will mean in our firm he was challenged over his use of the word ‘customer’.  Lawyers, apparently, just have clients.  He (and I) would beg to differ.  But the stream of emails he received, taking him to task on this apparently semantic point, was extraordinary.

Lawyers do have clients – these are organisations they work with for a number of years and to whom they provide a range of services.  They also have customers.  Individuals, who don’t want to have an ongoing relationship with a lawyer.  In fact they probably don’t even want to know who their lawyer is, they just want to get their compensation, their will or their new house.

The problem is by focussing on what they want to call their customers and providing the service they want to provide, lawyers don’t realise they are, in fact, doing dumb things to customers.  It’s a bit like the coffin-makers with the rule that all coffins should be six feet long.  They can pat themselves on the back if every coffin they make is, indeed, six feet long.  But quite a lot of their tall customers might be a bit annoyed (if they weren’t dead).

Until they realise this, lawyers will continue to get a disproportionately high level of complaints.  It’s a bit like going to a restaurant and eating the best steak ever.  This won’t be what you remember if it took an hour to arrive, the waiter was rude and a 20 per cent ‘suggested service charge’ is added to your bill.  Likewise, you can give fantastic legal advice, but if you are patronising, charge through the nose, bill higher than expected and never return phonecalls then your customers aren’t going to be happy.

Three Cheers

I used to work regularly over the Christmas break. Not this time. Back in the saddle after a lovely extended rest and I’m wondering what to write about. Recent posts from others all seem to be about resolutions v no resolutions, the economy is screwed v the economy is recovering, and a few angry rants to kick the new year off. This stuff isn’t sitting too well with me, I’m feeling all cheerful after a great break. Thankfully I’m not all alone. In no particular order, here are three things I’ve caught up on today which I think are interesting and motivating. Hope you like them:

1 – Happy New Moment by Alison Ashford. With all the planning and preparing to fail going on, don’t forget to live right now. Alison puts it much better than me and when you visit her site you’ll see she has a lovely smile too.

2 – Death to the CV by Sukh Pabial. With LinkedIn, Twitter and all that jazz who needs a CV any more? Truth be told I was asked for mine last week and duly obliged. But is there a better way?

3 – Just Coach by Trish McFarlane. A lovely short piece on the importance of coaching and feedback.

So that’s it then, job done eh? Well….kind of. I had another Three experience today which is related to the above only in so far as it made me feel good. So what happened? Over the festive period I bought an iphone 4 and a new sim only contract, both with mobile operator Three. The sim only contract is going in my personal phone and the flashy new thing is for work. I haven’t made many phone calls yet but I’m totally addicted to Angry Birds. Anyway, I was in town today walking along and whining to the long suffering Carole about how I was going to have to enter all the numbers from the old phone to the new one manually (on account of me having broken the data lead and generally not being very good at that kind of thing). Carole suggested we pop into the Three shop nearby to see what advice they might offer. My heart sank. A phone shop offering advice when there isn’t even the remotest danger of a sale…you gotta be kidding in.

In we went, me all geared up for disappointment. How disappointing – I didn’t get any. Disappointment that is. The woman in the shop was great. Friendly and helpful even when it became obvious that an earlier attempt of mine to copy the numbers from sim to phone clearly hadn’t worked (see earlier excuse). Everything was checked, and double checked to make sure we were happy. We were delighted and left the shop feeling very positive about the great service we’d just been on the receiving end of. My only embarrassment is that in all the euphoria I forgot to ask the woman’s name so I can’t give her the recognition she deserves. I’ll have to go back and find out.

I’ve read some great blogs today, and had a great customer experience, and there are loads of interesting opportunities arising all around me (of which more later). I feel refreshed after some quality time away, raring to go with plenty to be done.

How are you finding these first few days of the new year?

On The Road

Last week we had a great time working in different locations. I might scribble about the enjoyable work some other time. For now I want to write about where we stayed and the different services we experienced.

28th September. York. Park View Guest House.

We were due to arrive late evening; I’d made a note of this on our laterooms.com reservation. I was called several times through the day by the owner, just checking we’re still coming. After the third time I began to find this a little…weird. We arrived to find out that one of the two rooms we had booked was double booked. With apologies and lots of smiles my associate was shown to another bed and breakfast round the corner. His place was pretty much spot on, and my teeny attic room left a bit to be desired but it was clean, and that matters. Breakfast was on time and the service was friendly. I felt a little like the owner hadn’t wanted to tell us about the double booking in case we used that as an excuse to look elsewhere, but overall I’d say good value, an engaging experience.

29th September. Glasgow. Ramada Jarvis City Centre.

Another late evening arrival. Though we were booked into stay at the recently refurbed and allegedly quite swanky Lorne hotel, they called me in the afternoon to say, guess what, we’re double booked! Me, a jinx? Get outta here. The folk at the Lorne assured me they had booked us into an equivalent hotel. I’m going to be really kind and suggest they’ve not been to the Ramada for a long time, a very long time. Fraser on the front desk was great. Friendly and helpful. But that doesn’t make up for being put into a room right next to a night club. I found this out when trying to get to sleep around midnight. I called the Lorne to let them know how unchuffed I was and they promised to call me back in the morning to try and sort something out. Then I padded down to the front desk in bare feet. I was moved to a (slightly) quieter room where the bathroom smelt mouldy and the towels were dirty. The following morning Fraser was very apologetic. Good guy, crap hotel.

30th September. Glasgow. Lorne Hotel

I didn’t get the promised call back so I rang and found that yes, we do have our allocated rooms for tonight. Hallelujah! Arrived at the Lorne around 6.30pm, they weren’t expecting us. D’oh! We did get booked in shortly after on a reduced rate and breakfast was now included by way of a sorry. We paid up front so as to reduce the morning hassle. The following morning the staff tried to charge me for my breakfast and then when I checked out they tried to charge me for my stay again. Despite a few watery smiles I got the distinct impression that guests at the Lorne hotel are viewed as….an inconvenience? I watched two members of staff have a row in the foyer. Nice fight but come on folks, keep it to yourselves eh?

Summary of learning:

The guy who runs his own business is very welcoming, but he might not play it totally straight with you for fear you’ll dump him. Chill out Park View dude, honesty rules.

An engaged employee on the front desk does not a great stay make. Seriously Fraser, get out of there. Alternatively get the folks at Ramada to promote you to General Manager. Something better change.

A refurbished hotel is very nice and all that, but if the staff don’t know if they’re coming or going then the shine and the newness fades faster than my hopes of Tranmere Rovers ever winning the Premier League. And do your research. If you’re going to bounce customers to an “equivalent” hotel, make sure it is. What we experienced reflects badly on the Ramada Jarvis and the Lorne.