Doug is sat at his desk. He is telephoning Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to check his Accounts Office Reference number, how exciting!
HMRC “Hello this is Bert [names have been changed to protect the innocent] can I take you through security?”
Doug “Yes”
HMRC “What is your accounts office reference number?”
Doug “Ahh, well funny you should ask – that’s what I want to know. I am calling to check that I have that number recorded correctly.”
HMRC “I can’t give you that information over the phone”.
Doug “Why not please?”
HMRC “That’s not how we do it here.”
Doug “OK……so how about I tell you what I think my accounts office reference number is as part of the security questioning and if I pass security, I must’ve got it right?”
HMRC “What is your accounts office reference number?”
Doug “XYZ123blah”
HMRC “Company name?”
Doug “What Goes Around Limited.”
HMRC “Address”….etc etc
…eventually…
HMRC “right, you have passed security.”
And without another word, HMRC puts the phone down.
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.
Oh dear. I feel a mix of awkward and angry. If Keira wasn’t at school, she’d probably suggest I’m feeling a combination of both words, angward. Why? Well I’ve just tried (and eventually succeeded) in cancelling a subscription to Virgin Whine.
Last month I tried one of these voucher offers. I got £40 off a mixed case so it only cost me £47, just under £4 a bottle (a little over £7 without the offer). Sounded good. Oh, and there were no strings attached. There would be the small matter of a case every quarter being picked and delivered to me, but I can either send it back if I don’t want it, or cancel the order. I think they call this inertia marketing?
I placed the order. It wasn’t easy, the system got a bit confused by the voucher code, and in the end I had to phone my order through. Not great, but not bad. I’m getting £40 off so maybe I should expect a little glitch or two. The delivery was fast, I appreciated that.
I tried the wine. It’s….not bad. Not bad at £4, but for £7, I’m thinking maybe I can do better down my local shops?
Then I started to get bombarded with emails inviting me to buy more and more wine. They did say something about drinking responsibly but come on folks, you’ve only just dropped off 12 bottles, steady on. I logged back onto Virgin Whine to turn off the torrent but it wasn’t clear how to do this and if I did, would that mean cutting off all correspondence?
The whole thing was just registering a bit too high on the inconvenience scale so I decided to cancel my account. Guess what? You can’t do that online. So I called the contact centre and asked them to cancel. As soon as I said the magic word ‘cancel’, the tone changed. What had started as warmly as a room temperature red quickly became a very chilled white.
“OK then we’ll come and collect the case of wine.” Said Virgin Whine. “Why’s that then?” says I. “Well you’ve used the voucher, you haven’t given us a chance so we’ll take the wine back.” What ensued was a confused awkward conversation. I said something about “Wot, no strings attached?” Virgin Whine didn’t like that and though they agreed the offer was no strings attached, they kept saying “You’ve not given us a chance so we’ll come and take the wine back.”
I paused before explaining that my decision was in part taken because the wine just wasn’t all that. Yes, I’ve tasted the product. I began to fear that Virgin Whine might turn up with a stomach pump. I’ve still got five bottles left, will that save me from this fate? With that the conversation ended. I was told my account was cancelled, call over.
And now I’m left feeling…angward. Awkward because I feel I may have inadvertently taken advantage of Virgin Whine. And a little angry too. Angry because of the way the call went and angry with myself for attempting to be reasonable in the face of what felt like a pretty unreasonable way of playing “no strings attached”. I need a drink.
