Feature

posted 27 Apr 2010 in Volume 12 Issue 10

Consumer confidence

UK law firm Shoosmiths launched a new brand identity in early 2010, clearly distinguishing its consumer and commercial offerings. Richard Brent speaks to head of consumer services Judith Dorkins about the practicalities of the process.

What first prompted Shoosmiths to launch a new brand?

Three distinct things came together at the same time. For a long time we’ve had three highly successful consumer departments: personal injury and civil litigation, conveyancing and private client. Until now they’ve been run very independently, and we recognised it was time to bring them together, create a complete service proposition for the consumer, and so maximise our opportunity to retain clients for life.

We have come to recognise that our consumer and commercial businesses complement each other well, but need to present themselves independently if they are to reach their full potential, and a new brand was a way to achieve that.

Changes to the legal landscape also mean it’s essential every law firm makes a decision about where it intends to position itself. The market is talking about change, but we decided the time was right to talk to our target audience and find out what it really wanted. It was clear many consumers still want a professional to undertake their legal work, while welcoming a modern, effective proposition. With no recognised legal brand out there, we see a huge opportunity for those who act now.

How will the change to ‘Access Legal from Shoosmiths’ improve the customer experience?

The changes we’ve made reflect what clients want, as revealed by our research. It means our service offering is now much more holistic for every client. With one highly skilled central point of contact we’re able to ensure we can really understand the client’s need and place them quickly and efficiently with the right person to help them. Our systems will also help us fully understand clients and their longer-term needs, making sure we can offer help that’s proactive rather than reactive.

Our new brand also recognises that the modern legal services consumer wants and expects a high degree of free information so they can deal with some issues themselves. Our helpline and website provide this for them in an easily accessible way. Overall, the new brand allows us to return to a much more personal relationship with our clients, creating a real point of help and reassurance, whatever their needs.

What does it mean for the business and those who work at Shoosmiths?

Across our consumer-facing businesses we now work together much more closely, and we’re much more consistent in the way we look after clients. We understand our own offerings better.

All our people are also much more informed about what our clients want and the focus of our people development is on constantly improving our service proposition.

What were the main challenges in leading the brand launch?

The main challenge was delivering the project against an ambitious deadline, while still achieving day-to-day responsibilities. We also had a very tight budget and so had limited opportunity to call on external resources.

This was an exciting project though, so it wasn’t hard to motivate the team. What was difficult was finding extra resources to support them as they tried to juggle it with their other work. The project’s success was down to the hard work and commitment of the team charged with delivery, but also the support of some of their colleagues who took up some of their usual workload.

Who else worked on the project and what did they do?

The project team included representatives from each of our core legal product areas and all our support areas, including design and marketing and information systems.

We also had help from our human resources, corporate responsibility and training teams. In the early stages we split the project into the key areas of product, service, technology, ethics and visual identity, and split our resources accordingly to focus on these topics. This made it easier to get the research and design right before we began the implementation stage, which required the coordination of all our support areas.

What creative factors were considered in deciding on the style of your new website?

We asked clients what they wanted from a website and took professional advice on the right way to deliver a successful site. The colour and design was formulated in light of all this information by our own extremely talented creative design team. In part, our decision to stay with blue as the core brand colour continued an extremely important link to Shoosmiths.

It had to look ‘friendly’ and accessible, too. A bright, lively and instantly engaging site is what we were after, and that’s exactly what we’ve got. Crucially, it doesn’t achieve that at the cost of functionality, which it also has in spades.

Another element is a 24-hour customer helpline. Is that a new addition?

We’ve run a legal helpline for commercial clients for many years. The change has been to introduce that as a core component of our service offering to every individual who contacts us.

Ensuring the continuing availability of your helpline is the most important day-to-day challenge, but we now have many years of rota and call management experience to ensure we deliver this. It’s also important to ensure the team is constantly up to date with legal knowledge across a very broad range of topics, so ongoing effective training is critical.

What else does the new brand itself involve?

On a practical level we’ve changed all our marketing materials and messages. We’ve altered the focus of our marketing activities, and of the key partners we consider necessary in our plans for growth.

We’ve also defined our product range much more clearly and recognised how they all fit together.

Most importantly, we’ve begun an internal cultural change that places clients at the heart of everything every one of us does. The launch of our website and visual identity is only the beginning of the journey. In the next 12 months we’ll be adding new product offerings, developing our service delivery, and refining our routes to market.

How is marketing to consumers different from marketing to businesses?

A business looking for legal advice is already quite clear about what it’s looking for. It’s also reasonably confident about its choice of legal services supplier.

While businesses will use a website to check credentials or get a feel for an organisation, their selections are based much more around the building of relationships and the tender processes.

The consumer, on the other hand, is more uncertain about how to select a legal adviser and not at all clear on how to go about making that choice. They will be greatly influenced by recommendation, but will also buy from a website, and as a consequence seek reassurances on quality, technical ability, price and approachability from that site.

What lessons have you learned about successful legal marketing in the process?

The most important lesson we’ve learned has been about the power of market research in assisting your own planning. Client surveys on service are useful, but market research is far more powerful, as it starts with no preconceived ideas and really gets to the core of what your customers are looking for.

Personally, I’ve learned a huge amount about the science of website marketing too; in particular, how crucial it is to recognise that it IS a science and should really be left to the experts.

How will you measure the success of the initiative?

Success will be measured by the increase in independently sourced work we get. It’s also crucial that our proposition is delivering what clients want, and that will be measured by our ability to build lasting, traditional relationships with them, and of course through steady improvement in our customer satisfaction surveys.

We’ll also be looking to develop ‘Access Legal from Shoosmiths’ brand awareness over the course of the year.

How are you communicating the change to current and potential clients and the market in general?

Our initial launch included communications to all existing clients about the changes we were making. In the next year we’ll also continue a series of communications, as further service changes and innovations are delivered.

The new basis of our relationship with clients provides us with a series of ‘touch points’ for communication about our brand proposition, along with opportunities to check their experiences.

We’ve had a positive response from those publications that have carried news of the launch, both in the legal sector and the specialist ones we operate in. We’ve also prompted some lively exchanges on websites, and were particularly encouraged when one blogger suggested other law firms should follow our lead, saying ours was a great example of a consumer website.

Of course, a lot of awareness will also be developed on the back of day-to-day mentions when we regularly talk to the media about the work we do.

What do you make of the findings in your market research that customers wanted more varied contact with their lawyers?

There is no doubt that general service experience has led clients to expect more from their legal advisors. They now expect basic information to be provided free, and demand modern standards of service delivery using technology as well as price transparency. However, many also still want the reassurance of a personal relationship with a professional advisor.

What do you think the full implementation of the Legal Services Act will mean in the consumer legal market?

The landscape is already altering as organisations anticipate change. There’s no doubt that some external players will see this as a market worthy of investigation and will be able to provide a proposition for their customers at point of contact. What is less clear is whether that service will still be provided by solicitors behind those brands.

It’s also clear that not every consumer welcomes commoditisation of professional services and a market will remain for independent professional firms.

For firms to succeed in this new world they must decide which part of the market they wish to focus on, and then adapt their business plans to enable them to deliver to their chosen sector. It’ll be extremely hard to deliver a proposition suitable to every market entry point.

How do you see the new brand helping Shoosmiths to compete in that market?

The most important thing is that any provider of legal services has a clear proposition and understands the segment of the market they wish to support. The legal market is huge and so diverse. The key would seem to be not to try and support every area of that market.

This project has helped us understand what clients want, what we can deliver, and therefore which client groups we can support most effectively. That has enabled us to create clear messages to our targeted audience and a highly focused approach. We now understand how our strengths match market demand and this makes the definition of your own unique selling proposition easier.

How has the consumer services department’s experience grown in the past year?

We’ve seen conveyancing affected by the decline of the housing market, but during the past 12 months business in this area has been strong for us.

For our traditional private-client business there was a fall in tax and estate-planning work for a while, but political uncertainty is now seeing it increase again. For litigation, the market is largely unaffected by recession, and our changes have had more to do with the decision to reposition ourselves as an independent player in the market.