Total Body CRM Training: The Law Firm’s Path to CRM success

Research suggests that CRM frequently fails to deliver its business objectives. There are various explanatory factors. However, as Myrtle Lloyd of C3@Caribiner explains, it could be the training that is at fault .

"The legal industry is beginning to experience increasingly severe pressures that will force changes in its current business practices. Shifts in client expectations and demands are already beginning to have day-to-day impacts. Additionally law firms are facing competition from new sources for which most are ill-prepared.” Gartner Research Analysts Jim Jacobs and Kathy Harris in “Law Firms Must Adapt or Die” March 2001

In order to meet these rising expectations and demands law firms, like a struggling athlete, have been looking for a course of action that will help them to gain the necessary competitive edge. Most have turned to Client Relationship Management (CRM) or Customer Relationship Management, as it is known in the lay business world.

CRM, when done properly, reaches out to prospects, clients and lawyers of a firm with an invaluable proposition and builds ongoing interactions which deliver value to all parties. It enhances service to clients and clarifies responsibilities, ensures regular feedback from clients, facilitates the sale of services, and strengthens the very relationships which ensure the long-term success of an a firm. However, in the legal and business worlds over 50 per cent of CRM projects are failing to deliver against their business objectives according to research organisation, Gartner. This is a frightening thought when you consider that organisations spent $19.9 billion world-wide on CRM implementation last year. (Source: Gartner)

So, why is it going wrong? A number of factors are to blame, ranging from the belief that simply buying a software package and installing it will create CRM; to a lack of understanding of the business capabilities required to drive the CRM business architecture. We believe that amongst the quagmire of reasons and excuses, there is one truly fundamental stage in the whole process that is being ignored in the rush to become customer centric and that is the approach to training.

Like so many ‘also ran’ atheletes, the predominantly used muscles have been trained but the rest of the body and the mind have not been prepared to handle the rigours of competition and the race is being run without results. In the case of law firms, the Client Relationship Management team is being trained and allowed to run. Often however, the ‘mind’, i.e. the firm’s directors and the rest of the ‘body’, i.e. partners and support services, have not been trained, nor have they bought into the strategy.

Law firms must take a ‘total body’ approach to CRM training to see successful CRM implementation that delivers ROI. This approach’s initial focus is aimed at ensuring the mind (management team) is prepared to plan the programme, handle the stresses of training, motivating team-mates and competition (implementation). Following this with training the body (CRM team) to function at peak performance. Additionally, like a successful athlete there should be a programme of continual training for both body and mind to keep the CRM strategy at the pinnacle of performance.

STEP 1: Training the Mind

C3@Caribiner’s approach to CRM training and implementation starts with an interactive session for Senior Management (Directors, Senior Partners and administrators of the strategy), the decision making side of the ‘mind’. This CRM strategy session is focused primarily on creating an understanding of the relevance and value of CRM to a specific organisation and how investments in CRM can be optimised to provide the best value for the business.

The key questions posed in the early stages of the initiative are:

What should the CRM strategy be?
What value is the business is trying to leverage?
What is the business commitment and what are the delivery implications?

This initial training session should be followed by a session using business case experts to determine the value underlying CRM initiatives and articulate the justification for the project. An understanding of business advantage means quantification and this is addressed within this course. This is a vital step, as the business case has to quantify the value it will add to a firm’s business through more effective application of CRM in order for the decision making side of the ‘mind’ to truly believe in the value of what the body will undertake.

Following this, the operational side of the ‘mind’ (marketing managers, CRM programme managers) need to be trained to send the right signals through the body’s nervous system to achieve competitive success from the CRM strategy.

These two areas of the mind should trained separately in tailored sessions that will build the strategy into the firm’s psyche and culture, starting with sessions for the programme manager aimed at developing and structuring the complex capabilities essential to deliver on the strategic vision. These capabilities comprise a diverse set of customer-facing and internal competencies, ranging from being able to interrogate the database of customer information right through to gaining insight from the findings and applying them, to change the way business is done.

As the impact of this on the business is far-reaching, covering both how the firm’s business process will function and how the firm’s staff will interact with the technology it is, we believe, a vital step.

Carrying-on from this, programme managers go through focused sessions designed specifically for the individual business project teams. As an understanding of value and cost will drive the structure of the project to deliver maximum value in the fastest time possible, these sessions will consider the drivers behind the CRM business capabilities and assess the associated value.

The emphasis in these sessions is for the programme management team to:

Agree on the business capability structure
Agree on clear and measurable objectives, values and impact
Identify and define critical milestones
Understand and commit to the basis of phasing around project milestones
Agree on competency requirements to resource and operate key activities
Identify the needs for business support / technical partners

The CRM training approach for the firm’s marketing managers is to conduct marketing specific sessions that exploit CRM’s full potential. These sessions aim to provide a marketing focused approach to guide the way for a firm’s CRM strategy. Each tailored session ensures that marketing initiatives are fully-aligned with the business delivery vehicle.

Specific emphasis should focus on:

Exploiting the opportunity to develop customer intelligence through analysis of the consolidated client data repository provided by new systems.
Understanding and taking control of the business processes that support definition, assessment and refinement of business rules that drive the understanding and application of personalisation in a way that delivers true value for customers and business.
Leveraging marketing applications available to become more effective in the management, targeting and analysis of feedback from marketing campaigns.
Ensuring that marketing initiatives are fully informed by the rich high-value value information that can be obtained automatically via configured logging from contact-centres and web-site.
Establishing the necessary communication channels between marketing and systems delivery streams to ensure that these are mutually supporting and both are fully informed by business and technology priorities and strategies.
Establishing the wider business implications and requirements being led by the marketing initiative.

This comprehensive process, will prepare the firm’s ‘mind’ to implement and manage the CRM strategy successfully, overcoming what I believe to be the foremost reason for the failure of CRM strategies – a lack of management buy-in.

Step 2: Training the Body

Following the complexity of training the ‘mind’, training the ‘body’ (client relationship management contact agents) seems simpler. However, like training the body’s muscles it is a case of developing a base level of fitness (CRM skills), and adapting the base level of fitness to the specific rigours of the sport (firm’s needs).

This approach sees Contact Centre Agents trained in multi-channel contact handling where they develop the skills necessary to handle phone, email and Internet based enquiry and live interface all at once. Training on the “hard skills” of multi-tasking is coupled with familiarisation with the “soft skills” necessary for effective selling of the firm’s services, dealing with client complaint and enquiries and building relationships with the firm’s clients and external partners.

Following this initial training, a more in-depth comprehensive training programme should be undertaken covering elements specific to a firm’s culture and practice.

These firm-specific training elements should include :

Client proposition, culture and beliefs
Process training covering the key customer services processes
Legal Industry and the firm service knowledge training
Technology and systems

Step 3: The Finish Line

These two steps, will lay the foundations for a successful CRM strategy, However, like that of a true champion, the CRM training process never ends. Both the ‘mind’ and ‘body’ will require continual development sessions to further the programme’s development and success.

With client demands and expectations growing all the time, it is now, more than ever, essential that firms achieve and implement a winning CRM strategy. In a climate where over 50 per cent of strategies are failing ‘to cross the finish line’ of client expectations we believe that only strategies that take a total and comprehensive approach to the CRM training process will see the highly desired benefits that will place firms on top of the legal rostrum.

Myrtle Lloyd is principal business consultant at C3@Caribiner, Riverside, Cloister House, New Bailey Stree, Manchester M3 5AG. She can be contacted at myrtle@caribinercapital.com