Follow the yellow brick road to client care

Feature

posted 2 Oct 2001 in Volume 4 Issue 6

Follow the yellow brick road to client care

Client care is one of the buzz-phrases of the moment. But what does it really mean? And how can a concept that moves the lawyer from being a technically able legal adviser to a skilled relationship manager, be introduced into the highly competitive environment of a commercial law firm. Carolyn Roberson, director of business development and marketing at Addleshaw Booth & Co, tells how its award-winning client care programme has become central to the firm's success.

In an increasingly competitive sector, being legally able is no longer any guarantee of success in winning new business and keeping existing clients. Not only do they require their lawyer to have a deep and genuine understanding of their business and the markets in which they operate, but they look to the client partner in particular as a relationship manager.

Continuing technological advances in communications means that much of the day-to-day contact with clients will be by electronic methods. Conversely, in what may seem to be a faceless world, it will be the quality of human relationships that dictate how effective the technological interaction will be.

Although there may be less human contact than in the past, its value will be even more important. Therefore the successful professional firms of the future will be those that genuinely embrace client care at all levels of the organisation, and use it to deliver enhanced customer service and produce real commercial advantage, both for their clients and themselves.

It also requires emotional and practical buy-in throughout the firm and often a change in culture and behaviour - a 'letting go' of roles that take people well outside their comfort zones.

" What do you mean, the client wants someone else on the team to draft their contracts? I've always done it. That's my role!"

So where do you start? At Addleshaw Booth & Co, we have put client care at the heart of our business. It is the focus of everything we do. It embraces both client retention and the winning of new business. We seek to deliver to clients a consistently high quality of service as cost-effectively as possible.

Talking, listening, acting

The springboard for our client service programme was a client satisfaction survey in which 106 individuals at 53 client organisations were interviewed by external consultants. The firm was marked against a set of industry accepted benchmark standards and against service criteria unique to our firm.

We designed the interview programme to draw out the true state of our relationships with clients. We wanted to hear the good and the not so good. This was essential if the development of our overall client care programme was to have real value.

One of the most rewarding statistics to come out of the survey was that 83 per cent of clients interviewed said they would unreservedly recommend us to others. Our aim is to drive this to 100 per cent. How we reacted to the key findings is the driver to achieving this objective.

Clients told us that they had three key requirements of their advisers. These were:

· Commerciality

Clients said they wanted their lawyers to provide advice with options and recommendations for action, not just a legal judgement or technical explanation.

· Proactivity

Clients said they wanted their lawyers to generate ideas, provide potential solutions and keep them ahead on legal issues that impact their business.

· Responsiveness

Clients said they put a high value on the quality and speed of response, not just on important deadlines but also on day-to-day issues.

The findings were not only presented to partners, but to every single member of staff - some 1,200 people in all. This was an essential part of the 'buy-in' process.

In every presentation, partners, fee-earners and support staff were asked to think of the three key requirements, and to challenge themselves on how they could enhance their day to day working for the client to achieve improvements in those areas.

What else did we do?

We embarked on a journey to re-engineer our service approach, how we work with clients, the way our teams are structured and the approach to each relationship. We devised and implemented a combination of skills training and in-house mentoring and coaching. These initiatives have had real and tangible benefits.

Existing client relationships have been refreshed and revived, new work has been secured directly as a result of improved cross-selling awareness arising from the skills training, and the overall client care programme has played an influential part in the winning of new business.

Training and coaching

To be really effective, client care has to be a 'living' programme at the heart of all that the firm does, not something static and unchanging. Continual training improves the skills of all members of the client teams, and is essential to success.

In a business like ours, clients can come into contact with many different departments and aspects of the firm. Client care can mean different things to different people depending on their position. For the receptionist, it is about ensuring the client is made to feel important and welcome when they call or visit the office. For the lawyer, it is about ensuring that he or she delivers advice that is to the commercial advantage of their client.

Working with an external training consultancy we developed an integrated training programme to develop both client relationship management skills training and commercial awareness.

The training has been implemented through a series of linked workshops focusing on individual clients who were interviewed. It is easy though for teams to 'revert to autopilot' once the training ends and they are back in their offices with all the pressures of day-to-day business life.

So how do we achieve cultural and behavioural change?

We have a coaching and mentoring system that is delivered through formal and informal routes and led by a dedicated client service team. It draws on a small pool of well-respected executives in the business, people who have led successful teams themselves.

Through the in-house support, we set aside time for planning and for lead partners to spend more time with clients discussing key business and legal issues, and to ensure they are satisfied with our service.

We seek ongoing dialogue with the senior partner and other executives, who are independent of day-to-day relationships with particular clients. This feedback enables the effectiveness of the relationship to be regularly monitored.

New technology in client care

We have also embraced new technology to help us deliver enhanced client care. A bespoke intranet is being designed and developed for each client team to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and efficient case handling. It was successfully pioneered with one client, a household name retailer, to create a benchmark model for introduction across the firm.

One result of this work has been the development of extranet sites for individual clients. The aim is to enable clients to have real-time, 24-hour, on-line access to every detail of their account, from billing information to the state of a particular transaction, including access to all documentation.

A strategy for success

Client care is not just window dressing. In a highly competitive sector, I believe it is a genuine point of differentiation, and every legal and professional services firm has its own particular style of client service, team dynamics and culture.

A year of progress

In November 2000, Addleshaw Booth & Co won the Daily Telegraph/energis Customer Services Awards 2000 in the business services (large organisation) category. The award was unique among law firms. As part of the judging process, a service verification team contacted some of our clients for independent comment on our levels of service. Anonymous spot checks on our telephone and client handling skills were also carried out.

The future

We know we have just begun. Change is continuous and the programme we are embarked upon has many facets and developments. It is like 'the yellow brick road.' There will undoubtedly be surprises and opportunities as the journey unfolds - but if you deal sympathetically and robustly with surprises, and seize opportunities along the way, you can achieve real and significant change with benefits both for your firm and your clients.

Carolyn Roberson is speaking on `Client-led marketing techniques' at the Strategic Marketing for the Legal Profession conference to be held in London on 7th to 9th November. She can be contacted at CAR@addleshaw-booth.co.uk.