Rob at Businesspundit directed me to this article, titled Why Do We Overcommit. The article summarizes a study that reveals that people over-commit because they think they’ll have more time in the future then they do in the present: “In short, the future is ideal: The fridge is stocked, the weather clear, the train runs on schedule and meetings end on time. Today, well, stuff happens.”
What came first, the customer or customer service?
Tom Asaker, at A Clear Eye, asks this question:
Should banks and credit unions try to develop a community of like-minded people by creating a more personal and aesthetically appealing experience, al la Starbucks and Barnes & Nobles. Will customers forgo the percentage points - however small - required to create such an experience? Or should the value innovation be to reduce the emphasis on people and place and focus instead on information, choice, hard cash, and value for time, a la Amazon.com and Progressive Insurance? Perhaps the market could sustain both? Or neither? Something in the middle? Please let me know what you think/feel?
In one of the comments to the post, a woman named Susan writes:
i think its interesting that people discount the need for branches by saying that they "only walk in there once a year." this may not be a cause but an effect. it is the RESULT of bad banking practices not from lack of necessity to speak with a human being related to your financial needs.
Is this the same reason people don’t go to lawyers more often?
Dear America West
I know my call is important to you, because you've now told me that every minute for the 48 minutes I've been on hold. Freakin' amazing.
What is your client surprise budget?
Kathy Sierra has this wonderful post on the Creating Passionate Users blog. She gives several examples how businesses have made their products and services "playful."
Surprises are one of the best things you can do -- psychologists claim that intermittent rewards can be more engaging than consistent rewards. Remember, surprise=delight.
I worked for a guy who ran an exclusive, foofy, insanely expensive health club. He took 100% of what should have been (back then, when Ads were King) his advertising budget, and instead put ALL of it into a monthly "member surprise" budget. Nobody ever knew what was going to happen. You'd be in an aerobics class with 100 people (it was a big place), and as you walked out, suddenly there were carts loaded up with bowls of frozen yogurt and a toppings bar. You're in the weight room when the employees start walking through handing out exclusive t-shirts, always with his logo, and always with a fun quote, that you knew would never appear on a t-shirt again. Members collected these things like rare beanie babies. The late-night exercise classes were the hardest to fill, but he would take the worst time slot and make it interesting... the 9 PM folks might walk out of class only to be handed a wine cooler or even a relaxation CD.
It always felt like a party in there! And employees fought over the chance to be the one who got to hand out the cool stuff. And there was no hierarchy in deciding who got to do that...everyone from the janitors to the office bookkeeper might be "picked" to be the hero. I had never before, and never since, seen the kind of loyalty among both staff and members that I saw in that place. His attrition rate for both members and employees was less than half the industry average for health clubs at the time.
Thanks to Johnnie Moore for the link.
If I had a Hammer ...
Andy Havens has this great post (a rant, really) titled "When Your Only Tool's a $115k Hammer" about how the management at large firms justify the huge associate starting salaries as a benefit to the client. Speaking of this law.com article, Andy pulls a quote from Howard Scher, managing partner of Buchanan Ingersoll's Philadelphiaoffice -- one of the firms that has just bumped starting salaries from$105 to $115K -- who says,
Wehave clients who want first-class legal representation, so we have tocompete for the best people. While I don't think that $5,000 or $10,000should be the basis for making a career decision, it is for people atthat stage of their careers. So we hope this shows law students thatBuchanan Ingersoll is a first-class firm.
Now, Andy's take:
Look at the quote above: "We have clients who wantfirst-class legal representation." No offense to Mr. Scher and hisfirm, which is a very nice joint (especially since I'd love to consultfor him; call me, Howard -- 614.395.4134), but I have a question; isthere a firm out there with clients who want second-class legalrepresentation? Is there a general counsel out there who wakes upthinking, "You know what? My outside representation is too damned good.I'm going to fire them and hire some hacks."
Second point. Do you care what any service provider inyour entire world of purchasing behavior has ever paid any of theirworkers? I want you to think very, very hard. Have you ever thought toyourself, "I should check and make sure that my surgeon (dentist,mechanic, kids' teacher, banker, insurance agent) is the HIGHEST PAIDPROFESSIONAL IN HIS INDUSTRY!!??
No. You never have. Ever. You care about the quality of service.Period. And in many cases, quality of service does NOT track on a1-to-1 basis with what employees are paid. It more often equates to thelevel of respect they are provided, the amount of feedback they have intheir organizational systems, how well they are managed, their level ofpersonal mentoring, etc.
But, just as the billable hour is the only measure bywhich law firms seem capable of judging productivity, associate pay isthe only measure by which they seem capable of esteeming quality,rewarding it and (this is the huge disconnect) communicating the sameto both clients and associates.
I'd love to just copy the rest of his post word-for-word, but you owe it to yourself to check out the rest of it here, and read the rest of Andy's terrific blog while you are at it. I can't resist this one more snippet, though:
You are sending them a bad, wrong, unhealthy and, ultimately,self-defeating message. If the only way you can get "the best" studentsto come to your firm is to pay them $10k more a year... Let them go toother firms. Take the "Tier-2" kids who want to work somewhere withheart, guts, moxie, brains and staying power. I guarantee that in a fewyears your clients will love those kids way, way more than they everwould any shiny, greedy "A-Team" gold-diggers.
Some Great Consulting Tips
Dane at the Business Opportunities Weblog shares several great consulting tips he found (via Pablo Corral) on a Google message board. Dan has the entire list, but here are my favorites:
- I always take the approach that no problem or question is stupid. And I make sure the client knows this.
- I always give a verbal summary of everything I've done in as plain of English as I can when I finish a job.
- Ialways leave two more business cards with a client when I finish, andexplain that I'd appreciate any referrals they could give me.
- I always call to follow up the day after a major job.
- I do NOT charge for phone support.
- I do NOT charge for travel time.
- I send thank-you cards after payment is received.
- IfI'm not doing client work on a given day, I dedicate that day tomarketing efforts (letters, press releases, networking, etc.)
Print out this list and put it in the front of every client file you open and look at it several times thoughout the engagement. I especially love the thank-you card idea.
Are your services maturing with your clients?
Anita Campbell, editor of theSmall Business Trends Blog has been posting a lot recently about trends for 2005. Here are snippetsof a recentpost that may hint at a profitable niche for attorneys and otherprofessionals:
In 2005 and beyond, an aging Baby Boomerpopulation will be the catalyst for major changes in the workforce. It willspawn the entirely new field of retirement consulting, to help two-incomecouples discover what to do in their retirements.
With seniors aged 65and older the fastest growing segment of the American population, expect to seedaycare centers for the elderly crop up on Corporate campuses. Instead ofdropping off their children during the workday, employees will bring their agedparents.
The growing population of senior citizens will also mean newbusiness opportunities. Think errand-running businesses to serve elders.
Anita cites a report, titled "ChallengerFuture Workplace Trends: 2005 and Beyond" by Challenger Christmas & Gray. I’veread it and it has some great stuff. Check it out. While you are at it, checkout all of Anita’s trends for 2005:
Anti-Trendingand Other Trends for 2005
Entrepreneur'sTop Trends for 2005
SmallBusiness is Itself a Trend
TopTechnology Trends for 2005
TopGlobal Consumer Trends
Inc.'sTrends for Entrepreneurs in 2005
TopTravel Trends for 2005
MoreTop Trends for 2005
TheSmall Business Advocate's 2005 Predictions
Top2005 eBusiness Trends
EntrepreneurshipTrends for 2005
Healthand Family Trends for 2005
PowersportsIndustry Trends for 2005
Mattering More to Your Clients
Sam Decker has another great post titled How to Matter More. One of his five suggestions, titled "Proactive Communication" hits the nail on the head:
I’ve found I can have a bigger influence,make a bigger impact, and matter more by over-communicating. This is one of the principles I just read in Patrick Lencioni’s “Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive.” Increase the frequency of communication and you increase the clarity of purpose. In doing so, you increase your visibility and authority as well. Great leaders communicate, build a more cohesive team, and achieve a bigger impact.
This is a great way to "matter more" to your clients.
Let you clients sell your service.
Michael Cage has these fantastic tips for "adding proof to everything you do."
- Get testimonials – what other people say about you is at leasttwice as believable as what you say about yourself. When a client ishappy with your solutions, ask them for a testimonial to use in yourmarketing. Most will be very happy to help.
- Put written testimonials everywhere – every single written pieceof marketing material in your business should have at least onethrilled client testimonial on it. Proof is not a one-time thing; it’san all-the-time, every-time thing.
- Use on-hold marketing – what happens when potential clients callyour business and are put on hold? Do they hear music, or worse,nothing? Make use of it. Have your best clients record theirtestimonials, and play them when callers are put on hold.
- Use pictures – a client in the Midwest takes pictures every timethey deliver a new solution. He shakes hands with the client, they bothsmile big and bright, and an employee snaps a photo. The photos arethen used to make case studies and testimonials more compelling, andare also put in an album of hundreds of happy clients.
- Create case studies – what are the most common problems yourclients have? For each problem, create a compelling case study thattells the story of another client who you solved that problem for. Itcan all fit on a single page. Simply state what the problem was, how itwas hurting your client, how you solved it, and what the end resultwas.
- Create an eavesdrop line – put 15 or 30 minutes of recordedtestimonials on a voice mail line. Put this “real client eavesdropline” on your business cards, in your yellow pages ads, and ineverything else you do. Even if potential clients don’t call, the factthat you will let them hear real stories from real clients will lendbelievability to everything else you say
MoreSpace
I mentioned briefly that I’m involved in the MoreSpace project. Last week, we had to submit our proposals, and I have just under three weeks to get my first draft done. Here is my proposal, loosely titled “Building the Service-Centered Firm.” I welcome your comments.
Building the Service-Centered Firm
A bold proposal to bring customer service back to the professional service firm.
How can professional service providers become professional providers of service? In my essay, I’ll argue that lawyers (and other professionals such as accountants, architects, and designers) who have embraced hourly billing have based their entire business on a model that rewards inefficiency and is at odds with the best interests of the clients they serve. I will then offer one hundred (or thereabout) practical yet innovative ways these professionals can build their “perfect firm” by revamping their business model and putting their customers first.
I propose to organize my essay in the following “chapters.” In each chapter, I’ll have between five and fifteen tips, ideas, and action items for the readers to apply to their own businesses. I’m still roughing out the chapter descriptions, but this is what I have so far:
1. Learn to think for yourself. Lawyers, in particular, are paid to be innovative and creative, but only on their clients’ behalf. Professionals get so caught up in fixing their clients’ problems that they seldom apply that same creative energy on their own businesses.
2. So, what do you do? You can’t be everything to everybody. Satisfaction in any professional practice depends upon knowing what you do well and building your practice around your strengths.
3. It really is the billable hour, stupid. Until professionals learn how destructive hourly billing can be to our relationship with our clients we will never be able to take the leap and become superlative providers of professional service.
4. Fire your worst clients. This one seems like a no-brainer, but it is essential that you build your perfect firm around the clients you most want to serve. It is impossible to consistently deliver exceptional service unless you like the people you work for.
5. Identify your best clients. Just as you don’t pick out a box and then find a present to put in it, you can’t build a business based upon delivering superlative customer service until you identify that customer you want to serve.
The next five “chapters” will be the meat of my essay. I will give dozens of customer service ideas and strategies that fall mainly under these broad chapter titles:
6. Have something cool to sell.
7. Make sure your customers want it.
8. Give some of it away for free.
9. Make the rest of it simple to buy.
10. Don’t sell it to everybody.
Finally, my last chapter will be my thoughts on the future of professional services in this country – including the commoditization of law practice. I will suggest that those professionals who fail to embrace change now will be forced to do so, and on much poorer terms, in the near future.
Improving Customer Service
I came across this great article in Harvard Business School’s Working Knowldge newsletter titled Nail Customer Service. There are some really great examples of ways to address customer service bottlenecks, but my favorite part of the article is this: One copier company, for example, created what they called a "wall of washers." They saw that their product design engineers were specifying unique washers for each of their products. This caused huge problems in keeping local spare parts inventories, and resulted in big delays in repairs. To emphasize the point, one clever vice president had his staff collect every unique washer and paste them on a wall. There were over 1,000. The vice president brought the product design engineers to see the wall of washers. As a result, the engineers quickly began to redesign products to have a maximum number of common parts. The impact on service intervals, the time between when a customer calls and when the machine is fixed, was striking. And, inventory costs dropped through the floor. I suggest you try a similar exercise — especially you general practitioners out there. Take a pad of post it notes and write one of the legal services you offer on each one. Be as specific as possible. For example, don’t just write “Family Law,” but write “Dissolution of Marriage,” “Adoption,” “Child Custody,” etc. (alternatively, take each of your active cases and write its name on a note). Now, post the notes on the wall and step back and look at the number of notes you have. If you are overwhelmed, do something about it, and maybe you’ll find a similar positive impact upon your ability to serve your customers.
Baseball's Lessons for Lawyers
Great post by Jeff Angus over at Management by Baseball about how the Minnesota Twins have incorporated a new innovative way to price their season tickets by using flexible vouchers. In short, Twins fans can buy vouchers for game tickets (each priced $2.00 less than normal ticket price). If a fan buys the minimum of 40 vouchers, they can go alone to 40 games, take a friend to 20, three others to 10, etc. Each time the vouchers can be used for different seats, on an “as available” basis.
When I first read about the Twins’ plan, I started to think about how lawyers could use a similar voucher plan in their offices. We are talking to a few of our clients about offering estate-planning vouchers they can pass on as gifts to adult children, friends, parents, employees, etc. Each voucher is good for two wills, and powers of attorney for health care and property. We’ll offer the vouchers at a slightly lower cost than our normal flat rate for the services. In the event a person needs more significant estate planning, we’ll apply the value of the voucher towards our normal fee for that service. If this year’s trial run goes well, we will offer all of our clients the vouchers beginning next year.
At the end of his post, Jeff sounds like he is speaking directly to lawyers, when he shares some of his own experience with “out of the box” thinking:
It's amazing sometimes how rigidly a seller will adhere to a delivery scheme through inertia, even when the model has always been broken.
I worked for a swell software company where one of the highest-margin products it had was a product that could not be used by a single user. The fewest people this networked program could use was two. The buying of a single unit would only be for an upgrade (where an existing set of users needed to add another user). Dozens of times every week, technical support received phone calls from people who had just bought one unit and couldn't do anything with it (imagine instant messaging where you're the only person who has it).
Resistance to change was overwhelming. They had always sold 1-packs. It didn't matter that a 2-pack required only another registration key (a slip of paper with another number on it), and would therefore cost about 15 cents more to make while nearly doubling the asking price, never mind it would cut down on angry or confused (or both) customers and those customers' wrath directed at clueless resellers and our own technical support. And this was software, not something hard to package like a power-drill or a workbench or a piece of furniture -- it was a book, a pamphlet, a card with a number on it and a disc. No-one needed to design new packaging.
It took over a year to even get the idea discussed. Ugly, but not unusual.
Decisions as to what to put in the box usually stem from earlier wisdom that was actually wise. The wisdom then loses some of its value over time, but systems and the people who run them fall into patterns they don't want to change.
The Twins woke up and tried something different from what teams have been doing since their executives started working in baseball.
Shouldn't you?
Indeed.
Stupd Client Quotes
Great new website/blog called Clientcopia that collects stupid client quotes (mainly from the design industry). From the site:
There's no getting around it. At some point in your career, your patience will be tested with a stupid client who is so clueless that you'll question your sanity, career choice, and the future of mankind.
You may have dealt with one already, one that just stuns you like a deer in headlights. Dumbfounded to utter anything but an "uhhh…". Some clients have no concept of reality. They make up their mind, just to change it again to an even more hideous decision. And will end up blaming you for the mess. Can we honestly blame the client? Sure we can...
Clientcopia was created to give you an escape. Take joy in knowing you are not alone.
We all feel your pain...
Some pretty funny stuff here. Check it out.
What Do Sophisticated Clients Value?
Bruce MacEwen at Adam Smith Esq. beat me to posting about this article from Legal Week titled "The Client is Key." Read Bruce's post, read the article, and then dump hourly billing! As Bruce writes, "You have been warned."
Creating Client Evangelists
Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Creating Customer Evangelists, have authored a FREE new e-book titled "Testify, How Remarkable Organizations are Creating Customer Evangelists" with additional profiles of companies that have made their customers fervent evangelists for their businesses. There are just too many great examples to list them all. The e-book is a 50 page PDF. Download it and read it today.
Advice to New Lawyers:
Chan Stroman has a great post on her Commercial Leasing Lawblog reflecting on the seventeenth anniversary of her law school graduation. Her advice to new lawyers:
"Know the difference between rabbits and elephants." When you're a hammer, everything can look like a nail, but not all nails are created equal. The best thing a lawyer can do is to learn what's relevant to the client, from the client's perspective, and exercise judgment in focusing on what's important to the client (the elephants) and not just dot i's and cross t's (the rabbits) for the sake of dotting and crossing. You can actually add value by helping the client see "elephants" that they would not have been able to see but for your expertise—and your efforts to understand what's important to your client.
Can your law firm answer these questions?
Sam Decker alerted me to this article from Entrepreneur Magazine. Read Sam's post or the article for the whole story, but these ten questions stood out. Can you or your law firm answer them?
1. What exactly is my product or service?
2. Who exactly is my customer?
3. Why does my customer buy?
4. What does my customer consider value?
5. What is it that makes my product or service superior to that of my competitors?
6. Why is it that my prospective customer does not buy?
7. Why does my prospective customer buy from my competitor?
8. What value does he/she perceive in buying from my competitor?
9. How can I offset that perception and get my competitor's customers to buy from me?
10. What one thing must my customer be convinced of to buy from me, rather than from someone else?
Building a Strong Client Experience
Sam Decker at Decker Marketing adds his thoughts to this great post in Mark Hurst's new Good Experience Blog. Read both posts, but my favorite part of Sam's comments are here:
Building a strong customer experience is a constant battle of choices between effort to consistently meet and exceed the basics before getting fancy. First be confident you've built a strong foundational experience and can sustain and improve that foundation. Then venture off into fancy land
Starting my new practice, I have to be constantly reminded of this. Focus on the basics first, then work on the bells and whistles.
Great Stuff from The Nub
The guys over at The Nub picked up my post the other day about Value Billing, and added their thoughts:
One can take the question further and ask: How much have we helped our clients succeed? And get the client to determine this. Then build in some sort of payment that is dependent on how much the solution helps the client achieve success. For example, I've been paid the final 25% of my fee upon hitting performance targets. Other times I've received an extra % upon my client's satisfaction.
The Nub also has a pointer to a great excerpt from the John C. Maxwell book Today Matters.