What can you do to ensure your law firm’s client experience is better than average?
The only way that you can determine what your client experience is at all is by getting obsessed.
As the leader of your firm, you must audit everything. What do I mean by this? I mean you have to put in the work and see what’s really going on. For example:
- Call your own law firm. How are the phones answered?
- Submit a contact form. What happens next, from the client’s point of view?
- Engage with the chatbot on your website. What is that experience like?
If you don’t want to do any of these things, it’s probably because you know the answers aren’t going to be good. In fact, it’s probably worse than you think it is.
The same idea applies to active clients as well. Never wait until the very end of a case and ask them what their experience was; ask them throughout the entire process. Make sure that every touchpoint is up to their satisfaction and your firm’s standards.
Even if you decide to randomly audit 20 clients a week by checking in with them, it’s going to mean the world to them — and more importantly, their responses will give you some extremely valuable insights into your firm. By doing that, you could have stopped a negative experience from happening and possibly turn it into a positive one.
But it shouldn’t stop there.
If you really want to make your clients happy, remember the little things. Send them cards or gifts for their birthdays, wedding anniversaries, graduations, etc. Why? Because the more you know about them and the more you connect with them the stronger your relationship will be. However…
Those supplemental gifts and surprises will mean nothing if the experience isn’t world-class from the beginning.
Ensure that you’re constantly providing your clients with updates on their cases, or responding to their inquiries, or answering their phone calls and emails. How are you getting in touch with them? Are you sure they have all of the contact information they need to be able to reach you? Are you sure you have all of the contact information needed to contact them?
After all, a gift isn’t a replacement for a bad experience.
For that reason, I regularly secret shop Crisp, my own organization. I want to see exactly what our clients see. I don’t mind being a pain in the butt to my team. When they do better, our clients are happier, and that makes us all more successful in the long run.
Once you determine what great looks like, make sure your own law firm reflects that.
