First impressions matter

Two firms, two very different responses to an enquiry. Jaci Burns looks at why some firms are losing clients before they land them.

• 10 March 2015 • SME Law

Last week I had cause to contact a Sydney-headquartered boutique law firm – a firm which, though only a mid-tier player in the Australian market, punches above its weight as a brand.

You’re out of free articles for this month

Username or Email

Password Forgot password?

Keep me signed in on this device.

First Name

Last Name

Mobile

Organisation Type

By becoming a member, I agree to receive information and promotional messages from Lawyers Weekly. I can opt out of these communications at any time. For more information, please visit our Privacy Statement.

Need help signing up? Visit the Help Centre.

I made four approaches to three professionals over the course of six days. Not one of my communications was acknowledged. Finally, in frustration, I contacted the firm’s managing partner, alerting him to the neglect and challenging whether anyone at his firm actually responded to emails.

Ultimately, the question I was posing to the managing partner was, ‘How many times will your clients try unsuccessfully to contact your firm before they take their business elsewhere?’

The managing partner did not respond either, though within a few hours I received a call from a salaried employee at his firm.

At around the same time, I made a similar approach to the Sydney and London offices of global accounting firm Crowe Horwath. Despite the difference in time zones, within a handful of hours I had received responses from senior practitioners within the firm. Over the course of the next 36 hours the firm followed up several more times. What’s more, the managing partner responded with both appreciation and enthusiasm to my (unsolicited) constructive feedback about his firm's approach to digital marketing.

VIEW ALL

I’m sharing this anecdote as a reminder to you – whatever your title, whatever your role, whatever your remit – that feedback is real and it’s relentless:

You can’t conveniently quarantine it to the once or twice per year that your firm has scheduled to ‘listen’
You can’t exclude opinion that falls outside your firm’s ‘blessed’ methodology.
You can’t limit your audience to current clients – or, more likely, current ‘top’ clients.

Every person who has contact with your firm is a potential advocate, a potential ambassador. Or not.

Every person who has contact with your firm will form an opinion, be it positive, negative or neutral.

Every person who has contact with your firm is networked and connected in ways you could not even imagine.

Every person who has contact with your firm will have at least one platform (this being a prime example) from which they can share their experience. It bears remembering there is no form of marketing more powerful than word-of-mouth.

How comprehensive is your firm’s process for measuring client service and monitoring and responding to feedback?

Jaci Burns (pictured) is the managing director of Market Expertise, which provides marketing, business development and communications services to law firms.

Mary K Friday, 29 May 2015

There's a lot to this story that is missing and I would really want to know the content of her emails before condemning the lawyers who did not answer. It is extremely unclear as to whether she was emailing them with a request that they take on a case for her, or if she was just looking for some free provision of information from them, or to sell them on an idea. I would say in this day and age that if her email was a genuine query prior to engaging their services, it would be extremely unlikely that her inquiries would have been so completely ignored across all levels of the firm like that. Makes me suspicious that the woman was asking for the lawyer to basically donate his time and expertise to her needs for free - a complete timewaster in other words. Many people out there still don't get that for a lawyer, time is money in a very literal sense of the word. When you send an email to a busy lawyer, you better make your inquiry worth his while to respond to as otherwise any answer he gives you is just money down the drain for him and the firm. That might sound greedy to some outside the business but believe me, small tier and even mid tier solicitors operate on a very tight profit margin nowadays and they make precious little money in exchange for the long hours and level of stress involved in the profession. At our firm, a small suburban general practice, email responses often account for 90% of my time and it is starting to become a major major issue with staff having to stay well after closing in order to finish their other work that doesn't get done as a result. Some days I am averaging up to 25 emails per hour throughout the day and each one requires a response that usually takes up a lot of my time, usually requiring me to carry out research into an issue, pulling up an old file or making phone calls to check things before I am able to provide them with a response. What is beyond infuriating, however, is that many of these emails are a complete waste of my time, either because the client is simply asking me to answer hypothetical of the 'what if' variety, often a response to their query simply provokes further emails and questions that are time-consuming and pointless. Then there are the clients who will ask stream of consciousness questions because they are sitting in their government job with nothing better to do and often the answers to these questions have already been provided to them in correspondence we have sent them but which they have not bothered to read. And of course, in the midst of these there are the emails from clients just asking me to provide reassurance on an emotional level and soothe their anxiety. Incredibly draining and at times enraging as for a small firms like ours, we are not able to time-cost, if we tried the clients would scream abuse at us and so we are supposed to chalk it up as 'time thrown away' on a file. The email situations has actually reached the critical point where the profit margin is completely lost and the file becomes a complete loss to us in terms of the time expended on it not being properly offset by the fee the client is paying. Of course all of that is before I have even get started on all the countless emails that come in from old clients who thing that because they had a matter with us two years ago, that this gives them the right to email us whenever they have a general query or just want some advice on a venture they have in mind and blah blah blah. So forgive me if I don't join in this woman's outrage at her emails not being responded to by this firm, as I am sure there was a very good reason for this that she has not disclosed in her diatribe.

0
Harvey K Wednesday, 15 April 2015

Ha ha ha - talk about space filler, Lawyers Weekly! So Jaci Burns failed to get some quotes from a law firm for her article, and then writes the whole article about it! At the outset - why are you equating yourself with a client, Jaci - you aren't!! You are apparently a marketer and/or a freelance journalist. Either way, Jaci, please get in the real world - lawyers spend their day slogging away doing billable work and aren't particularly fussed about wasting their time dealing with questions from randoms - including you! As a non-client, what makes you so special to expect complete strangers - not to mention busy people - to spend their time returning your calls? If you get someone to talk to you for a story - great. If not, move on and find someone else. Don't write a whingey article about it that tries to paint accountants as so much more commercially savvy than lawyers. So you managed to get Crowe Horwath to suck up to you? Terrific, and good for you! But so what?? That is all.

0
Absurdiness Brown Wednesday, 18 March 2015

Pics or it's not true.

1
Shovel Friday, 13 March 2015

As long as you; don't just pick the low hanging fruit,get out there & shift the paradigm ,take it to the next level,think outside the box,blah,blah,blah.Messengers with pretentious ,cliched,self serving messengers get shot because they have big bull eyes drawn on them. Pass the ammunition.

1
Lyn Peel Friday, 13 March 2015

And you all wasted your time being defensive ... hallmark of the idea.

0
You must have started in HR Friday, 13 March 2015

If we ring-fence your take-away, adopt a pro-active approach to client-care and reach-out to them, will they love us more and give us more work-life balance?

1
Annoyingly incogneto Friday, 13 March 2015

What is her market anyway, unfunny Dawn French impersonations?Gold my friend, pure Gold !

0
Curious Friday, 13 March 2015

You're certainly funny. Can we see your photo?

0
Oyster Bay Friday, 13 March 2015

There is nothing wrong with being clueless. I have built a career on it. Luckily I am beautiful, funny and really intelligent so very successful in Sales. 

0
Oyster Bay Friday, 13 March 2015

I am in Sales and people always call me back because I am a really attractive woman who is funny and really intelligent. Us Sales professionals really are the most important aspect of your business. You should give us the respect we deserve. 

0