Poor Client Service is Easy to Find

Recently, attorney Leanna Hamill related the following tale about bad client experience:

I’m having the rather unfortunate experience of having to interview and select realtors to sell my dad’s house (anyone wanting to buy a fixer-upper on the ocean in beautiful Scituate, MA. let me know).

I spent half the day on Monday at the house showing the realtors around. One of them went on and on about her own house and her own cottage and wasn’t going to be able to start showing it until the end of June because she had family visiting and then they had an open house for “1.5 million, so we really need to take care of that one.”  Then when she emails me first she calls me “Deanna” and in her next email she calls me “Leanne.”

One company had a horribe gruff person answering the phone, so I didn’t even use them.

Leanna’s Tips based on her experience:

Tip #1: Don’t make your potential client feel like the rest of your life is more important than she is (even though it is.)

Tip #2: Don’t make your potential client feel like their case will get less attention because of the size of it.

Tip #3: Have someone good answering your phone. 

Tip #4: Get your [potential] client’s name right!

Bad client service stories like Leanna’s are far too easy to find. But the good news is that since client service is universally so bad, it should be relatively easy for you to create an excellent client service by using some common sense. It only takes small steps and little touches to make a difference (as my previous client service story indicates). As Gerry Riskin says, it’s the ‘slight edge’ theory – you only have to be marginally better than the competition to have the edge (stay tuned for a post later this week with more advice from Gerry Riskin from the Get a Life conference).

Given the abysmal client service that’s the norm, how hard would it be to gain the edge in client service?

Want to learn more about client service? Take a look at this post about value and client service, as well as this one about caring for your clients.