Can Excellent Client Service Be Taught?

A brief article in the July 2006 Inc. magazine caught my eye. The piece was about customer service in restaurants, but the lesson applies to law firms, too. A reader asked whether great customer service can be taught. The answer, by Danny Meyer, CEO of the Union Square Hospitality Group, a company which includes the Gramercy Tavern among its holdings, makes a distinction between customer service and hospitality, and claims that the latter cannot be taught.

Meyer says that in the restaurant business, customer service is, "getting the right food to the right person at the right time." In the legal world, that translates to performing the work competently and on time for the client. In short, it's what I call technical skill.

Hospitality, on the other hand, is defined by Meyer as, "the degree to which your customers feel that your staff is on their side." To Meyer, this includes such intangibles as remembering repeat customers, listening, making eye contact, and handling mistakes well.

When I talk about providing excellent client service, I'm talking about what Meyer calls hospitality. That's the real essence of client experience. It's what will make the difference between a good law firm and a great law firm. In the legal world, there's nothing the client wants more than to feel that his lawyer, and indeed the entire firm, is on his side.

The 'hospitality mentality' needs to be present throughout your firm in order to provide your clients with a good client experience. Your receptionist should take care to remember long-standing and repeat clients. Professional staff must be mindful of listening to the client's needs and concerns, rather than merely barging in with the lawyer's solution to what the lawyer perceives the client's problem to be. Clients must be treated courteously and professionally at all times. They should always be made to feel that everyone in the firm, regardless of position and familiarity with that particular client, is there to serve the client - as indeed they are. For a truly spectacular client experience, everyone within the firm must be willing to 'go the extra mile' for a client, and to do the unexpected.

Sound easy? It may be, but time and time again I've observed law firm personnel, whether staff or attorneys, ignore clients sitting in the waiting room, brush off a client' s call without attempting to help because they aren't familiar with the client's problem or because the person whose 'job' it is isn't currently available. Client service is the job of every individual employed by the law firm.

For employees who aren't providing the proper level of hospitality, Meyer recommends telling the employee precisely where he's going wrong and giving him a fixed amount of time to make specified improvements. For law firms, that means feedback of a less than traditional nature. And that feedback can't wait until an annual peformance review - your relationships with your clients are too important for that. Feedback needn't be formal, but it must be provided at all levels on an ongoing basis. This feedback should be made in conjunction with client review sessions or client satisfaction programs.

Hospitality, or an outstanding client experience, is often a product of the firm's culture and environment as a whole. As Meyer cautions, "hospitality starts with employees treating one another with respect and trust. If that's missing with your staff, it will be missing with guests." Wondering whether your clients are being treated the way you want them to be? Look first at how your partners, associates and staff treat one another - if your internal culture, atmosphere and communication are poor, chances are the client experience with your firm may not be as positive as you'd like it to be.

Meyer contends that the key to hospitality is hiring the right people, because hospitality cannot be taught. Although I don't necessarily agree completely, I do agree that a firm can't provide its clients with a truly great client experience without the right people. Meyer says he looks for five key traits when interviewing prospective candidates to work in his business: friendliness, curiosity, a good work ethic, empathy and self awareness. What do you think are the key traits a legal employer seeking to increase the quality of client experience with her firm should look for?

For more about how your firm can incorporate client service into its cultures, see these posts: Considering Client Service as Part of Employment Reviews, Exceeding Clients' Expectations, How Client Dissatisfaction Can Hurt You, Do You Know What Your Clients Really Want? and Rules for Client Service.

If you'd like to read more about client feedback programs, you can check out these previous posts: Do You Know if Your Clients are Satisfied?, Tips on Obtaining Client Feedback, What to do With Client Feedback and More on Client Surveys and Client Satisfaction.

Comments

[Miriam Lawrence]

Great post, Allison. I agree with your comment that it may be difficult or impossible to teach the underlying feelings that naturally inspire some people to be hospitable ("bedside manner").

However, lack of hospitality is often rooted in simple obliviousness or ignorance, not in an innate desire to be inhospitable. Many behaviors and touches of hospitality can most certainly be taught, and I'd argue that they build on each other.

You may be familiar with the research that says that the physical act of smiling can actually make one feel better. I'd suggest that the more effort a team puts into hospitality, the more hospitable they'll begin to feel. Often people wait to feel inspired to change their behavior, not realizing that more typically, you have to change your behavior FIRST and the change in attitude will follow.

[Allison Shields]

I couldn't agree more that structure, systems and procedures are key for law firms. It is one of the main things I work on with my clients.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but in reality, it is the structure that provides the freedom to do the more valuable (and usually more enjoyable) tasks - including focusing more on your clients and their experience with your firm. But that's the topic for another post...

Certainly structure, systems and procedues can be taught, and there is a certain level of hospitality or client care that can be taught as well. But some of it does boil down to personality, or 'bedside manner,' if you will. And procedures and systems alone don't ensure that clients will have a good experience with your firm. It paves the way, but it's not a guarantee.

I also agree with Carolyn that most law schools don't teach 'hospitality.' Legal education focuses much more on issue spotting and issue analysis, and often the people behind those issues are forgotten. I had an interesting email exchange with a reader about this very topic, and I'll go into more detail about that in a future post as well.

I'm glad this topic is generating so much discussion.

Allison

[[email protected]]

I've never been to Cornell but I've been making the comparison between law firms and restaurants for years & can't agree more with Greg's comment below.

And the comparison goes even deeper. . .

In my audio CD program How To Market A Small Law Firm I elaborate on this point that just like there are different marketing & business strategies -including client service strategies - that are appropriate for a fast food restaurant that are wholly unsuitable for a gourmet restaurant, so too you need to think about how your law firm is positioned in the marketplace and provide an appropriate level of client service.

But what I did not say (and now wish I had...thanks Allison!) is that no matter what level of client service you provide, it can & should always be done in a hospitable way.

And for those of us who did not have the chance to go to Hotel School to learn all about the art & science of hospitality, I will point out that in my experience it most definitely CAN be learned and instilled in a law firm's culture. Here's what I mean.

It all begins with developing systems & procedures for as many business processes as possible. I know most touchy-feely/artsy-fartsy types would have you believe that systems & procedures hem you in & restrict the opportunity to provide a "personal touch". But in my experience, and many of the solo practitioners I've worked on this issue with, the opposite is actually the case. Having a reliable system to handle 80% of the client interactions frees staff and attorneys to be especially hospitable with the 20% of issues that really need a personal touch.

We're planning to host a teleseminar in the next month or so on how to document business procedures for a small law office. Anyone who is interested should send me an e-mail & I'll send you an invite. Price will be only $79 with money back guarantee if you don't think it's GREAT.

Respectfully,

RJON ROBINS
www.HowToMakeItRain.com
Helping Lawyers In Small Law Firms Make ALOT More Money

P.S. I was just speaking about good ethics/good business & courtesy with the Director of the Michigan State Bar's brand-new Law Office Managemet Assistance Service (Hint to any Michigan lawyers reading this - you have a great new resource available to you.)

[Carolyn Elefant]

As a 1988 graduate of Cornell Law School, I would encourage the previous commenter to ask his predecessors to take a visit over to the law school and teach them some hospitality. I don't know if Cornell has changed much since I was there, and I loved my time there, but hospitable is one word that I would NOT the word that I would use to describe the place when I was there.

[Greg]

As a lawyer and graduate of the Cornell Hotel School, I have often commented that the practice of law is like the restaurant business (short time between "production" and "delivery" of the product, service at least as important as product, perceived value and relationships are paramount, etc. People used to smirk or roll their eyes. Thanks for backing me up, albeit 10 years late!
Greg