This news is about as groundbreaking as a new AMA survey that reveals cigarettes are hazardous to your health and licking electric fences can cause severe discomfort. While we all appreciate the confirmation, and I'm definitely grateful to McConnell and Huba (publishers of the awesome CotC blog), it strikes me as another one of those why-did-Nielsen-even-need-to-bother pieces of research.

The real question is: How do you get/increase those word of mouth referrals? 

Every day, the client service...should be good enough to permit those employees to actually steal any client, and take them to another law firm...if they were to leave your shop tomorrow morning.

If you are not...willing to go that far with your own employees...you are neither confident about client loyalty (not to mention employee loyalty) nor really serious about delivering outrageous client service to your clients.

That's  fabulous. However, one might pause and rightly ask what level of client service the senior partner delivered if the decision were that easy for the client!!  :-)

A great concept to live by, though. (Don't miss the "employee loyalty" comment, too!).

"You should wake up every morning terrified with your sheets drenched in sweat, but not because you’re afraid of our competitors.Be afraid of our customers, because those are the folks who have the money. Our competitors are never going to send us money."

Well put!!!  Anything else I add will just diminish its beauty.

When planning your spending, bear in mind that it is far (FAR) easier to keep an existing client or get additional business from that existing client than it is to generate new clients altogether.

Your spending should reflect that reality.

If your scheduled expenditures are largely geared towards acquisition of new clients expect a lower ROI. Conversely, if your dollars are geared towards things that help you serve your existing clients better expect higher ROI.

And for goodness' sake avoid the temptation to spend your dollars on things that are "sexy" but shaky in their ROI. Unless, of course, you're paid to be sexy but ineffective (i.e. your name is Anucha Browne Sanders and your boss is Isaiah Thomas). OOPS. I digress....

Tom Kane agrees, apparently, but with less verbiage.

Clients and client service are much the same way. Like it or not (here we go again!!), clients hold the "whistle," and they have the power to take their business elsewhere. Whether or not we agree with them, if we want to keep serving them we will listen to their wants.

Another analogy: It's rare to see a call successfully argued and reversed. The time to listen is before they blow their whistle on you!  

By the way, the refereeing was fabulous this weekend. Frankly, the referees are rarely the problem. It's the rose-colored glasses we as parents see through that create the problems. And frankly, clients are the same way: rarely unreasonable. Firms just need to take off those rose-colored glasses.

Good game, Nate and Sam. I'm really proud of you guys.

But what happened to voices, vibes, faces, bodies, winks, hand gestures, touching another's hand or shoulder impulsively, stares, grins, frowns, hand-written thank you notes, human electricity, NOT-typing, non-virtual joking, yelling, ragging and flirting, occasional confrontation, intimacy and the "god-in-the-room" magic that starts with two breathing humans in one real place.

A great reminder to not forget to connect with our clients on occasion. They'd probably enjoy having lunch with you, or having you stop by their office.

The women's World Cup 2007 is upon us. I watched the second half of the England-Japan game. It ended in a 2-2 tie on what can literally be described as a last-second goal. Worse, on a phantom call that allowed Japan to tie it. Credits to the Japanese player for a beautiful shot in the corner, but England got ripped off. There just was no foul there. To the utter disregard of my post, I'm going to e-mail one of my favorite customers who comes from England. :-)

The US goalie to the right, Hope Solo, comes from my home state (Washington) and played ball for the UW. Sorry for the shameless promotion.

It's okay to treat clients differently. In fact, it's fine to give preferential treatment to key clients. I'd be nervous if my bank treated me just the same as it treated Bill Gates. Would I really want to trust my money to an organization devoid of any business smarts?

I wish churches would figure this out. When you treat every congregant the same, you really only treat some right and the rest get left behind, or end up leaving. (David Murrow's book, Why Men Hate Going to Church, is a great read for those interested in the topic). No more holding hands across the aisles; the perfect sermon length: 20 minutes; if you have more than one drummer who can join the worship team, they should arm wrestle--the loser plays.  :-) 

Oh yeah, there are wrong answers. And it's a virtue for someone to care enough to confront you on it. But I've digressed.

The point is that there ways that lawyers can ask for work in a professional manner that doesn't involve groveling. It is part of the closing process that comes with business development.

I really do not disagree with his post. In fact, I highly recommend reading it. I'm going to offer my naive opinion, though, that the firm that really gets client service right will at least ask less often than others. Clients will want them to handle their additional work badly enough that they'll often ask.

When I was in high school, I received a great piece of advice relating to girls. While my memory of those years is fading (at least my confidence that I remember them accurately), I can recall my share of crushes on the good-looking young ladies. And there were a few that were interested in me that I deemed sub-par. The advice, simply put, was even if there's a girl that's less than attractive, and you're just not interested in her, be very, very nice to her. She almost certainly has "hot" friends.

Time has shown  that advice to be true. Very true.

Even if you have a client that you're not particularly keen about, or is 165 degrees off from being your ideal client, as long as they're your client, serve them well. They may have "hot" friends.

Long ago a merchant had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to a lender. The old & ugly lender fancied the merchant's beautiful daughter, so he proposed a bargain. He would forgo the merchant's debt if he could marry his daughter. Both the merchant and his daughter were horrified by the proposal. The cunning lender suggested they let providence decide the matter.

The lender would put a black and white pebble into an empty bag. The girl would then pick one pebble from the bag.  If she picked the black pebble, she would become the lender's wife and her father's debt would be forgiven. If she picked the white pebble she need not marry him and her father's debt would still be forgiven. If she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into jail.

They were standing on a pebble strewn path in the merchant's garden. As they talked, the lender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them up, the girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them in the bag. He then asked the girl to pick her pebble from the bag.

What would you have done if you were the girl? Here are some options (remember the consequences!):

1. Refuse to take a pebble.

2. Show there were two black pebbles in the bag and expose the lender as a cheat.

3. Pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself to save her father.

4. Another option?

The girl put her hand into the bag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto the pebble-strewn path where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles (OOPS!).

"Oh, how clumsy of me," she said. "But never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked."

Since the remaining pebble is black, it must be assumed that she had picked the white one.

How did you do? Did you "save the day?" 

In the initial hiring criteria for outside counsel, Lawyer Expertise ranks as extremely important by 78% of the respondents. Another 10% rank it as important. That's a total of 88% of the respondents ranking it highly, and by far the most important component. Client Service sits at 12% ranking it extremely important and 38% important. Easily second, but by a very large deficit.

Catch this, though:

In the criteria for allocating additional work, 56% rank Client Service as extremely important, with another 24% ranking it important. Lawyer Expertise? 43% rank it as extremely important and 25% as important.

Hmmm....What a shame to lose out on additional work when getting it was fully within your grasp!

*Be accessible
*Respond promptly
*Learn the business
*Don't say 'no' (i.e. offer alternatives)
*Listen to feedback
*Empower your clients (teach & give them information)
*Reduce law firm costs
*Communicate clearly and directly
*Get to know your clients
*Have a customer service-friendly attitude

No surprise punches in this list. I've written previously about these points here.  They really are the stock answers. That's not a knock on Inside Counsel magazine. It's really a knock on us that we need to keep hearing it over and over again.

And I thought it was supposed to be all the rage. I guess the devil we know is better than the demons we don't.

I appreciate Patrick's posts. And I'm guessing his analysis is right on target. What surprises me is that for budgeting certainty purposes I would think in-house counsel would rather spend slightly more with the fixed rate. Apparently not.

Not sure how this relates to client service, except to add that if your clients ask for it, you should at least offer it. Even if they don't do it, at least you showed your client-friendly face.

"You may be so busy billing hours that you won't have time to read Robert Herbold's new book Seduced by Success. That's too bad, because it's probably a sign that you need to spend fewer hours billing and more hours planning for the future."

And he goes on to explain three primary destructive behaviors:

"The first destructive behavior is "lack of urgency...." Some law firms are aggressively increasing efforts to satsify current clients and find new ones. They are taking business away from the conservative firms that are acting as if the world has not changed since Nixon left office....

The other two destructive behaviors Herbold describes are are "a defensive attitude toward any kind of new thinking" and an "entitlement mentality." Do those sound familiar?"

By the way, he's referencing the new book by Robert J. Herbold, Seduced by Success. I highly recommend reading his post. I'm also going to pick up the book.

The picture to the left is us standing in front of the breathtaking Nairn Falls (a short 20-mile trip--one way--from the Whistler Village).

I live in Puyallup, Washington.  It's a small town that doesn't get much tourism (apparently traffic gridlock and our local daffodil princess have fallen short of expectations).  Local businesses rely on repeat business if they want to stay in business.

Whistler, on the other hand, is a different story.  Merchants there could almost certainly prey on tourists, and hardly feel the bite at all.  There's a steady enough stream of tourists that with some decent marketing they could keep the cash registers buzzing with ease.  Flying in the face of that logic, though, what really amazes me is the outstanding level of customer service that the vast majority of merchants provide. And largely from a 20-something year-old set of employees, no less.

My best guess: the vast majority of those working in Whistler are there because they truly want to be there. They came to Whistler to live the dream, and they're doing it.

You draw out the implications for customer service.

Your own co-workers are potential clients. Even if they aren't going to buy your services directly, they could (and should) send those clients to you. Provided you give them every reason to believe they'll be taken good care of.

Through the seventh round this continued. Foreman fans looked like the world was theirs on a platter. Ali fans had nothing to cheer about. David vs. Goliath without the surprise ending. Even Ali's trainer, Angelo Dundee, didn't know what was happening. But unbeknownst to all but Ali, a plan was unfolding. He figured that if he could absorb the shock of Foreman's blows early, he could eventually wear him down.

And he did. Early in the eighth round Ali sprang from the ropes when Foreman's energy had been spent. With three beautifully-timed blows, Ali put Foreman out, and the fight was over.

Don't be surprised if launching a client service initiative leaves you feeling like an early-round Muhammed Ali. It probably will hurt a little; maybe a lot. Hang on, take the blows, and execute your plan. If you're willing to pay the price I suspect you, too, can achieve a shockingly positive outcome.

By the way, I don't recommend you Ali-wannabe's taunt your clients!!

"....When we perform well, the client appreciates us and signals that appreciation. So then we like the client even more, and want to do an even better job or keep doing the good job we are doing so we can derive more real pleasure from the engagement, and obtain more work.

...We have never, ever had good long-term relationships with any organization client (1) which did not genuinely appreciate what we were doing for it or (2) which had disturbing corporate personalities (i.e., mean-spirited Rambo cultures, groups with employees given to blame-storming, or companies with disorganized, internally-uncommunicative or just plain lazy staffs.)"

I'm not taking issue with him on this statement. In the context of client service, however, we should at least ask the following questions: 

Could it be the reason they don't genuinely appreciate us is we haven't earned it?

With the mean-spirited employees is it a matter of nature or nurture? (In other words, did we create the monster?)

I've been married long enough to know that if my wife is mad at me there's typically a reason for it. And "she's just plain psycho" isn't the right answer.

Sometimes we really do need to fire a client. Sometimes they are just plain nasty. But before we place the blame there, we should first honestly ask ourselves if we caused the problem.

It came to mind for me in a conversation I was recently having with a new client of LexBlog's, legal search recruiter Courtney Sapire (whom I would rank extremely high on the I-trust-her scale). Thanks Courtney. In my conversations with her I've always come away with a sense that she's extremely trustworthy. I'd recommend her in a heartbeat if somebody asked me who to call.

Would your clients do the same for you? It's the highest compliment. They're telling you indirectly they trust you enough to put their reputation on the line, like I'm doing for Courtney!  That's huge.

If I could think of only one question to ask as a good indicator of your client service posture, the question "Do you truly trust us?" would be given serious consideration. It answers a lot of other questions in the process.

I was in the process of removing a massive shrub of grass (pampass grass?), probably a circumference of 15 feet (& 10' high). Huge. I was happily plodding away, which took the better part of a Saturday. The warning signs were there all afternoon; I knew there was a nest in there, and I'd seen them buzzing around. I took minimal precautions (my wasp spray was posted on the fence like some sort of scarecrow--apparently wasps can't read!).

I think some lawyers treat client service with the same sort of "scarecrow" mentality. They happily grind away working on client files. The warning signs remain, with even the latest research showing little to no improvement in perceptions. Yet they work away without any regard for the warning signs. Somebody's going to get stung.

The problem here is this pain won't go away with some baking soda and an advil.