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January 26, 2006
Polling The Real Jury-Part 4: Just Who Should Conduct Client Satisfaction Interviews, Anyway?
No puns intended--but I'm going to stay neutral in this. But would anyone care to join the fray in the multi-blog discussion of just who should conduct client satisfaction interviews? There's an interesting, important and I think relatively difficult discussion going on between Jim Hassett, Michelle Golden, Patrick Lamb and me. I'm just listening at this point. My instinct for years has been that only 3rd party neutrals should conduct them. Now I am not so sure. Shouldn't a senior member of the firm be present, even at the risk of dampening candor?
At this point, there seems to at least be an agreement that client/customer interviews are critical for any size firm. So roughly put, the issues are: (1) who should conduct the interviews--a 3rd party "neutral" (Michelle), a senior partner (Jim) or a hybrid of sorts (Patrick); and (2) what, if anything, should be the purpose of the interview beyond asking for feedback and improving the service rendered to the customer. This is an important practice management issue if you assume, as I do, that in the future client interviews or polling by professional service firms will be the rule--and not the exception--for firms to be competitive.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:37 PM | Comments (0)
Word-of-Mouth and Internet Top 2 Picks.
The consistently insightful and easy to read Tom Kane has a great post today in his The Legal Marketing Blog on what medias really work for small business (all law firms fit in this category, I think). Word-of-mouth and the Internet may be the top 2. Talk about flattening. Although personally I think that the more lawyers, staff and clients you have, the better position you are in to enjoy WOM power, the numbers Tom has in his post suggest that big advertising budgets may not rule where clients go in the future. Or even where they are going now. Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, which I posted about in mid-December, does an admirable job of explaining the dynamics of word-of-mouth--and WOM's great but fickle power to make or break us. I know, I know: there are hundreds of books out there people say you should read, and we are all mega-busy working and practicing law. But Gladwell's book is compelling to me because it strongly implies that there are ways to create and even control positive "buzz". And it's a great book for anyone who serves business clients. Read it!
Posted by JD Hull at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)
Will We All Be International Lawyers? Are We Already?
One of the things I've been trying to tell you all--like here in a September 30, 2005 post about the International Bar Association's meeting last year in Prague and the International Business Law Consortium my firm joined in 1998--is that law practice is changing. I am still not sure exactly why, how and how fast. But I am sure that the global economy's impact on competition in even the most basic and rudimentary service businesses is no New Age b.s.
Before law school I majored in History (not Economics) and wrote my honors thesis on something like "How the [Japanese] Shishi Got the Chutzpah to Overthrow the Bakafu". And, rather than Paul Samuelson, I read Chaucer, Melville and Hunter Thompson. So with these macro issues, I struggle. I speculate. I get comments and mail from people who imply I'm out of my area--and they are probably right.
So I'll stick to federal courts, the Clean Water Act Title VI appropriations for FY 2007, selling my firm's corporate tax and international practices, and making our clients happy. Besides, Adam Smith, Esq. (New Yorker Bruce MacEwen) discusses it a lot better in this recent post "Where Will Your Firm Be in 2015?" than I can, have thus far or likely ever could.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)