What is your client service experience like? Client service is the support that a company or organization provides to its customers. Is yours exceptional, functional, or dismal?
Part of your client service includes answering questions, addressing complaints, and assisting with issues or problems that attorney clients may have.
Improving your client service can offer a whole range of benefits that will increase client satisfaction and help you boost sales. Providing good client service is critical because it can help to build trust and loyalty among clients and can lead to increased client satisfaction and repeat business.
But it’s hard to tell how you’re doing by intuition or estimation alone. Here are some ways to assess your client service and see how you measure up.
The Client Service Experience
Business Touchpoints
Where do you interact with your client? On social media, in weekly emails, in person, or on your YouTube channel? Every touchpoint presents opportunities to connect with clients and learn more about their needs.
If you have limited points of contact with your client, consider adding more. For example, use Instagram Stories to post a poll, schedule a Facebook Live and open it up to questions, or post a quick video on YouTube with a ‘hot tip’ and ask viewers for their feedback.
Can Clients Contact You Easily?
- Is it easy for clients to contact you?
- How can they reach you?
- How soon can you respond?
It is important to be responsive and available to attorney clients. Attorneys are busy taking depositions, meeting with new clients, working on legal submissions – they want to speak to you when they want, or to get a response within a few hours. Be reachable.
If you supply expert witnesses, as I do, attorneys judge you and your LNC company by how responsive your experts are.
The most common complaint I receive is related to experts who are not responsive.
Provide people with different ways to contact your business, to suit all preferences and needs.
‘Time to Resolution’
How many of your client service issues are resolved in one contact? If your answer was, “all or most,” you’re doing well. If it takes a series of follow-ups to resolve an issue, consider tightening up your responses.
Track an interaction from first contact to resolution and see how long it takes. Identify the problem that is causing delays and solve it.
It is also important to be proactive in addressing any potential issues that may arise, and to have systems in place for promptly resolving any problems that do occur.
Client Complaints
If you’re experiencing a high number of client complaints, you need to discover the cause. Client complaints should be very rare, and generally easy to resolve. If you receive many complaints about the same thing, this tells you that the issue is on your end, not the clients’.
In addition to being responsive and proactive, it is also essential to be empathetic and understanding when interacting with customers. This can involve actively listening to their concerns and showing that you are trying to understand their perspective. It is also important to be patient and to take the time to fully address any questions or issues that customers may have.
Another key aspect of providing excellent client service is being able to communicate effectively with clients. This can involve using clear, concise language and being able to explain complex issues in a way that is easy for clients to understand. It is also important to be able to communicate with clients in a friendly and respectful manner, and to be able to adapt your communication style to the needs and preferences of atttorneys.
In addition to these core elements, there are also a number of best practices that businesses can follow in order to provide excellent customer service. These can include:
- Offering multiple channels for attorneys to reach out for assistance, such as phone, email, and live chat.
- Providing self-service options, such as online FAQs and knowledge bases, to allow clients to find answers to common questions on their own.
- Having clear and transparent policies in place for handling complaints and disputes.
- Regularly soliciting feedback from clients and using this feedback to continuously improve the customer experience.
Seek Feedback Directly
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Seek Feedback Directly
A great way to assess your service is to contact clients directly. Create a short survey that asks key questions about their experience with your business. If you have the resources, arrange one-on-one interviews or focus groups as they can provide more detailed insights.
Improve Your Client Service Experience
Are you ready to make improvements and learn new skills that will take your client service to a whole new level? Now that you have identified potential weak points, you’re ready to make some changes.
Overall, providing excellent client service is essential for any business looking to build strong relationships with its customers and to ensure attorney satisfaction. By being responsive, proactive, empathetic, and effective in communication, and by following best practices, LNC businesses can provide the high-quality client service that is necessary to build trust and loyalty with their clients.
Pat Iyer is president of The Pat Iyer Group, which develops resources to assist LNCs in obtaining more clients, making more money, and achieving their business goals and dreams.
Pat’s related websites include the continuing education provided on LNCEU.com, the podcasts broadcast at podcast.legalnursebusiness.com, and writing tips supplied at patiyer.com.
Get all of Pat’s content in one place by downloading the mobile app, Expert Edu at www.legalnursebusiness.com/expertedu. Watch videos, listen to podcasts, read blogs, watch online courses and training, and more.