50 Coolest Song Parts
This has nothing to do with the law, marketing, my daughter, or whatever else I write about on this blog, but I've just spent the last thirty minutes reading RetroCrush's "The 50 Coolest Song Parts." He's counting down and has twenty yet to go. Really fun.
Building Client Loyalty
I found this article on the MarketingProfs.com website (if you aren't subscribing to the e-mail updates, you really should) titled, "12 Laws of Customer Loyalty" by Jill Griffin. Her 12 tips:
Build staff loyalty
Practice the 80/20 rule
Know your loyalty stages and ensure that your customers are moving through them
Serve first, sell second
Aggressively seek out customer complaints
Stay responsive
Know your customer's definition of value
Win back lost customers
Use multiple channels to serve the same customers well
Give your frontline the skills to perform
Collaborate with your channel partners
Store your data in a centralized database
My favorite gem from the article:
Today’s customers are smarter, better informed and more intolerant of “being sold” than ever before. They expect doing business with you to be as hassle-free and gratifying for them as possible. When they experience good service elsewhere, they bring a if-they-can-do-it-why-can’t–you attitude to their next transaction with you. They believe that you earn their business with service that is pleasant, productive and personalized; and if you don’t deliver, they’ll leave.
As service providers, lawyers are not just competing against other lawyers, but airlines, dry cleaners, restaurants, and even internet retailers. When clients have gotten a high level of service from someone else, we need to match (or even exceed) that level of service, or we fail. That is one of the reasons I've been writing this blog. I want to look to see what others in business are doing to improve the customer experience and bring those lessons to my firm and lawyers in general.
The Weekly Five (Week 2)
This weeks version of The Weekly Five is up in my sidebar on the site. Don't wait too long because these links disappear and will be replaced next Friday.
Tablet PC
My new Tablet PC (a Toshiba Portege M205) arrives today and I am giddy with anticipation. I hope to run it though it's paces and have a full report next week. The best part: after buying it on E-Bay, the seller tells me there is a rebate. Sweet!
Update: I'm salivating even more after reading this article.
Quote of the Week
From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life. -- Arthur Ashe
Ask your clients to point out your faults.
In this post from his Duct Tape Marketing Blog, John Jantsch recommends that we should ask people to point out our mistakes and then reward them for doing it. According to Jantsch:
When you make this a policy and communicate it to the world you accomplish several things.1) You get better or at least things get fixed. (Watch how fast your staff shapes up when they realize their every move in on notice.)
2) You admit you are human. Now more than ever people are looking for ways to connect with companies they do business with. Inviting them to participate in your customer service process is great way to connect.
3) You send the message that you care. You want to provide an absolutely perfect experience even if it means getting help from your clients to do it.
This idea isn't new among lawyers. Evan Schaefer at Notes from the (Legal) Underground has been offering a proofreading reward of $20 for each typographical error, $10 for each grammatical error, and $5 for each clever demonstration of how he can omit needless words.
Personally, I'm nervous about asking my clients to point out my mistakes, but perhaps that is why the idea is so intriguing.
Sometimes, its the little things.
Sam Decker has been writing his weblog, Decker Marketing: Marketing, eBusiness, Management, & Life -- from a Startup & Dell Marketing Guy since September 2003. I happend across it last week and have been consistently impressed with what Sam has to say. In a recent post, Sam talks about his friend's new restaurant and its amazing bathroom hand dryer. Sam's point:
I told my friends and wife to go wash their hands. And now I'm telling you about this. I'll tell others. Why? I've never seen this before, and thought it was cool. Mike spent a few extra dollars for this dryer...but it should quickly pay off.I think little things in the customer experience can make a big difference in driving customer choice and word of mouth.
It's why I go to Mexican restuarants with great chips and salsa, despite the food. Or the tipping point for me to choose one sandwhich shop over another because they serve soft ice. Or the chinese buffet, just because they have free ice cream.
Think about the little things you can do in your business to stand out, be remembered, and perhaps lead to word of mouth
.
What little things can you do to make your law firm stand out? I'm compiling a list of things we're going to try. I'd like to know your ideas too.
So, what do you do?
Don the Idea Guy's Brain Blog posts a link to a site called 15SecondPitch.com. From the site:
"So, what do you do?" It's one of the first questions people ask. Your 15SecondPitch lets you answer with confidence and get them interested in learning more. Enhance all your relationships, business and personal, by marketing yourself more effectively.
The site also helps you craft an elevator speech with the help of a "Pitch Wizard." You can put the result on a business card purchased from the site -- which I think is a great idea. I've been working on my pitch for quite some time. As a general practitioner who also mediates, it has always been very hard for me to answer that very question, "So, what do you do?" But here is my best effort so far:
My name is Mathew Homann and I am an attorney and mediator. As an attorney, I help individuals, businesses, and organizations cope with day-to-day legal issues and plan for the future. As a mediator, I help those same kinds of people resolve their personal and business conflicts in a peaceful and cost-effective way. My firm, the Silver Lake Group, constantly strives to improve the way we work with our customers and we guarantee they will be happy with our service.
I'm still not 100% happy with it, but if you don't start somewhere, you'll never get anywhere.
Redesigning the Customer Experience
Rob over at Business Pundit points to a Business Week article on IDEO, a famous design firm. The article focuses on IDEO's work in redesigning the customer experience for Kaiser Permanente, the largest health maintenance organization in the U.S.
After just seven weeks with IDEO, Kaiser realized its long-range growth plan didn't require building lots of expensive new facilities. What it needed was to overhaul the patient experience. Kaiser learned from IDEO that seeking medical care is much like shopping -- it is a social experience shared with others. So it needed to offer more comfortable waiting rooms and a lobby with clear instructions on where to go; larger exam rooms, with space for three or more people and curtains for privacy, to make patients comfortable; and special corridors for medical staffers to meet and increase their efficiency. "IDEO showed us that we are designing human experiences, not buildings," says Adam D. Nemer, medical operations services manager at Kaiser. "Its recommendations do not require big capital expenditures."
This article got me thinking about how IDEO would redesign the customer experience for most law firms. Seeing a lawyer is also a social experience often shared with others (spouse, parent, business partner) and, like medical care, often starts due to some unpleasent situation. Read the full article, it is a fascinating take on the IDEO process.
Great Client Questionaire
A great profile of Harvey Mackay, the well-known author of multiple business best-sellers, on About.com. The story contains a link to the Mackay 66, a tool Mackay uses in his businesses for gathering information about customers. The instructions:
It's critical to have information about your customer. Armed with the right knowledge, we can outsell, outmanage, outmotivate and outnegotiate our competitors. Knowing your customer means knowing what your customer really wants. Maybe it's your product, but maybe there is something else, too: recognition, respect, reliability, service, friendship, help - things all of us care more about as human beings that we care about malls or envelopes. Once you attach your personality to the proposition, people start reacting to the personality, and stop reacting to the proposition.Use this questionnaire to develop a profile of each customer. Some of your resources for the information might include secretaries, receptionists, suppliers, newspapers, assistants, trade publications, and the customer themselves. Look, listen, and learn all you can about the customer, both personally and professionally. You'll find topics for opening conversations, which can open doors for you and your company.
My favorite is number 66: "Does your competitor have better answers to the above questions than you have?"
The Weekly Five
Each week, I come across some really cool sites that I don't specifically write about. To share them with you, I'm starting "The Weekly Five" list in the right column of this weblog. I'll throw five (or so) sites on the list each week that I've found, liked, and added to my Bloglines news aggregator. Enjoy.
How to design a memo.
Greg Storey's Airbag has this post demonstrating how he would have redesigned the memo to George W. Bush about the Bin Laden threat. I don't write about politics, but the redesigned memo is quite striking and makes me want to rethink my client correspondence design. Greg writes:
I seriously doubt the White House cares about such things (Condi if you are, lets talk) but it would seem to me that if USA Today made it easier for a nation to monitor the weather through good design, why not give design a crack at making it easier to stop terrorism?
What do Clients want.
Wayne at Cutting Through asks, "Now why can’t I get my Estate Agent and my Lawyer using RSS the next time I move house? I don’t then have to spend half my life on a phone finding out whether I have a house to move into in 6 days, 6 weeks, or 6 months?" Why indeed?
Gaming Strategy = Business Strategy?
Angie McKaig has a brilliant post titled On Game Theory and Entrepreneurship equating her computer game play strategies with her business methods:
I realized something about myself last night. I realized that I play games the same way I manage my business. ... Truth is, I've always played games the same way; for the strategy. I just never realized it. And over the last twelve hours I've come to realize that I can understand the way I do business more clearly by looking at the way I play. I can also learn how to do business better by keeping in mind the way that I play.
Angie's lessons (read her post for her explanations):
1. Short term sacrifices are sometimes made to pursue long term goals.2. Cooperation is preferable to hostile competition.
3. Build quietly and carry a big stick.
4. Amass only good resources.
5. Invest in your people.
6. Avoid conflict and keep successes tactical rather than bloody.
7. If I could win the game without decimating my opponent, I would.
8. In choosing between overtaking an opponent through brute force or your own skills, choose your own skills.
Angie muses, "Makes me wish I could play Master of Magic with my competitors. What a great way to quickly determine how my competitors do business. Is this why "good old boys" play golf?"
Word of Mouth for Lawyers
In this post, Creating Customer Evangelists author Ben McConnell comments on the recent Time Magazine Article on the new movie Troy. From the Time article:
Before a movie opens, studios can generate inauthentic signals by securing a star and advertising heavily, creating the impression of a phenomenon. This puts butts in seats on opening weekend and gets the competition out of the way. "You can orchestrate an opening," says [economist Arthur] De Vany. "What you're doing is briefly dominating supply. That's not demand. The long-term demand necessary to sustain a blockbuster is still dependent on the authentic signal, word of mouth
Ben's take:
In other words, you can advertise the hell out of a movie, or a product, and create artificial demand, but it's still word of mouth that drives long-term, profitable success.
We lawyers already are at a disadvantage when it comes to this kind of customer evangelism. Our profession is so maligned that we must first convince our clients/customers/prospects that we are, "not like other lawyers." Once you get past that barrier, however, good "buzz" or word of mouth will be your best measure of success.
Some Catching Up
So involved with the cool stuff we're doing here that the blogging has been sporadic. That will change come Friday, but for now, here are a few interesting reads I've come across:
Dane at Business Opportunities Weblog picked up a great piece from Jeff Wuorio at the Microsoft Small Business Center on ways to diffuse angry customers.
Curt Rosengren at The Occupational Adventure has another thoughtful post titled, Your Money or Your Life - rethinking money.
Jennifer Rice at What's Your Brand Mantra comments here on a great post from Dispatches from the Frozen North about marketing and the customer experience.
Johnnie Moore has list from the ecustomerserviceworld newsletter about the difference between managing and coaching that I thought included good lessons for lawyers.
And finally, the best of the bunch. Scheherazade writes:
When you get invited to someone's place for dinner, and you say, "What can I bring?" and they say, "Just yourself," bring flowers. I feel like a champ every time I do this, and like a bit of a chump every time I don't ."
The [non]billable hour in print.
I am constantly amazed at the power of weblogs and the blogging community. Though I am far overdue in posting thank-you's for sites linking to this weblog, there were some interesting off-line developments last week:
First, thanks to Evan Schaeffer for including this weblog in his Illinois Bar Journal Article (reprinted on his firm website). Evan is a friend, and if you haven't read his Notes from the (Legal) Underground or Illinois Trial Practice Weblog, go do that right now.
Second, I posted here about letting your secretary fire a client as a "gift" for Administrative Professional's Day. The post got picked up in a lot of weblogs and generated a request from the editor of the Administrative Assistants Update newsletter to reprint the post in her publication.
The Silver Lake Group, Ltd.
Well, the Silver Lake Group, Ltd. is open for business. My partner is Jeffrey Mollet, a lawyer with expertise in agribusiness, real estate, and banking law (I'll post his biography here in another post). Jeff shares my passion for innovation and we both recognize how important it is to get our new venture off on the right foot. To that end, I'm shutting down my legal practice for the next month to concentrate on everything we need to do to start fresh, and most importantly, start right.
To be sure, I'll still be here for client calls and meetings, and the occasional motion or hearing, but I have no trials scheduled and will be taking on no urgent matters this month. On June 1, we will be meeting with every client and sharing with them our vision for our practice -- and more importantly, learning from them how we can better serve their interests. Some things on my agenda for the next four weeks:
1. Complete our Satisfaction Guarantee.
2. Prepare our announcements and finish our marketing materials.
3. Settle on our slogan/tagline. Right now, "Innovative Lawyers - Guaranteed Service - Uncommon Value" is the one we like best.
4. Revise our Mission Statement and draft our Client Care Agreement.
5. Interview for our Client Concierge Position.
6. Talk to the Placement Offices at St. Louis University, Washington University, and Southern Illinois University Law Schools about a first or second year student for some research projects.
7. Work on the SilverLakeLaw.com website.
8. Finish our migration from Word (him) and WordPerfect (me) to OpenOffice.
9. Introduce Jeff to blogging. He's going to be starting a Farm Law/Agribusiness Blog soon as a service to his existing clients. We will use weblogs as an alternative to newsletters for clients in specific industries.
10. Keep blogging (though a bit sporadically).
I've never had more to do and been more excited about doing it. Look for updates here and thanks for your support.