Remember the last time you called a company about your order, your payment, or your account and what it took to get to the right department? Remember the joy of wading through a phalanx of options and when you didn’t find what you wanted, choosing any option, hitting “0” or shouting out “customer service” so you could talk to a human being?

God forbid you made a mistake and had to start over. 

Who decided this is the right way to treat customers? 

An accountant. Or committee thereof.

Bean counters counted the beans and realized that it was a lot cheaper to use automation than to hire humans to talk to people. No doubt that’s true. But what they didn’t “account” for is how frustrated customers might be battling the automated devil.

Or how much business they would lose when frustrated customers gave up and bought their wares somewhere else. 

They also didn’t think about the other side of the equation. They didn’t consider how much goodwill and loyalty they could engender, and how much additional profit they might derive, by eating the expense of providing some old-fashioned hospitality on the phone. 

I’m not saying automation is bad. Just that management should consider not just the savings, but the cost. 

How much is it worth to ensure that a customer returns to your store? How many new customers might find you when existing customers share their positive experience with you via reviews, social media, and word of mouth?

I’m not just talking about the phone. There are many areas of customer service where a company should consider spending more to make more. 

That goes for law firm, too.

I encourage you to consider spending more to make clients feel welcome and appreciated and giving them an exceptional experience with your firm. Look for “pain points” and areas of friction your clients and prospective clients might experience and put some money on the line to fix them. 

But don’t just fix them. Turn those pain points into your areas of strength.

It might give you a competitive advantage over other firms that listen too much to their bean counters and don’t listen enough to the people who pay them.

The Attorney Marketing Formula