Client Service LASTS in Successful Law Practices
Client Service that LASTS is essential for building a strong and lasting law practice.
Simple to state, harder to implement, the solution is to create an atmosphere where complaints are welcomed and resolved quickly. Realize that clients will have complaints and don’t think that their failure to tell you about them means the complaints don’t exist.
Use the acronym LASTS to help you remember the easy solution. LASTS stands for Listen; Acknowledge (show you understand the problem) or Apologize (if there’s complaint of any kind); Solve the problem; Thank the client; and make them Smile.
An apology isn’t a solution. These days, lots of complaints are handled by starting with “I apologize for the inconvenience” or some such. Clients want solutions. Remember the Smile. Not yours, which is important, but theirs, which is essential. Send them away happy. Until they’re happy, don’t let them go.
The formula for Client Service that LASTS. Simple to state, harder to implement, the solution is simply to create an atmosphere where complaints are welcomed and resolved quickly. Realize that clients will have complaints and don’t think that their failure to tell you about them means the complaints don’t exist.
Law practice is a service business Just like car washing, technical support, appliance installation and many others. Practicing medicine is a service business, too. As is teaching at all levels. And being President. Or holding any other political job or elected office.
What work in today’s American economy isn’t a service business?
Are you a producer? If we’re not producing a product, then we are engaged in some sort of service. There aren’t a lot of examples. Manufacturing, certainly. Farming. Construction. Any job that results in a tangible product (and most of us reading this post are not producing any tangible products).
Why is this important to lawyers? Because clients have many more options for selecting lawyers than they once did. Because satisfied clients are the golden eggs of law practice. Because we can’t practice law without clients, that’s the bottom line. At least, I haven’t found a way to practice law without clients to represent, whether those clients are individuals, small businesses, government agencies, large corporations, or foreign nationals. Have you?
Because most clients come to lawyers with problems that need to be solved, clients are tense and anxious. Just being nice is essential, but niceness alone won’t cut it in the delivery of legal services (or the delivery of any services). Clients are going to have complaints and those complaints must be successfully resolved if the client is to become and remain satisfied. Client service has many attributes, but one of the most important is keeping the client’s complaints successfully resolved.
Come to think of it, all service businesses would benefit from this procedure, wouldn’t they?
