Are you serving your law firm clients properly by adhering to “best practices”?  That depends on who your clients are, and who you think they may be.

I live my life online.  Banking, buying books, getting my entertainment fix and a host of other activities come courtesy of broadband.

So when I think about client service issues in my law firm I default to email and other online communications channels.  Documents come to us by fax or email.

Don’t bring us paper, we’ll just send you home with it.

People who hire my law firm think it’s fantastic; they recognize that we can work more quickly and efficiently for them this way, and that our practices are far more environmentally-conscious than would otherwise be the case.  They love saving a trip to the office to drop off documents.

But lots of people don’t hire us once they find out how we work.  They’re not comfortable with our method, and so they go elsewhere.  And we’re OK with that.

Some people think we’re doing it wrong.  I think we’re doing it right.

Here’s why.

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It starts out as a new procedure designed to make things more efficient and to improve client service.  But when things take an unexpected left turn, we need to turn into the skid.

If you’re worried about the competition, you’re obsessed with providing the best possible client service.  After all, a happy client is more likely to refer new people to you and become a fan (not in the Facebook sense, in the real world).

So you nitpick over every little procedure, constantly asking whether something could be done more effectively and in a way that makes it easier for clients to hire your law firm.

If you’re like me, you find something that solves the problem and move on from there.  Bad move, friend.

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I’ve been a huge Priceline fan forever.  If you know me then you know whenever there’s a convention I hit Priceline for the hotels and car rentals.  I find a sweet deal, pass it around to my colleagues, and we all win.

No more.

Some months ago I planned a trip with my family to a large city.  We were scheduled to land and pick up a car rental arranged through Priceline.  But illness befell the clan, and we were delayed for 3 days.

I knew I had the car rental paid for, but called Priceline to let them know I’d be late to pick up my ride.

Priceline told me that my rental would not be waiting for me, in spite of the fact that I’d paid for 10 days in advance.  In other words, the car was mine for all 10 days.  Lock, stock and paid for.

Not so, my friends.  Priceline Car Rental chose to screw me, and did so willingly.

Why?  Because the rental is held for 48 hours.  Though I’d paid for the car in advance, it would not be there for me when I arrived.  My money meant nothing to them, though they’d taken it gladly when offered at the outset of the deal.

Priceline, in other words, would potentially rent the vehicle twice – once to me, and once to someone else.

Bear in mind, I didn’t want any money back for the time I wasn’t driving the rental.  All I wanted was to make sure the car I’d paid for would be there when I arrived.  No dice, said my (former) friends at Shatnerville.

I lost over $200 on the deal, had to rent another car (from Hotwire – thanks guys!) and had to deal with “customer service” agents who began every sentence with, “I understand,” yet did not.

Not a ton of money lost on my part, but that’s almost besides the point.  I paid for the damn rental, and they wouldn’t give it to me.  Took the cash and ran.

Over the past five years alone I have spent over $15,000 with Priceline.  My colleagues and friends have collectively spent at least $50,000 with Priceline as a result of my earnest recommendations.

All because they couldn’t bear to honor a reservation that had been bought and paid for.

Think it was worth the $200 they made off me?

Remember your first kiss?  The terror, the elation and the sense that something inspiring was happening?

That’s the first moment of contact with a prospective client.  We forget that feeling after awhile, much as we begin to treat a kiss from a loved one as a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence.  It’s expected, somehow routine.

But not for the prospective client.  Each one of them feels the same way because he or she has never met you before.  It’s all fresh, all new, and all terrifying.  There’s the feeling of being unbalanced.

With a first kiss, the feelings are mutual.  With the new client, they aren’t.  But it’s our responsibility to remember the feeling and to act accordingly.  It’s respectful of the impending relationship.

Today you’ll be busy doing the same things you’ve done time and time again.

Remember that your client hasn’t walked this road before.

Most of the time there’s never been professional contact with a lawyer.

This moment, this first point of contact, is a make-or-break opportunity to build trust and rapport.

Mess it up and you’re sunk.

How will you handle it?

Image credit:   Some rights reserved by polarisdigital