Client Service Energize Your Professional Staff

Developing the Next Generation of Rainmakers Client Service: Energize Your Professional Staff I recently did a presentation for a law firm on client service. One thing I shared was clients may not easily recognize the quality of your legal work, but they can easily recognize the quality of your service and it begins with your staff. I published this blog in 2011. It is worth reading again and if you want more on client service, here is a link to my Client Service eBook. It’s 5:00 AM and I am sitting in the Admiral’s Club at the Philadelphia airport. For the last three nights I have stayed at the  Ritz Carlton. As you likely know Ritz Carlton  refers to its staff as “ladies and gentlemen.”  The Ritz Carlton Leadership Center even has a blog that occasionally features  some of their ladies and gentlemen. As you also know, law Firms refer to their staff as “non-lawyers.” I suspect the morale of the Ritz Carlton ladies and gentlemen is greater than your non-lawyers. Isn’t the professional staff of a law firm as important to the level of service clients receive as the ladies and gentlemen who work with Ritz Carlton? When I practiced law, I thought so, and after reading Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles book  Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service  I decided to create a”Plus One Client Service” program in each of our offices. I wanted to share with you the game plan in case you want to start a program. We created office contests. Here is the plan one of our offices used that your office can use as a model: I practiced law for 37 years developing a national construction law practice representing some of the top highway and transportation construction contractors in the US.