We conducted research into clients' perceptions of law firms and found that client experience is not nearly as good as the expert legal advice given by solicitors.
For a sector which employs 140,000 highly trained and skilled solicitors to advise on complex ‘human’ problems, it is difficult to understand why some law firms behave as if there is no client choice.
The time for solicitors to act and improve client experience is now! There is enormous pressure in the legal sector as 'low cost' competition increases. ‘Watson’, the legal artificial intelligence, has already been created to replace the solicitor’s advice and 'new business structures’ are challenging the traditional model.
Our insight6 study of the Legal Client Journey highlights an enormous opportunity for every law firm to grasp the nettle and focus on client experience. Clients want to be heard, understood and served by solicitors’ practices just like any other business they buy from, at every stage in the journey from first contact to receiving the bill.
The single biggest opportunity exists before the solicitor even knows a potential client exists - it is at the point that the client is shopping around - phoning in, logging in or walking into the practice.
Our research demonstrates the financial value of lost opportunities.
In a nutshell, the top six areas that need to be addressed at law firms at the enquiry stage are:
- 6 out of 10 people were NOT called back after leaving a message 'out of hours’;
- Less than 30% of enquiries had their call answered with a person that introduced themselves with their name;
- Contact details were not taken by one third of callers which meant that enquiries could not be followed up;
- Under half of the solicitors used the name of the client when interacting with them on the phone;
- Only 1 in 4 firms described the benefits of working with them when talking to a prospective client on the phone;.
- 80% of firms did not follow up call enquires and 95% did not follow up enquiries made through the website.
So what can you do?
First thing is to download the Legal Client Journey, have a read and hold a conversation with one of our Customer Experience Experts who are based throughout the UK and Southern Ireland to create a bespoke six step action plan for optimising the Legal Client Journey. We constantly receive ROI success stories from our 1,000+ clients who work through our programmes. Just one of insight6’s clients told us they invested less than £1k in improving customer experience and as a direct result retained a client worth £45k per annum.
The time to act is now! We are in an ‘experience economy’ where people value human connection more than anything else.
Download your copy of the Legal Client Journey by clicking here and reinvigorate your practice.