Customer experience (CX) is the new business battleground for the Legal sector, yet our recent research study, The Professional Services Customer Journey Report, showed that many legal firms are failing to get the basics consistently right – and this could be affecting their bottom line.
In fact, out of all the professions analysed, the legal sector was found to be performing worst when comparing NPS (Net Promotor Score), with a sobering -54, a sharp decline from its score of -15 in 2019.
By surveying over 250 professional services firms in the UK, our research analysed the full customer journey when making a new enquiry. The findings, although harrowing, now provide a benchmark for improving CX and offer an immediate checklist for every Law firm.
- Offer a human touch. Make sure that all employees offer their names to callers when they answer the phone. It sounds so basic, but our research revealed that 22% of reception staff did not answer initial calls with their name, and when put through to a law expert, an astonishing 60% of these people did not offer their name.
- Regularly test your messaging services to ensure they are working correctly. Technology is great, until it fails! Our research found that 43% of messages left (including personal voicemails) did not get a response.
- Develop your team’s emotional intelligence. When clients or potential clients are facing stressful situations, it is critical to establish a positive connection with understanding and compassion for their situation.
- Check website contact forms and web-chat services work correctly and that they are treated in the same way as phone or email enquiries. Implementing new technology is a great way to improve CX – but only if it is done with care and consideration. Our research found that over a third of web enquiries were left completely unanswered.
- Follow up! We were astounded to find that only 8% of companies bothered to follow up a potential new client lead, and where more information had been requested, 38% of the time it never arrived.
- Make it personal! People want a personal service more than ever, but our researchers found that only 53% of email exchanges were personalised and more worryingly, 57% were poorly written with grammatical errors.
Research by the London School of Economics shows that for every 7% increase in a brand’s NPS, their revenue will grow by 1% as a direct result – that’s a whole lot of untapped revenue to gain from some basic day-to-day improvements.
“It is clear that legal firms, along with the whole professional services industry, have a huge opportunity to improve CX, deliver a superior experience to both new and existing clients, and reap significant business benefits in doing so,”says Jonathan Winchester, insight6 CEO.
Behind poor CX you can find underlying problems in a firm’s culture
Overall, insight6 researchers were underwhelmed by how the firms handled their enquiries. Just 23% felt the team member attempted to add value or go further to help them, and only 43% said that they would recommend the business to others.
What we do know to be true, is that underlying problems within a firm’s culture can often be found behind poor CX. Issues such as short-term targets, disengaged teams or siloed working - effective CX is often about empowering staff and providing them with the skills, tools, and authority they need.
One organisation that absolutely have got it right and understand the benefits of delivering great customer experience is LawNet. In next month’s blog you can read more about how LawNet has partnered with insight6 to help its members put CX at the heart of their businesses.