We were first introduced to the ‘client journey’ over 10 years ago by John Niland, of Success 121, and it was a concept that helped us to re-evaluate the performance of our business in a relatively objective way and – importantly – from the perspective of the client. Through a series of questions, each of which relate to a specific stage in the ‘journey’ a client takes from first hearing of the firm, through project sign-off to payment of the final bill, a fairly comprehensive self-assessment is possible.
The three questions that for us highlighted the most burning issues to address, and which resonate most strongly today as we work with law firms on maximising returns on their business development activities, are as follows:
- “We have an effective mechanism for following up people that we meet”
- “When somebody refers another, we undertake to call the prospective client as soon as our mutual contact has obtained permission for that call.”
- “We have a prepared process for producing proposals that includes active participation with the customer.”
The Cost of Missed Opportunities
Our own experience at the time was not dissimilar to the answers we get from law firms when we pose these questions today. Snowed under by the work at hand and unwilling to impose ourselves on prospects who may not want to hear from us, it is all too easy to create opportunities but never follow up. This is, of course, doubly costly because – added to the business we are missing out on – there is the wasted resource and opportunity cost involved in generating those initial conversations.
At a recent conference, a firm of business analysts presented on a client research project in which they had interviewed and surveyed a large number of actual and prospective clients about their experience as they followed the “client journey” from first enquiry through to completed transaction – and probed the reasons for not proceeding if that had been their decision.
The firms in question generally scored highly for general levels of satisfaction and relationships with fee earners, especially compared with benchmark data for a far larger sample of law firms.
However, when it came to follow-up processes, the firms’ scores can only be described as appalling. A significant number of unconverted enquiries resulted.
Following Up on the Follow Up
As a consequence, a number of the departments concerned instigated formal processes for ensuring that every single enquiry and quotation was followed up and tracked – to the point of having a conversation with the prospective client to find out why they had gone elsewhere if they had done so. The result of this systematic attention to follow-up was an increase of up to 30% in the number of instructions taken on, as compared with the period prior to the implementation of this approach.
These lessons may not, of course, apply to every department in every firm. However, research in the US has shown that buyers expect to be involved in a dialogue with suppliers of professional services and not be given a “take it or leave it” option.
The clear conclusion is that, however they choose to go about it, firms must take the issue of follow-up seriously – otherwise opportunities will continue to be missed, and resources will continue to be wasted.
