– Today’s customers are increasingly demanding and expect a quality experience.
– The range of legal services on offer is growing ever wider!
Customer care is no longer a choice, it’s an obligation.
In fact, according to a study carried out by Justifit France (1) on a panel of 16,000 people, 44% of those surveyed said that their collaboration with their lawyer had not gone well. Yet a study by Bain & Company (2) shows that in the financial services sector, which, like the legal profession, is highly intuitu personae, a 5% increase in customer loyalty can generate 25% extra profits.
While there’s no magic formula for improving customer relations, applying a few simple principles can quickly prove to be a winning strategy.
1- Getting to know your customer
This may seem obvious, but the reality is quite different. How can you follow your customer’s life without becoming intrusive? By “life” we mean the professional AND personal information of your contacts. These two elements will enable you to take a personalized approach to the relationship.
On the personal side, who wouldn’t feel embarrassed to take a vegan customer to a steak house, or ask about their spouse after they’ve just divorced?
On the business side, how can you avoid calling a customer when they’re no longer with the company, or missing out on a contract because you weren’t informed of a key piece of information that could have triggered a phone call on your part?
To avoid all these difficulties, using a CRM is an excellent way of getting to know your customer and keeping track of them over time. But a CRM is more than just a contact database.
Your CRM must be able to guide your actions, and to do this it must be alive. For example, it must be able to capture and deliver external information from social networks or the Internet, which will be useful for your development actions. CRM should also enable you to store all the information you have about your contacts in a single place, and track the important elements of your exchanges.
In short, for your relationship to live, your CRM must live too!
2- Tailor-made actions
We’ve just seen that improving customer relations means getting to know your customers better. Now that you’ve taken this step, you’ll be able to carry out surgically targeted marketing actions and be sure of reaching the right contacts.
In a world where we are all inundated with information, it has become essential to offer customers tailor-made communication that meets their expectations. Otherwise, the risk is to have a customer who no longer reads you and forgets you.
Here again, your CRM is your best ally, enabling you to target your contacts extremely precisely according to the message you wish to convey.
In short, show your customer that you know him!
3- Simplify your customers’ lives
Faced with increasingly demanding customers, you need to be able to respond more quickly to their requests and offer them a tailor-made service. So yes, it’s obvious that as a lawyer you already offer personalized support, but do you offer a personalized experience? These two notions, although quite similar, should not be confused.
A personalized experience can take the form of a customer space where your customers can chat or videoconference with you in total security, or book appointments directly via an intelligent diary that automatically suggests free slots. This type of system is extremely reassuring for customers, as information security is an absolute priority for them. As for the calendar, it reinforces the idea that you are easily accessible at any time.
In short, show your customers that you take care of them!
