Effective client service requires a lot more than rebranding exercises

By Robert Sawhney, Managing Director, SRC Associates

One thing that consistently strikes me is the lack of awareness among firm leaders in Asia about which factors lead to superior performance and which kinds of behaviours support them.

For example, research has found that high-performing professional service firms engage/invest in significantly more market-oriented behaviours than their lower-performing counterparts. These market-oriented activities include formal client and market research, cross-functional teams, knowledge sharing and adopting new technologies to respond to client needs.

Numerous other studies have also found that market-oriented firms significantly outperform firms that do not demonstrate such behaviours.

However, I have found that less than five per cent of firm leaders in Asia have conducted formal client research in the past three years. This number goes down to almost zero if the timeframe is reduced to within the past year.

Many of these firm leaders talk a good game but are very bad at actually investing any time in activities that are deemed managing for the future. In other words, they talk the talk but do not walk the walk.

One of the major reasons for this is the rise of Asia and hence work for many law firms coming in the door, whether they perform at a high level or not. However, this is clearly not the case in the west. Those markets have been intensely competitive for a number of years and, given the recessionary times of late, law firms have been forced to up the ante to remain both competitive and relevant.

In Asia, there are other factors at play as well. The leaders of firms here, whether local or foreign, do not tend to be exposed to the same degree as their western counterparts to ideas that lead to alternative ways of '¨working and practising. They have been sheltered by a relative lack of information regarding more modern practice management approaches that leverage a market orientation.

They have also been sheltered from the need to become more market oriented by clients that continually accept levels of performance and service which they would not accept in any other realm as a consumer and buyer of services.

While this is gradually beginning to change, as always it will be law firms that will have to be pulled kicking and screaming into what might be called 21st-century firm management.

During my recent research, a number of clients of both local and international law firms complained about fees exceeding capped amounts and other types of poor service. However, these same clients noted that most law firms are the same and they were unlikely to change firms, as they wanted to avoid the hassle when there was no guarantee of receiving better service.

I have also seen firm leaders proudly describe rebranding exercises involving new taglines, websites and so on (one even went as far as hiring a 4As ad agency) yet, when asked how they changed the behaviours of their professionals who are supposed to deliver on those brand promises, they give you a blank stare and try to hide the fact they hadn’t thought '¨of that.

One reason that law firms both here and elsewhere are willing to engage in such activities as rebranding or hiring social media specialists is because they believe it is something they can do on a superficial level without having to get their hands dirty. By hiring someone to take care of a new website or the firm’s LinkedIn page, they can wash their hands of the issue, believing the job is done.

I have found very few leaders with the appetite to tackle the systemic competitiveness issues facing their firm, because such issues require change and too few firms are ready for this. Changing a website and hoping the client experience will magically improve is certainly wishful thinking, especially when your new tagline promises one thing and your professionals do another.

At the end of the day, competitiveness is largely about leadership and building a market-oriented firm. With so few firms taking the steps towards this goal, there are real opportunities for firms to differentiate themselves by providing superior client value. And no, new brochures won’t help!

bob@srchk.com