Service Quality in Legal Services: Emotion important for some clients

Much evidence points to the fact that highly satisfied clients are more likely to re-patronage a service. However, in legal services, where the knowledge of the buyer may vary considerably between seasoned GC’s to small business owners with little technical acumen, the perception of service quality can vary greatly as different types of buyers will use different criteria.

 

Research conducted by Tony Garry in the UK legal sector (published in the Journal of Services Marketing 2008) identified the important role of emotion in client satisfaction. Surveying 252 legal departments, he found that the technical aspects of the service quality were most important for the in house lawyer but other factors that focused on the functional service quality (such as responsiveness and accessibility) were more relevant to the SME respondents. In addition, the author identified the importance of emotion and lawyer-client interactions.

 

This highlights an interesting point for law firms that target the SME market. As SME buyers are likely to be less sophisticated buyers of legal services, they will use other aspects of the service to gauge service quality, namely ‘soft’ factors such as responsiveness and the impact that your personal attitude has on them. Other research in the professions identifies the importance of EQ as opposed to IQ in career success and this evidence supports that idea but from a client perspective.

 

So what should you do? As a first step, be aware that your emotions can actually ‘rub’ off onto your client and affect their perception of service quality. To heighten the EQ capability of your client facing people, consider incorporating training that enhances client perspective understanding, not only from a business perspective, but from an individual/emotional perspective.

 

Just as importantly, recognize the market you are serving and adapt your service offering and delivery appropriately.

Comments

[Lance Godard]

Robert: at the Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference last week, Jeffrey Reeser of Newmont Mining Corporation and Julie DeCecco, Associate GC at Sun Microsystems, Inc., said exactly the same thing in a panel discussion. DeCecco put the "connection with client" third on her list of importance, and Reeser suggested it would be even higher on his list.

What's most interesting about this from my perspective is not that they rank the emotional connection so high (we all do it, probably even more than we think) but rather that they are so open about it. Yes, even GCs want to work with people they like. And, as you say, lawyers need to understand and respond to that.