Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 9, 1993 TAG: 9304090271
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: John Levin
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
EARNING CUSTOMERS' RESPECT
Customer service is probably an alien concept to many lawyers, doctors, engineers or architects.This is not to suggest that they don't deliver quality care and advice to their clients. Rather, few in the professions are bitten with the thinking sweeping the service and retail trades that says satisfying the customer is a primary goal, indeed the point of existing as a company.
Even doctors with the best bedside manners would rarely rank pleasing patients above delivering quality medical care. Only in recent years have some dentists, for example, started keeping office hours based on what's convenient for patients.
"People in our profession grew up with the attitude that people find you essential, but competition is changing that," said Bayard Harris, a Roanoke County lawyer. He counts himself among the first lawyers in the region who care enough to ask his clients what they think of his services.
It's simple arrogance that's kept many professionals from inviting the guy who pays the bill to rate what he got for his money.
"You can afford to be arrogant only when you're the only game in town, or at least think you are," Harris said.
"Traditionally the attorney was respected for his advice and counsel. He was an influential member of the community just by his presence," Harris said. "Many who are lawyers today grew up with that attitude and don't see a need to earn that respect.
"But I don't think the public bestows that respect anymore without you earning it," he said.
Two things have molded Harris' thinking. His three-lawyer Center for Employment Law specializes in representing employers on labor issues. Many of its clients - ITT Corp., the Kroger Co., Carter Machinery Co. and Carilion Health System - are in the midst of adopting total quality management, an operating style that has forced more customer-oriented outlooks.
Also, when he decided last fall to survey his clients, Harris said his practice was only a couple of years old. A young firm depends on referrals for new business and we "needed to know what our long-term prospects were," Harris said.
The firm mailed a six-question survey to 94 clients asking their perceptions of the timeliness, quality and value of its legal services. Those are the three main issues "that really matter to us as a firm," Harris said.
The survey was intentionally light-hearted, a factor that Harris credits for the 75 percent rate of return.
For example, to the question "How would you evaluate the timeliness of our response to your needs?" the clients chose among: "Speed of a passing bullet, speed of a passing auto, speed of a passing pedestrian, still sitting on Bayard's desk." Of the replies, 56 percent checked the auto analogy. Harris admits that his less-than-perfect work habits probably are responsible for the less-than-perfect score. It gives him something to work on, he said.
But that 67 percent rated the quality of the center's services as "sweet" and 80 percent said its fees were fair or better is comforting, he said.
Clients who expressed severe complaints got a personal visit. All of them got copies of the results. And Harris said he and his partners are planning similar surveys in the future.
Without being so direct about asking, professionals generally find it difficult to gauge client opinions.
"Most lawyers think they find out everything they need to know when they get response to their bills," said Frank Schultz, a visiting law professor at Washington & Lee University.
"Nobody likes to pay lawyers' fees," he said. "So, if the bill comes back with a complaint, you have to discuss it. If the bill gets paid, you figure that's all you need to know."
After 30 years of practice of administrative law in Washington, D.C., dealing mostly with the Securities and Exchange Commission matters, Schultz said he got only three or four letters of praise but nonetheless assumed most of his clients were pleased.
"Lawyers are only slowing beginning to use management and public relations devices that business regularly uses," he said. "That's because of an old-fashioned notion that you're there to offer your services, not to sell them.
"Lawyers didn't market their services until recently. You did a good job because that was your obligation to clients and to the judicial system, and doing a good job was supposed to be its own reward," Schultz said.
Although he regrets that law is becoming more of a business - "it cheapens it" - Schultz concedes there are new bottom-line demands on lawyers.
"The young students here are aware of how competitive practice has become, how difficult it is to get a good job and to land clients.
"The notion of doing a good job being its own reward seems silly to them," he said.
John Levin is business editor of the Roanoke Times & World-News.