legal service delivery: what controls the client experience?
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the making of client evangelists. Specifically, I’ve been looking at how this kind of consumer zeal fits into the larger canvass of the emerging experience economy.
The question that keeps coming up for me is: What really steers the client experience in this new era? According to a recent post and related comment thread from Seth Godin, the consumer experience ship may have co-captains. That’s because businesses are starting to consider a new version of traditional CRM (Client Relationship Management) - - it’s called CMR (Client Managed Relationships). Dubbing it a “third generation” CRM strategy, a post from the Customer Relationship Management blog says that this new wave is all “about listening to the customer and enabling companies to finally put the ‘C’ in CRM.”
Adding to the discussion is a post in which David Maister asks What Does Client-Centricity Really Mean? Maister’s reasoned answer comes in the form of a list depicting “increasing levels of client focus.” At the base “Level 1: We do a better job than our competitors at listening to customers and work hard at finding out what they like and don't like about dealing with us.” At the list’s optimal opposite end, “Level 11: Clients believe that if it is ever a trade-off, we will put the clients' interests ahead of our own.”
Making another point on the subject of consumer experience is this article on The Meaning of Hybrids. It discusses research into why people buy hybrid cars. According to researchers interviewed for the piece, saving money isn’t “the primary motivator” for the purchase. Rather, we’re motivated by a desire to add to or edit the personal narrative that underlies our identities. We’re “looking for either new ways to either advance the storyline we like, or change the one we don't like. The idea of what a car means can be one of those important story elements.” The personal storylines of hybrid car purchasers often include a strong “desire for a society and a world where people work together for common goals.”
It will be interesting to see how our clients’ personal narratives influence the way we package and deliver our legal services as the experience marketplace continues to manifest.
