The Voice of Our Clients
For many years I have said as lawyers we focus too much on what we do and not nearly enough on what our clients need. How can we learn what our clients need? Put simply, if we do some research and listen intently, they will tell us.
Two of my friends with Patton Boggs here in Dallas, Charlie Miller and Ronna Cross, recently published an article titled: "Capturing the Voice of the Client." You can find it at http://www.pbdi.org/Originate/default.asp?Action=GetDetails&ArticleID=31. I urge any lawyer who represents businesses to read the article. It will show you ways to capture the voice of your business clients.
Reading the article caused me to think again about the voice of our individual clients and client representatives. In law school we were taught to "think like a lawyer." Imagine if we had also been taught to "think like a client." We would be in a far better position to help our clients. To "think like a client" we must work on being empathetic and walking in our clients' shoes and we must build trust and rapport with them.
According to Wikipedia, empathy is defined as one's ability to recognize, perceive and feel directly the emotion of another. For us it is the ability to look at things from our client's perspective. It is very important for us to understand how our client or client representative views the matter we are handling and what is important to them. Keep in mind that for a business client our legal work is in the context of their business and for an individual client, our legal work is in the context of their life.
Habit Five, in "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," by Stephen Covey, is: "Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood." That is a great habit for lawyers to follow. Covey points out that only a small percentage of people engage in empathetic listening. Most of us are figuring out what we will say instead of listening intently to what our clients are telling us. Covey also urges readers to diagnose before prescribing. Far too many lawyers want to demonstrate their brilliance before the client has finished describing the situation.
How do we diagnose? We need to ask questions and listen intently. Here are some questions or statements we can use:
- Tell me about...
- What is it like...
- Tell me more...
- Help me understand...
- Can you give me an example of...
- How did you...
- Bring me up to date on...
Sometimes our clients will tell us one thing, while their body language is telling us something different. In his book "The Likeability Factor," Tim Sanders points out that the first step to understanding how others feel is to recognize their emotions which, with practice, can be read on their faces long before they tell us how they feel. Sanders references the work of Dr. Paul Ekman and includes a quote: "Facial expressions, even quickly passing, signal emotional expression. The face is the mind's involuntary messenger." On his website, Sanders identifies seven facial expressions we should be looking for and what emotion they signal http://www.timsanders.com/downloads/faces.html .
How can you build your empathy skill set? There is plenty of information on the internet. Tim Sanders points out that many empathy training courses use movies as a device to understand feelings and gives readers a website for recommendations: http://empathy.colstate.edu/films.htm. That website includes many other resources for learning to become more empathetic.
When meeting with clients, prepare the way Charlie and Ronna suggest in their article. Find out as much about what is important to your client or potential client as possible. During the meeting, build trust and rapport by asking questions and listening intently. Put yourself in their shoes so you can understand best how to help them. After the meeting follow up in some way that demonstrates you were paying close attention to the voice of the client.
